"Print media is dying!" read the dramatic headlines on the front of print media like newspapers. We've been hearing about the death rattle of traditional publishing for so long now that it doesn't feel like a natural passing. It's like the ridiculously protracted demise of that one guy from the cheesy seventies action movie. Newspapers and printed books have been cowering terrified in the corner by the approaching onslaught of the internet and eBooks, which are threats that are very much on the radar of comic books too. If people can get single issues on their iPad for 99 cents instead of the $3.99 they're expected to shell out for a physical copy, it's a no-brainer, right? Comic books have been subject to their own special brand of hysteria, though, as industry insiders and fanboys alike are bemoaning the fact that kids today have plenty of other distractions, like videogames and hoop-and-stick, in much the same manner that people used to worry kids were being distracted from regular books by these graphic novella dealies. Whatever the reason, people do have a reason to be nervous about the future of comics. Where the biggest titles were selling as many as a million copies per issue in the Golden Age, and again during the speculator boom of the nineties, these days the top of the Diamond Sales Chart is usually an issue of Batman that made its way into 20,000 people's hands. 20,000. That's nothing, compared to the amount of people who go to see the number one movie, or play the number one game, or even watch the number one YouTube video. And the profits will reflect that. DC and Marvel will never go out of business so long as they're owned by hugely successful parent companies (who handle all the money-earning movies and merchandise), but they may end up scaling down their operations when people notice just how unprofitable they are. And those profits are only gonna go down, what with the digital comics and the hoop-and-stick. Comic books are a dying format. We can admit it. Even as we cling to the hull of this sinking ship; we're not blind to what will be our certain deaths. We'll still go down with it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
