Mark Millar Claims Comic Book Industry Is In The Worst State Its Ever Been

They are. But they were actively sought out as a progressive generational voice to modernize story-telling.

The writers who do random runs of hundreds-of-issues-long capeshit comics will never have the same name-brand recognition as "the guy who made Chainsaw Man." You think Mark Waid or Bendis or whoever the frick has that kind of weight in the general consciousness of pop culture?

If you come up with examples like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman they are 100% the exceptions and not the rule, and they aren't even working in the industry anymore and the industry is actively designed to not let new talents get to that level anymore.

>the industry is cultivating new talent all the time
Not any more, it’s mostly just failed TV writers at this point. A manga volume cost 12 dollars, which means when I go out to buy it I have a significant portion of a long running story. A comic ISSUE costs 4 dollars and a collection of five issues costs 25, and I have no idea if the shit in those pages will even be canon in a year. Outside of the terrible quality of the stories most comic writers tell now and outside of the antiquated price models that prevent most CHILDREN (an audience both publishers ignore, despite it being the genres core audience) from buying, there isn’t any real cohesion from book to book. So not only is the writing terrible and propaganda filled, but the editorial actively PREVENTS the books from reaping the benefits of a shared universe. That all goes outside of the fact that these publishers have pushed most readers far enough to be apathetic about the drivel they write, hence why no book can even crack 100k anymore

>which unsurpaily has caused no end of confusion for the former readers of those books which they are no longer targeting

Complete and utter bullshit. I have never been “confused” because they put couple of comics I wouldn’t be interested in. This is pure narcissistic butthurt if you are offended and angry that they also try to appeal to non-neckbeards because muh secret club

dude, instead of just saying no you're wrong all the time, at least try to explain why comic books are failing
and you can't say: "it's not the agenda pushing because it didn't bother ME"

Yeah but it also has a story that is designed to have an end at some point anon. Comic books just go one forever and are at the point they physically HAVE to ruin these characters in order to push the currently day propaganda. I don’t see the current dragon ball emasculating goku just to show how much better gay black lady goku is

People just have to accept this is an antiquated medium that’s supposed to die because there isn’t anything to salvage from it anymore. Just read online comics if you want that sort of fix, because marvel and DC don’t like the people who buy comics and can’t get enough people who don’t buy them to start

While I agree that the characters don’t have to have an end, the asinine concept that every writers feels they HAVE to come up with the character defining story that changes everything needs to stop. None of these writers are good enough for that and it’s just made everything worse. What currently long running book do you like and why?

maybe the problem is that those big stories need events that use many characters from different line ups
maybe the problem is the shared universe
for example, they kept suggesting me to read the "king in black", a super crossover big event, so i downloaded the big book with 80+ issues, 1500 pages, thinking it was supposed to be this huge thing
imagine my surprise when the whole shit was over in 80 pages and the rest was tie in comics that no one would ever care about

This doesn't sound like a problem with comics, it just sounds like the problem with western capeshit. Try reading other shit, ogns, or books actually aimed at all audiences and not skintight latex suit man punching people on rooftops.

>Bendis is a giga hack who could probably not writte a good story to save his life.
And yet he's considered a top talent.

>he's considered a top talent.
By an industry of no talents and corporates.

Only because he's been doing it long as frick and the big 2 are almost entirely handled by the same dozen or so writers who are not doing anything interesting to attract anyone who isn't already into comics.

it's a fetish for femcels, hardly a good representation

>It doesn’t count because uhhhh it just doesn’t!

LMAOOOOOO

NTA but characters being black/gay doesn't drop sales. The problem is that the only characterization those characters have is being black/gay. If they had something more to offer than "look at how black/gay I am!" then they'd be actual characters people might be interested in and buy the comics.

Yeah, like they're some sort of festive bunting rather than a sign poverty or bullying.

>>its our culture so you can't judge it
The people that say this attack japanese culture all the time

And if you believe that, you believe rainbow parties were a thing.

>The problem is that the only characterization those characters have is being black/gay.
Did Tosen being black matter at all?

It doesn't help that most of the time the black or gay characters are just derivatives of something else. When was the last time Marvel or DC introduced and built up a minority character from the ground up?

This is true. Making interesting new characters is difficult. And Big2 would rather cling to their tried and true established IPs.

>Something is inherently wrong with comic readers.
How so? Not the exact thing that is wrong, since you are obviously unsure what it is. But what is it that makes you think there is something wrong with them?

>The market does not want new characters.
Well how do you know that if the big publishers aren't making new IPs to begin with? Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me.

