Should The Comic Book Industry Explore New Genres?

For my ideal combo, remove Japanese art style and add in British attitude and pacing.

Ukrainian Red Cross

The big problem is that DC and Marvel gave up on selling comic books to kids a long time ago. They did this in the name of having more mature comics for more mature readers, but it also meant that they were no longer grabbing new readers during the period of their lives when they were most open to new things. The lack of new readers pushed both companies further and further into their niche, and now comic books are just something that weird nerds read.

Comic books are seen as a genre rather than a medium now, and DC and Marvel aren't doing much to try to break that.

The comic book industry is the worst possible victim of Running the Asylum. The only people working in it are people that read comics as a kid and made it their life's goal to become a part of it's creation process. They are so completely in love with whatever it is they are working on that they have stopped writing for an audience. They are writing for themselves, and the only people that can appreciate their efforts are other fans.

Honestly, I tried getting into western comic books. I really tried. But there's just no way for anyone unwilling to go any further than 'casual reader' to break through the Continuity Lock-Out. The only way to know what's going on in a given issue, is by reading at least least five previous issues, plus a few issues from different series, and then you still miss out on all kinds of details because the current plot is directly descended of the plot in an issue published twenty years ago.

Say what you want about Japanese comics, at least every series*

has a traceable beginning and end. If you want to get in on the action, find the first issue and read from there. No cross-overs, no Call Backs to things that were published forty years ago, no multiple authors with differing views on characters and events, just a single storyline going from point A to B. Simple, clean storytelling.

Maybe I should try getting in now that DC has been rebooted. Being able to actually start somewhere sensible might make things a lot easier.

You are using Western to mean American. Please don't do that.

As I say annoyingly often, European comics are not the same as American ones; in fact, the French language has different words for them. France has a long and literally proud tradition of good comics which generally have a beginning, middle, and end, and BDs have been a significant influence on manga (and vice versa, to be fair). Britain doesn't have as many, but there is still plenty of good stuff if you look for it (although I should mention that some of the most praised stuff is somewhat dated nowadays). Italy also puts out a number of good comics, but there's also an annoying amount of misogynistic crap, so be careful there.

Ukrainian Red Cross

I apologize and I'm currently feeling really stupid, since, as a Dutchman, I grew up on European comics myself.

Like, seriously, I feel like hitting myself now.

edited 7th Jun '12 7:28:34 AM by Kayeka

It's also not that hard to get around lockout. Just pick up a particular run on a book. For example, I gave someone a copy of Planet Hulk recently after they haven't read comics for twenty years and they loved it. They didn't understand everything, but the story made sense.

I swear, the words "I really tried to get into X" are a pet peeve of mine.

"I swear, the words "I really tried to get into X" are a pet peeve of mine."

Me too, because more often than not they are lying.

The problem I have with "The comics industry should do x", is that you could always write a publisher with a story and ask them to do it. If they ignore you, you could always webcomics it.

Grant Morrison and Alan Moore got their start by making their own comics. A considerable number of other authors got their start by pitching oddball ideas :Gaiman on Sandman, Johns on Stars and STRIPE, Robinson on Starman. There's no reason for this us vs. them mentality because the industry seems pretty kind to upstarts.

edited 10th Jun '12 2:21:08 PM by Distortion00

Moore and Morrisson got started in Britain, which has a pretty vibrant small press scene. I don't think it's the same in America.

Ukrainian Red Cross

So I'm reviving this thread even though it's three years old. Arguably, in our superhero-filled time, this question is needed more than ever...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the fact that the majority of comics are superhero-related is hurting the perception of comic books and the industry as a whole. Comics are capable of so much. We shouldn't reduce them to a few simple genres.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

there ARE other comics being published now that aren't about superheroes, some of them surprisingly high-profile such as sex criminals, the walking dead, and saga. the latter actually had a pretty blatant jab at the state of the writing in most superhero books, which i wish i could find because it's perfect.

thing is, the only people who really know or care about them are people who are really into comics...and they probably got into comics through superheroes in the first place. i don't have a lot of money right now but if i did i'd pretty much be reading image and dark horse stuff exclusively.

edited 23rd May '15 6:25:32 PM by wehrmacht

I, frankly, am tired of the animosity, the "us vs. them" mentality that the fans and makers of non-super hero comics have for superhero comics. They seem to think that, but for super-hero comics, whatever their particular comics taste is would do better. How that is supposed to work, I don't know, given that people read super hero comics, not for want of an alternative ("I'm so desperate for sequential art that I'll buy crap like Batman..."), but because they WANT to. You can't blame super hero comics for being successful or popular. If you're a filmmaker in America in the 50's and you make surrealist films don't blame your lack of mainstream success on Westerns and Musicals. To put it another way, if you insist on selling pencils in the desert, don't wonder at your lack of success.

I daresay as well that every time the big two have tried to do non-superhero comics, while those comics have frequently been acclaimed, they haven't had the numbers to sustain themselves very long (outside of comics for kids; I know DC's Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo comics have been going on for quite a while). An argument could be made that such titles should be allowed to build an audience, and I agree, but there you are.

