Heartless Dark: The Blog

Okay, getting back to a few threads I’ve planted here and here, let’s start to address this behemoth. “The Problem with Comics Today” or “The Art Form is dying fast.”

I don’t need to give a history lesson here – you most likely know it or can figure it out really quickly, but – to be brief (too late) – the majority of comic readers are not kids – teens. They’re adults. Mid-twenties (if we’re lucky) to the forties. Men (mostly). Now, the upside to this is that this is a steady base. They’re stuck for life.

Example: met a cool guy at Night-Flight the other week who stopped in to pick up his weekly stash of comics. He had Uncanny X-Men and Spiderman (among a few others). He shrugged and said he’d gotten tired of comics – of the repetitive storylines and rehashed characters – but he’d been collecting for decades, so why stop now (he was actually only 32 issues (I believe) from owning the entire run of X-Men).

That’s the feeling I’m getting with long-time readers. “Well, sh*t, we’re here, so why leave?”

Is this the malaise you want from your core audience?

I’ve loved comics and related characters since I was a kid. Some of my earliest memories were getting some comic books in my stocking for Christmas – and my collection of Super Powers Team and Secret Wars action figures. Man, I love those. As I got older, I became a collector. Then I wanted to draw them. Then I wanted to write them. Now, I’m doing both (not particularly well, but, hey, I’m doing it aren’t I). I still buy a stack every month (not to mention the endless trades from Amazon.com), and I want everyone to read comics.

But I can’t get them too.

Too much history to pick up a story. Too much money and time to get caught up in order to enjoy a series. Long-running, serialized shows on TV face this problem too – but a) TV is free, so it’s easy to sit down and figure it out and b) this is why most serialized shows don’t last too long – they don’t invite viewers, they exclude them.

So, the question becomes, how do we attract NEW readers of ALL ages (instead of the dying fanbase we now have)and not piss off the existing base?

No easy answer to that one. Robert Kirkman (the writer of the amazing Invincible) had an idea last year. Read it here.

What do you think?

In a nutshell – all the creators with a name (I’m talking to you Bendis, Morrison, Millar, Ellis, Ennis, Gaiman, et al), make your own damn books. Start something original. People will follow. Big companies – hand your titles over to new, up and coming creators and let them play with them. Don’t shackle them with years of continuity and crossovers. Let them start fresh.

Let me go one step further.

Big two – you listening?

Kill your Universes.

(insert collective screeches from Mom’s basements across America)

Give it a year – what the hell can it hurt?

Kill everything that is happening right now. Kill them. Have some big bad come and rip reality to shreds. And restart.

Original idea? Hell no. It’s been done before. But this time, don’t just do it as a stunt (as every damn crossover is every damn year) – do it as a way to GET PEOPLE TO READ COMICS. People will come. Produce some high-quality sh*t – and PEOPLE WILL STAY.

You can even get your big guns to orchestrate it.

It worked with Ultimate Spiderman. You started from the beginning with Top-Notch people and let them be great. And it worked. GREAT comic.

Notice how it didn’t work with Ultimate X-Men. Too many creators, not all top-notch, and too much “let’s do what’s already been done” rehashing of old storylines (yes, yes, USM has done this a bit too much, too – but it’s done it mostly better).

What’s the worst that could happen? You retcon it all and go back to the decades of continuity dragging you down. Your core fans will stick around.

They did before when you pulled stunts that didn’t work.

So don’t make this a stunt. Make this a concerted effort to SAVE COMICS.

Cause they’re not going to last too long at this rate.

Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?

More to come… Stay tuned…

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