Comics Confronting A Death Spiral? Competition From Videos, The Internet Zap Superman’s Strength
Chicago - The death of comics?
Sounds like an alarmist ploy, akin to a TV preacher hoping to pry some big bucks from his broadcast flock. Or better yet, another gimmick from the comic book creators, aimed at driving up sales. After all, the death of Superman four years ago did wonders for circulation.
But things in comic book land have not been the same since. Circulation has been in a four-year tailspin. The biggest name in comics, Marvel Entertainment Group Inc., creator of X-Men, Spider-Man and Captain America, is on the ropes. And people who have spent close to a lifetime loving comics are thinking the unthinkable.
“We could very well be seeing the death of comics,” said Chicagoan Gary Colabuono, founder of the now-defunct Moondog chain of comic book stores, which at its peak two years ago had 21 retail outlets in five states.
“We’ve lost a generation of prime comic book readers in the last five years,” Colabuono said. “Will they come back? I don’t know.” Not everyone in the $450 million industry makes such a bleak assessment. This is a cyclical business, and comics have been left for dead before, only to rise from the ashes. There will always be a place for comics, supporters say.
There is widespread agreement, though, that comic books are in trouble and their future is highly uncertain if kids - especially pre- and early-teens - continue to forsake them for movies, video games and the Internet.
“Who would have thought that we’d be worried about attracting kids?” said Greg Loescher, publisher of Comics Buyer’s Guide.
But they do, and they must. Kids are the entryway into comic books, and unless they buy early, the industry thinking goes, they probably never will be comic readers.
“I just think they’re stupid,” said 14-year-old Chris Durkin of suburban Downers Grove, Ill. “They don’t have a plot, and they’re all just about killing people.”
Although there remains a following for comic books, the three-year slide in circulation has caused some industry observers to wonder if the falloff - which coincides with the explosion in computer and video use - is more than cyclical.
Comic book sales have crashed since 1993, falling 47 percent from $850 million to a projected $450 million in 1996.
Some of the reasons for the decline of the comic book are obvious. One need only look at the crowds at video rental stores, the 35 percent of American homes that have three or more television sets and the rapidly growing percentage of homes with computers to understand why comics are losing the battle for kids’ attention.
The thin, multicolor books no longer corner the market on over-developed men in Spandex pummeling one another.
The decline of the comic book, though, is more than simply another story detailing how traditional forms of entertainment are losing ground to the onslaught of cyber-enticements, video temptations and satellite-delivered dreams.
What happened to comic books may say more about the consequences of adults getting into a medium for kids - and kids-at-heart - and screwing it up.
Riding a boom in the early 1990s, comics branched out into licensing agreements to promote spinoff items: movies, videos, toys, merchandise, clothes. In doing so, industry officials said, some publishers lost sight of their original mission: to entertain kids with compelling stories.
“They became licensers and they forgot what they were all about,” said Greg Daniel, vice president of merchandising and marketing at Chicago-based Classics International Entertainment, the former owner of the Moondog chain. “Anything that could have gone wrong in this industry, we did, and it all came back to haunt us.”
Moreover, the boom turned out to be artificial. Many people bought comics, but for the wrong reasons. Following the speculative craze in baseball cards, comic books became investments.
“People flaunted the investment value of comics, with stories about putting your kid through college on the sale of one comic book,” Daniel said.
It is true that there is money to be made in comic books. Robert Overstreet, author of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, said a 1939 issue of Superman sold for $170,000 this year, while some comics from as recently as the 1960s have sold for $25,000 to $30,000 an issue.
“This market is amazing,” Overstreet said.
Circulation soared on the speculated value of the books and the strength of the death of Superman gimmick. Sales of DC Comics’ Superman/Batman Group of comics topped an average 6 million a month for the six-month period ending in June 1993, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Smelling the profit potential, other comic producers joined the competition.
But the gimmick - and the boom - ran its course, and three years later Superman/Batman circulation plunged more than 72 percent, to 1.65 million copies.
At the same time, paper prices soared. Comics that three years ago cost less than $2 were selling for $3 and more, the price of renting an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. The teen and preteen dollar did not go as far. Videos and the Internet proliferated.
“Video games and the Internet took time away from reading comic books,” said Daniel Manser, marketing communications director for Baltimore-based Diamond Comic Distributors, the nation’s largest comics distributor. “You double the price of a comic book, and you can go see a movie. And I imagine the movie will last a lot longer than the reading of a comic book.” These days, the kids who used to populate the comic book stores are often outnumbered by adult collectors.
Marvel, which published its first comics in 1939, is paying the heaviest price in the industry. The company announced last month that it is firing about 115 people, or one-third of the work force at its comic book division. Marvel stock has plummeted more than 78 percent since March, closing at $2.50 on Friday. It has cut the number of comic titles in half.