Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2017 7:59:06 GMT
The is due to the fact that about 20-30 years ago a new generation of no-talent hipsters took over the comics industry and created themselves out of business. Comics are now only sold to a small niche audience of adults and do not appeal to kids anymore. The problem is, if you don't appeal to kids there will be no next generation of comic book fans.
Most of the comics they make are on the same level of quality of most of the recent Hollywood remakes of classic movies. In other words amateurish and forgettable.
The characters still have fans but they come from movies, TV shows, cartoons and video games. They don't come from dark, dreary, overly complicated, and political agenda pushing comic books. That's why comic-con is more about movies and TV than it is about comic books.
It's also why more tickets are sold to a blockbuster movie in 1 weekend then there are comics sold in North America in a year (all publishers, all titles).
I have to disagree with you.
I think one of the best periods of comic books was in the 90s especially with female characters which up until then were mostly poorly treated as many male and female comic book writers have spoken about in interviews with Batgirl being paralysed in ‘the Killing Joke’ (which thankfully Gail Simone has now fixed), Supergirl being killed off in ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’ and worst of all, Ms Marvel being raped and impregnated by her own son and the other members of the Avengers smiling like it was a good thing. The 80s were a really sexist period for comic books. I read a few comic books in the late 80s and with the exception of some series like Wonder Woman, Spider-Woman and Ms Marvel (minus the incest thing) most female lead series were garbage. It wasn’t until I read the Supergirl (Linda Danvers) series by Peter David and Witchblade that I really got into comic books and the 90s introduced some of the best female lead series such as the Birds of Prey, Razor, Darkchylde (outsold Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and X Men on a monthly basis at its peak), Fathom, Painkiller Jane, Shi, Lady Death, Aphrodite IX etc that were nothing like the female superheroes we had seen before. What I loved about a lot of them was they were strong, fierce, badass, intelligent, sexy and they were their OWN heroes and were not secondary to any males. Some of them may have had unrealistic bodies but at the same time they were three dimensional characters and were treated with the same respect as male superheroes - something movies and TV shows have long failed to do.
There is a good reason why the ‘Supergirl/Linda Danvers)’ series is still the biggest selling and longest running series of Supergirl and it was ‘cause Peter David made Supergirl her ‘own’ character with her own personality, her own unique powers, her own characters and her own villains, her own costume and her own Horror vibe and you only have to read through the letters sections in the comic books to see what male AND female fans were praising the most and I still have all the Supergirl/Linda Danvers comic books and I’m currently collecting them all in graphic novel form as they are being re-released on Amazon. I find myself still loving them more than the current ‘Supergirl’ show with Kara which is more of a female Superman show than a Supergirl show. The difference between Linda and Kara was they made Linda a real human being with emotions and she had a lot of struggles and was very conflicted. At times you didn’t know if she was going to save people or wipe everybody out and give into her rage and that is something I had never seen with a female character before and still have never seen on screen. Most movies get out to more people than comic books but the 'Supergirl' movie with Helen Slater didn't even make a quarter of the sales at the Box Office the Linda Danvers series made in the 90s and early 00s and the 'Supergirl' TV show DVD sales fail to match it too. At its peak it was outselling Superman some months and is one of the main reasons Supergirl is the second biggest selling female superhero of all time.
Independent series really took off in the nineties and Image Comics came very close to dethroning DC and Marvel as the biggest selling comic book company thanks to series like Spawn, Witchblade, the Darkness, Cyberforce, Wildcats, Gen13 and Youngblood which were all very popular here in the 90s and you could easily find them in the newsagencies. Spawn and Witchblade outsold the majority of DC and Marvel superheroes in 20 years and this wasn't in the Golden or the Silver Age of Comics. This was in the 90s and early 00s. The sales for comic books didn't drop off until the mid 00s but even then some comic books managed to rack up big sales like 'Hack/Slash' that holds the title for being one of the biggest selling independent comic book series of the past 20 years and after having a break is finally returning in October with a new 'Hack/Slash' series and a 'Hack/Slash/Vampirella' team up series which should be awesome!! Comic books were originally written for adults before they were aimed at children and the Horror comic book genre pre-dates Superman and the entire superhero genre and continues to this day. I don't see a problem with comic books aimed at adults. Marjorie Liu's 'Monstress' just won a big award at the Hugo Awards beating Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Paper Girls, Saga and the Vision and 'Sunstone' which is a BDSM Lesbian Romance novel has been critically praised as one of the best LGBT series of all time and that started as an internet series.
Comic books are still selling and many independent series like Rat Queens, Bitch Planet, Nancy In Hell (TV show in development now with Aussie actress Bianca Brady playing Nancy), Rogues!, Wonderland (Zenescope), Van Heilsing (Zenescope. TV show on Syfy), Miss Furry, Saga, Belladonna, LOLA XOXO, Sex Criminals, Wynonna Earp (TV show on Syfy) etc are finding new audiences every day and some series like Fathom, Cyberforce, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, Soulfire and The Magdalena are returning due to popular demand. Witchblade is coming back with a new team up series with Spawn and there is talk of a new 'Witchblade' series which could star Danielle Baptiste who was one of the most popular LGBT characters in comic book history. The comic book industry isn't slowing down. New series are coming out every year and old series are coming back. Image Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, IDW, Zenescope, Action Lab Comics etc are still going strong despite not having their own movie universes like DC and Marvel do which is mostly due to the fact DC is owned by Time Warner and Marvel is owned by Disney who can throw around the dollars and it doesn't matter if one movie flops 'cause they still have billions of dollars to make another one.
I think what you are not seeing is comic books are never going to be as popular as they were in the 90s/00s. That period was their last big hoorah, so to speak and since then sales have been dropping every year just like novels. It doesn't matter how much they change it if people don't like comic books they aren't going to buy them which is why the companies are doing the smart thing sticking with what they know is going to get fans. On top of that light superheroes were not popular in the 90s and for most of the decade and the early 00s were considered lame. I remember when I was a teenager most of my friends thought Superman was lame 'cause he wore his underwear on the outside and they were into heroes like Spawn, The Crow, Witchblade, Birds of Prey, the Mask and Blade. A lot of them liked the Supergirl (Linda Danvers) series too 'cause it was like Buffy. I always liked comic books 'cause they were (and still are) far more progressive than anything we have had with female characters and LGBT characters especially in movies and TV shows and Hollywood could learn a thing or two from the comic book industry instead of having a non stop penis fest which is what it has been for the past 10 years with some rare exceptions.
They still sell comic books in some newsagencies around here and you can get a lot of graphic novels in book shops like Angus and Robertson Bookworld, Dymocks and Booktopia but the best place to get comics is online. One of my favourite series at the moment is Batman: Detective Comics and the Spoiler and Clayface (who is now a hero) are stealing the show.
