On the subject and continued health of comic books

It is quite well known that I love comic books. I estimate that I have somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 of them. I obtain more every week and frequently attend conventions. In fact, it would not be unreasonable to say that I am one of the more affluent nerds about town.
There are many things I love about comics. As a medium, I enjoy the way the words and pictures can interact so well together. I appreciate the serialization of the story, a factor that is almost completely unique to comics. I have much love for the characters, the stories, and the history. To say that Superman is not one of the greatest characters in contemporary literature would be completely false. I doubt there are many people in the world that wouldn’t recognize him immediately.
Unfortunately, not unlike the music companies in the late 90’s the comic book industry is at the edge of a time of great change, and they must evolve to survive. Digital distribution has been the loudest voice crying this change. Certainly it isn’t a bad system. It isn’t for me, I prefer the physical books in my hands. I further maintain that most comics have some resale value whereas digital comics (As of yet) do not. There are some suggestions about that coming up soon.
As I said, I love comics. I absolutely adore them. However, I have some complaints. I may be in the minority, but I don’t particularly like Brian Michael Bendis’ writing. He isn’t bad on a book like Daredevil but his work on the various Avengers titles has regularly teetered between awful and mediocre. This is particularly bothersome to me as I am a huge Avengers fan. I want to read about Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, The Wasp, Ant-man, Wolverine, and Ms. Marvel. I have every issue of the series from #1 in 1964 to #36 of New Avengers. I want to read it, but the story and writing simply aren’t worth an additional $4.00 a month. Not too mention that there are four different Avengers titles!
This brings me to my next complaint; over-saturation of the market. I like Thor but Marvel is publishing 7 different Thor based books a month? The same with Captain America, Iron Man, Deadpool, and Wolverine. That doesn’t even factor all their various appearances in other books. DC has this problem as well, but certainly not as badly as Marvel does.
I know this is a dead horse which requires absolutely no beating, but let me mention the $3.99 price point. It’s not that I am unwilling to pay the extra dollar from time to time, but when every book that I want to read (Except X-factor) is at $3.99. A lot of which is filled with pointless additional material (Example: The history of the Avengers) to make up the price difference. I’m not saying boycott $3.99 books, but I think the publishers should be more cognizant of our limitations. Certainly if prices were lower they could sell more comics.

I thought I could make a few suggestions for the future of the comics industry. A few things that consumers, retailers, and publishers can all try in the hopes of strengthening the industry as a whole.

Digest comics- Archie has published those Digest comics and sold them in grocery stores for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how well they sell but it seems to work. I buy them every so often. If there was a Spider-man digest published with reprints in the same manner, I would buy one every time I go to the store. Same with just about every other series. I figure put in 5-8 comics in for $3 to $5, publish one for each character (Or group them together like Flash and Green Lantern) and publish it monthly you could publish them for at least 5 years without repetition. It would be a great way to introduce people to comics.

Digital Comics Hot Spots- The idea is similar to how the Nintendo DS and the B&N Nook work. When you are within range of certain store you can get free stuff and exclusive downloadable content. Why not with comics? Perhaps you can only get an exclusive cover from inside comics stores. That way the retailer can get a percentage from the download as well.

Lower the prices- I think $2.99 is the most that people are readily willing to pay for comic books. What I suggest is that we go back to newsprint style paper at a lower price. Granted the quality wouldn’t be as nice, but I think it might be worth it. What if the lesser selling titles were printed like this to make them cheaper, say $2.00 a book? I can almost guarantee there would be more people buying Agents of Atlas or Captain Britain and MI:13.

Better all ages titles- Thor, The Mighty Avenger had it right. It was a fun, lighthearted book. It seems to be the belief that “All Ages” books need to be poorly drawn with stupid stories such as Spider-man and Wolverine getting ice cream together. I started to read comics at age 3 and I did not turn out bad. Part of this stems from my complaints about an over-protective parental society. That said, I have absolutely no complaints about Tiny Titans whatsoever.


I know that no one in a position to do anything (Dan Didio, Tom Brevoort, Joe Quesada) will even glance at this but I sincerely hope someone does and thinks about my suggestions.

Keep Watching The Skies!
Blake Cates