5 Bad Habits Superhero Comics Should Break
1. Reliance On Events
Without getting into too many specifics, here’s a very brief breakdown of how the comics industry functions: the big two publishers print only the specific amount of books that comic book shops order. The publishers sell their books through Diamond distribution and the shops buy them from Diamond. These orders are usually based on how many customers have pre-ordered the book, how many people have specifically asked for that title. The retailers who own the comic shops don’t get to return any unsold books and they have to take the loss if a book doesn’t do well, so it benefits them to order just enough for the customers who want them plus a few extra for anyone who walks in off the street and wants a copy. Put more simply: Marvel and DC are not hurt by unsold books, neither is Diamond; it’s only the small retailers who get punished. Marvel and DC (and parent companies) get to show the shareholders how many units were sold to Diamond and get rewarded, even though all of those books probably aren’t actually being purchased by individual readers.
Retailers use the data they have from their customer base to see how much of a book they should continue to order. New #1s happen to sell more and sales usually fall with each subsequent issue. So, for Marvel and DC, having a new #1 come out every few months is like hitting refresh on the sales charts. And the easiest way to have new first issues is either through relaunches or constant events. That way, the retailers don’t have any past data to work with since nobody on Earth knows how many copies Civil War II will “usually sell.”
The big two can point to sales charts and say “look, people must really love events because they keep buying them, the market has spoken, let’s press on,” but retailers are stuck with boxes of unsold books in their backrooms. The merchandising hype machine is active and there are constant news stories about the next event that’s on the horizon. Sure, the sales charts back up the idea that events are popular, but at a certain point this has to come crashing down. Individual customers will feel event fatigue and stop buying the issues and retailers will either go out of business because they’re not selling enough or stop ordering as much because they’re tired of taking the hit. Industry wide sales may be going up, but those are just sales to Diamond, not necessarily sales to readers. The bubble will burst eventually and hopefully things will bounce back, otherwise we won’t have comics as we’ve had them anymore.
Superheroes may be more popular than ever, but the sales don’t reflect this massive surge of public interest. This could be a new Golden Age of comics where average people go see an Avengers movie and then walk to wherever comics are sold and pick up an issue of that month’s Avengers comic that has an easily digestible story that will get them hooked and coming back for more. As it is now, a person walking out of a superhero movie will find a comic rack full of part 3 of 6 or a delayed event or some other source of confusion that makes them give up before they even get started. For the industry to survive there need to be new readers, especially young ones, and if things don’t change everything will collapse sooner or later. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.