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Modern Age of Comic Books
Mid-1980s to present era of American superhero comic books From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Modern Age of Comic Books is a period in the history of American superhero comic books which began in 1985 and continues through the present day.[1][2] During approximately the first 15 years of this period, many comic book characters were redesigned, creators gained prominence in the industry, independent comics flourished, and larger publishing houses became more commercialized.[3]
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An alternative name for this period is the Dark Age of Comic Books, due to the popularity and artistic influence of titles with serious content, such as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.[4]
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Image Comics and creator rights disputes
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In the mid-1980s, artist Jack Kirby, co-creator of many of Marvel's most popular characters, came into dispute with Marvel over the disappearance of original pages of artwork from some of his most famous titles. Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and many other contemporary stars became vocal advocates for Kirby.
By the early 1990s, these events, as well as the influence of vocal proponents of independent publishing, helped to inspire a number of Marvel artists to form their own company, Image Comics, which would serve as a prominent example of creator-owned comics publishing. Marvel artists such as X-Men’s Jim Lee, The New Mutants/X-Force’s Rob Liefeld and Spider-Man’s Todd McFarlane were extremely popular and were idolized by younger readers in ways more common to professional athletes and rock musicians than comic book artists. Propelled by star power and upset that they did not own the popular characters they created for Marvel, several illustrators, including the above three formed Image Comics in 1992, an umbrella label under which several autonomous, creator-owned companies existed.[5] Image properties, such as WildC.A.T.s, Gen13, Witchblade, and especially McFarlane's Spawn provided brisk competition for long-standing superheroes. Image in particular is singled out by some critics for contributing to the conditions which led to the speculator market crashing, as Image titles favored alternative covers, foil covers, and other "collectible" comics.[6]
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Rise and fall of the speculator market
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By the late 1980s, important comic books, such as the first appearance of a classic character or the first issue of a long-running series, were sold for thousands of dollars. Mainstream newspapers ran reports that comic books were good financial investments and soon collectors were buying massive amounts of comics they thought would be valuable in the future.
Publishers responded by manufacturing collectors’ items, such as trading cards, and “limited editions” of certain issues featuring a special or variant cover. The first issues of Marvel Comics' X-Force, X-Men vol. 2, and Spider-Man became some of the first and most notorious examples of this trend. Another trend which emerged was foil-stamped covers. The first Marvel comic book with a foil-stamped cover was the third volume of the Silver Surfer, issue 50 (June 1991). A glow-in-the-dark cover for Ghost Rider, volume 3, issue 15 appeared as well. This led a market boom, where retail shops and publishers made huge profits and many companies, large and small, expanded their lines. Image Comics in particular became notorious for this, with many of its series debuting with alternative covers, wide use of embossed and foil covers and other "collectible" traits.
This trend was not confined to the books themselves, and many other pieces of merchandise, such as toys, particularly "chase" action figures (figures made in smaller runs than others in a particular line), trading cards, and other items, were also expected to appreciate in value. McFarlane Toys was notable for this, as it created many variations in its high-quality toys, most of which were main characters or occasional guest stars in the Spawn series.
But few, in the glut of new series, possessed lasting artistic quality and the items that were predicted to be valuable did not become so, often because of huge print runs that made them commonplace. The speculator market began to collapse in summer of 1993 after Turok #1 (sold without cover enhancements) badly underperformed and Superman's return in Adventures of Superman #500 sold less than his death in Superman #75, something speculators and retailers had not expected. Companies began expecting a contraction and Marvel UK's sales director, Lou Marks, stated on September 29 that retailers were saying there was "simply no room to display all the comics being produced".[7] The resulting comic market crash devastated the industry: sales plummeted, hundreds of retail stores closed and many publishers downsized. Marvel made an ill-judged decision during the crash to buy Heroes World Distribution to use as its own exclusive distributor,[8] which resulted in both distribution problems for Marvel and the industry's other major publishers making exclusive distribution deals with other companies, which would lead to Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. becoming the only distributor of note in North America.[9][10] In 1996, Marvel Comics, the largest company in the industry and hugely profitable just three years before, declared bankruptcy.[11]
The crash also marked the relative downfall of the large franchises and inter-connected "families" of titles that led to a glut of merchandising. While the big franchise titles still have a large amount of regular titles and merchandising attached to them, all of these things were notably scaled back after the crash.
