Comic Book Industry Gets Clobbered Sales Have Declined Sharply After Period Of Stupendous Growth
Whoosh! ABC’s “Lois and Clark” flies to the top of its Sunday evening TV time slot.
BAM! “Batman Forever” rakes in $184 million at the box office.
POW! Millions of children tune in “X-Men” and “Spider-Man” cartoons each Saturday morning.
ZAP! Coming soon to a freezer section near you: Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica on packages of Ore-Ida Tater Tots.
CRAASSHHHH! Even as comic book characters today pop up in more places more often than ever, the comic book market itself has dived into a ditch.
Since 1993, sales have dropped by a fourth, maybe more. One out of six comic book stores has shuttered. Video games and other high-tech toys are luring away the primary audience: pre-teen and teen boys. And in January, the king of the comic book hill, Marvel Comics, announced layoffs and deep slashes in its publishing output.
“The entire comic book industry is in a bad state of depression,” Marvel Comics President Jerry Calabrese said.
Just two years ago, comics were on a joyous upward jaunt. By some estimates, 1993 sales broke through the $1-billion mark for the first and only time.
During this period, Marvel promised a “Marvelution,” launching no less than three new comic lines and buying upstart Malibu Comics and its then-successful Ultraverse titles. Marvel also licensed other characters, ranging from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to Barbie, for yet more titles.
Four days into 1996 came what some have sarcastically called the “Marvelcution.” Marvel Entertainment Group Inc., which also includes the Fleer and Skybox trading card companies, Panini sports stickers and Toy Biz toys, cut loose 275 employees. Over the next few months, three out of every 10 Marvel Comics titles will disappear. Barbie and the Power Rangers are gone. Malibu is gone. All but a handful of the books Marvel launched during the boom have been canceled.
“Marvel’s fine,” said Calabrese, noting the company shipped about eight million comics in a recent month and still owns the largest chunk of the market. “It’s just not fine compared to the boom years. The big mistake we made was when the market turned, we didn’t respond by shrinking those lines fast enough.”
Estimates of last year’s comic book sales range between $400 million and $700 million, far less than the 1993 high watermark. (Marvel last year decided to distribute its own comics, creating some behind-the-scenes tumult that makes it harder to pin down total comics sales.) The number of comic book stores in North America has fallen from more than 6,000 to roughly 5,000.
“There’s more competition for the entertainment dollar,” said Bill Liebowitz, owner of Golden Apple Comics stores.
Beneath the gloom are nuggets of good news. The worst may be past. Publishers are promising better stories and art rather than gimmicks. Even as the industry shrinks, it is drawing in more female and older readers. Superheroes still dominate comics, but comics are no longer just super heroes. In absolute terms, the market may be roughly the same size it was in 1990 before the up-and-down gyrations.