And in fact, I DO feel that the comic book industry should explore new genres. I'd love to see it. But the success of such genres or the lack thereof has nothing to do with the existence of super hero comics. They have everything to do with audiences.

edited 24th May '15 11:58:15 AM by Robbery

It's been mentioned earlier in this thread that the big two companies used to offer other genres well into the 70s that weren't marketed towards kids. Humor comics, horror comics, war comics, even romance comics... Marvel even got in on the underground comics boom in the 70s. (Their attempt lasted maybe 5 issues, though, so there you are.)

It now seems they can't do anything without linking it to superheroes in some form.

edited 24th May '15 1:47:35 PM by Aldo930

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

i think the thing isn't necessarily that the existence of superhero comics is preventing other comics from being successful so much as the fact that a lot of creators and fans of other comics think a lot of the big two's output (which is mostly superheroes) leaves something to be desired, even the better titles.

I wouldn't disagree, I think the entire structure the big two have set up isn't very conducive to good storytelling.

edited 24th May '15 3:34:34 PM by wehrmacht

Problem is, even when you publish something that's not a superhero comic, almost no one who's not a superhero comics fan will notice, because they won't be browsing the comics section in the first place.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

A guy I know who writes comic book reviews told me that people who read comics are a niche audience, and people who read comic reviews are a niche niche audience.

Presumably people who read non-superhero comics are a niche niche niche audience. And that's a particularly small niche.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I can honestly say I've never spoken to anyone who liked (or admitted to liking, anyhow) the current event-driven storytelling that goes on at DC and Marvel. Writers and artists have periodically complained that storylines get derailed or cancelled out of hand to make way for whatever big crossover is going on. It does NOT make for a productive, creative storytelling environment. Unfortunately, while few will admit to liking these big crossovers, they apparently DO go out and buy them. Go figure.

yeah that's one of the big problems atm.

I especially don't like it because I'm a fan of large, decompressed, cinematic storylines that take years to unfold. the super fast frenetic pacing of most superhero comics can be a nice change of pace, but i find that most of them would have a lot more impact if they were allowed to take their time.

I'm afraid it's too obvious why Americans are largely stuck with superhero comics (with some honorable exceptions):

• The Big Two companies set the tone of the market.
• The Big Two are large, old publishing companies, with all the risk-averseness that implies.
• The Big Two are also highly incestuous organizations, run by Ascended Fanboys who—talented or not—tend to have extremely limited interests and creative horizons.
• The Big Two are heavily invested in the fortunes of their TV and movie franchises, all of which involve superheroes (or at least a superhero-type universe).

So it's likely that non-superhero titles, such as they are, will remain a small-publisher, economically vulnerable market alternative in America. The other possibility is that the DC/Marvel bubble eventually bursts catastrophically across every medium. In the resulting Dark Age, some superhero alternatives might eventually start looking worth a shot. (It goes without saying, of course, that the harms of this scenario would far outweigh any long-term incidental goods.)

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

this isn't really just a problem with comic books, actually. pretty much all geek media universally have this problem. I don't know who said this exactly, but one way I've heard the situation being described is that writers for these types of things typically have like 4 to 5 movies they really enjoy and that's all they truly know, so they just recycle them again and again without pulling from other sources. As you can imagine this leads to, as you put it, incestuous storytelling where nerds write stories for other nerds and everything gets progressively more and more formulaic.

This is partly what made people like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman stand out in their careers. They have distinct styles that were influenced by a wide variety of things, and were clearly well-read enough to understand how to craft a story with literary merit.

edited 27th May '15 1:59:53 AM by wehrmacht

I really couldn't agree more.

If you look at some of the best writers for comics (and comic related media) they have fairly wide ranging tastes. Alan Moore was influenced to create Watchmen by Harvey Kurtzman's parody of Superman in MAD, for example.

If all you ever read is superhero comics, or if all you ever watch is sci-fi films, you'll make superhero comics or sci-fi films that are just like what you like until they end up as the literary equivalent of Charles II of Spain. There's no better argument for expanding your horizons.

edited 27th May '15 4:12:44 AM by Aldo930

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Amusingly enough, in this very sub-forum eight of the top 10 threads are super hero related.

well, yeah. the comicbooks subreddit is like 90% superheroes too. it's the same no matter what nerd community you are in, unless it's a community specifically dedicated to non-cape books, and it'd probably be quite small.

superheroes are the "gateway" into other comics because most people got into them because they wanted to see the source material that inspired characters they enjoyed as children. this often means that they get into the larger comic book community and discover that other comic book genres still exist. while a lot of people read only cape books a lot of them also read other things because they just grew to enjoy the hobby.

edited 27th May '15 4:57:20 PM by wehrmacht

That, in turn, is pretty much due to the fact that kids have been shut out of the mainstream comic book market, with only a section of their own...

Is it any wonder that comic books had tons of genres at a time when they were mostly read by children?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Definitely, super hero comics need writers who are fans rather then fans who are writers. People who can actually write a good story rather than just mine cool elements from other stories. When new writers I've never heard of pop up in comics, I frequently wonder what their writing credits, if any, are. And how they came to editors' attention.