Comic Books are in the decline. This is no surprise anymore. I’ve also noticed that more and more people, primarily in the comic industry, are being hired for their politics, rather than on their merit and skills. Because of this, the core essences of what made comic books so damm popular has all but faded away and now, we are left with a hollow husk of its former glory.
Make no mistake, just because the MCU is booming, does not mean that the comics that inspired them are doing so hot themselves. From what I’ve been able to gather, many have attributed the failure of comics to two prime things:
- The new writers are more focused on politics and virtue signaling than narrative, and as a result pushing those that are looking for an escapism out of the hobby.
- There’s a constant influx of single new issues & not enough trade paperback to bring in new fans, thus making it difficult for them to start their journey.
These are the core reasons why I think the comic book industry has been struggling to survive and stay relevant so far. For the politic side of things, that’s an rather easy one to observe. The quality of writing in comic has shifted greatly, much to the dismay of veteran fans. Make no mistake, comics have always been political, heck that’s how Superman was born, but there was this nuance to it that made it easier to deal with. At its core, story and narrative was their main priority and the message was sprinkled on top of it to complete the package. Nowadays, it seems that the story is what’s being sprinkled and the priority now is to virtue signaling.
As for the second point, there is an argument to be made that the medium is quite difficult to get into if you’re not knowledgeable of previous events. Yes, there are amazing comic book channels that make videos to help digest the stories so that newcomers can have a springboard to begin their comic journey but this still won’t help the sales of comic. I believe that once a series or storyline has concluded, it should be made into a Trade paperback, which is a collection of previously published comic books. Now, these already been done but not as frequent or marketed as much as I’d like.
The trade paperback is a nice solution but even with that, there’s no denying that a huge portion of the problem within comic books right now is the writing. If this keeps up, then we may see the extinction of a well beloved medium that has changed the world as we know it.