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Rise of the trade paperback format
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Although sales of individual comic periodicals dropped in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, sales rose for trade paperbacks,[12][13] collected editions in which several issues are bound together with a spine and often sold in bookstores as well as comic shops. Comic book publishers began releasing trade paperbacks of collected story arcs directly after those stories' original periodical publication because a new reader could purchase the trade paperbacks and access the entire series' stories to date. The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels for Children and Tweens by David S. Serchay explains: "At first it was the most popular stories that were being collected, but more and more comic book stories are now being put into trades, sometimes less than two months after the 'newest' issue is sold. And [...] not only recent material but a great deal of older material is finally being collected into trades".[13]: 15 In 2015, Polygon highlighted that "though this was far less common a decade ago, pretty much every monthly comic out there right now is eventually collected into trade paperback or hardcover edition that prints several issues in one package".[14] Trade paperbacks are often even given volume numbers, making them a serialization of sorts. Due to this, many writers now consider their plots with the trade paperback edition in mind, scripting stories that last four to twelve issues, which could easily be read as a "graphic novel."
In addition, the publishing format has gained such respectability as literature that it became an increasingly prominent part of both book stores and public library collections.[citation needed] Trade paperbacks and graphic novels are the preferred format for circulating library collections, since these collections are created to be read, and not to be retained as collector's items or as investments.[15][16] Attempts to catalog and circulate single-issue comics can pose difficult problems[17][18] and the durability of the trade paperback format is an important consideration for longevity and collection development in public and school libraries. Trade paperbacks "are also the primary culprit in people's confusion of the lexicon, since 'TPBs make up 95% of what many librarians refer to as graphic novels'".[12]
Despite the growing popularity of the trade paperback, the serialized, individual issues are still considered the primary mode of sale by comics publishers, and a poorly selling series may face cancellation irrespective of trade paperback sales.[19][20][21] However, some series[22] "survive on the popularity of their trades sales, not just in the direct market and local comic shops, but in book stores across the world" and at "Scholastic [book] fairs and the like".[23]
The popularity of trade paperbacks has resulted in older material being reprinted as well. The Essential Marvel line of trade paperbacks has reprinted heroes such as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and has been able to introduce these Silver Age stories to a new generation of fans. These editions tend to resemble a phone book in that these are very thick books and are black-and-white (to help keep the cost down). DC Comics has followed suit by introducing a line called Showcase Presents. The first four have included Superman, Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, and Metamorpho the Elemental Man. Other characters have included Green Arrow, the Superman Family, the Teen Titans and the Elongated Man.[citation needed]
In 2018, Screen Rant highlighted, "publishers and retailers traditionally ignore the sales of trade paperbacks when it comes to deciding whether or not a specific title is doing well. For decades, the single issue has been king, even though those sales figures are far from helpful. [...] Trade paperbacks are increasingly important as a marker of what sells, with 2016 seeing a 12% jump in trade sales over 2015 – a period when single-issue sales fell. Even 2017, which saw both trades and single issue sales fall compared to 2016, trades were down 9.38%, compared to single issues dropping 10.4%".[20] In 2019, Bleeding Cool emphasized, "in recent years, collected issues/trade paperbacks are more popular and profitable than monthly comic book periodicals. As single-issue sales have consistently plummeted, trade paperbacks and graphic novels have filled in the gaps. From 2013 to 2018, graphic novels were the highest-selling format for comic books".[21] According to industry reports,[24][25] "the massive shift to graphic novels as the preferred format for comics continued in 2019 bringing sales in the book channel above the comic store channel in North America for the first time in the history of the medium"[26] and that "the sales of graphic novels were growing faster in the book trade than in comics shops".[27]
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Changing market
In October 2019 industry analyst Milton Griepp presented data at an ICv2 conference in New York showing that for the first time in decades, the market was dominated not by traditionally American monthly comics of the superhero genre, but graphic novels and trade paperbacks of other genres, particular those aimed at younger readers, such Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man and Raina Telgemeier’s Guts, and Japanese manga and manga-inspired books. These books see high sales in bookstores, though the shift was also reflected in comics shops. According to data by Bookscan, child-oriented comics and graphic novels accounted for 41% of sell-through at bookstores, and manga is 28%, while books of the superhero genre constituted less than 10%, a drop of 9.6% year-over-year.[28]
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See also
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