Race swaps are not new IPs. They legally count as the same character.

>They have introduced entirely new characters and they have failed.

Name some.

>a genre where legacy characters have been a celebrated staple for over half a century and different ethnicities and genders have held the name and costume of different characters.
Legacy characters were never as pervasive as they are now, and even then the ones with any staying power were few and far in between.
Ultimately, legacy characters just dilute the brands and Marvel and DC are just feeling the long-term effects.

Wait, so black little mermaid doesn't extend the copyright and trademark life of disney's work?

Name some.

NTA but characters being black/gay doesn't drop sales. The problem is that the only characterization those characters have is being black/gay. If they had something more to offer than "look at how black/gay I am!" then they'd be actual characters people might be interested in and buy the comics.

>Majority of comics readers are bigots and racists achtually

No they’re not.

then how come when people read comics, they feel pandered and proselytized too
but when they read manga, they dont?
whats the difference?

Mutherfricker did you even read what I wrote?

NTA but characters being black/gay doesn't drop sales. The problem is that the only characterization those characters have is being black/gay. If they had something more to offer than "look at how black/gay I am!" then they'd be actual characters people might be interested in and buy the comics.

Howling, someone actually think Overwatch treat it's gay better than god dam Yakuza. Seriously, playing the games even shortly will let you see how fricking gay they are.

Up until recently it was a beat em' up but with a shit ton of side-content and mini-games.

tbf Big two comics was generally always meant to target the same demographics as shounen manga but the big two have been focusing on making book for diffrent demographics. which unsurpaily has caused no end of confusion for the former readers of those books which they are no longer targeting

you're just a fringe case then dude, in your sample of you

Great counter argument.

it's a fetish for femcels, hardly a good representation

>a damaged reputation.

What damages reputation? They have always been considered kiddy shit.

And most people still consider comics to be for kids.

Exactly. It’s a matter of PERCEPTION.

Bookstores sell trades, not floppies. Another overlooked distinction in these threads, the floppy and trade markets are distinct.

Book stores have tried to sell floppies. Again showing how people who whine about the state of comics know nothing about the business.

he's never going to answer, i've aked him the same
he just goes NU HUN NUU and keeps reddit posting away

>It’s a matter of PERCEPTION.
If you reach enough evrything can become a matter of perception. Can cultural issue be a perception issue? Sure, but it doesn't make it less of a cultural thing. Despite all their money, American comics are failing at genre diversity and creative freedom and don't even attract on a nationale scale. A problem Europe doesn't have when their books are slimer, more expensive than mangas and can make you wait a year or two between two book.

>HunterXHunter is a good exemple
are Killua and Gon gay or just some headcanon?
>Naruto also didn't tank because it had black in it
the people of the cloud village were cool and the women sexy, and the color of their skin wasn't ever brought up
even bleach has many cool black characters and everyone loves them and no one ever cared.. hell Yoruichi is probably the most liked dark skinned woman in Japan
it would have gone much different in a western comic

but it literally doesn't happen when they read manga, so what changes? i wish you could speak your mind instead of being this passive aggressive all thread

do you have any proof for this take or?? you think the millions of readers that are fine with woke manga but not with woke comicbooks are all chuds or something? millions of them? well maybe it should be wise to appease the if they represent millions of sales no?

well, it still caused a drop of sales so enjoy your dead industry

No, the fans are just more racist and angry now when you introduce new characters. Go read how John Stewart debuted. That shit would make this board seethe for months if you published it as it is today. Way harder butthurt would be generated than what Immortal Hulk ever did

So the fact that comics are fricking shit now is the fault of the fans. Got it. Are you Tom Brevoort by any chance?

>The publishers react and try to sell what the market is willing to buy.
>Sales keep going down.
No, I don't think they do.

They listen to fans and then same fans refuse to buy what they claim to want because waaaah I didn’t mean it like that.

>in some cases go deliberately against it
they actively demonize and antagonize the biggest pool of readers

>They stopped making romance comics when they didn’t sell.
I wonder if there's a reason they didn't sell...

That's pretty damn stupid. It's probably true though.

>Racists are the REAL FANS!!!

Citation needed

the fall of romance comics and girls comics is general is kinda odd, in the UK in the 70s girl comics were outselling the boys comics of the time but they morphed into more standard magazines over time with less and less strips in them and by the 2000 the girl comic ceased to exist

>Go read how John Stewart debuted.
I dunno. Maybe for some. But you still have the two Lanterns playing off each other back and forth, with each of them being right. If it was written these days, I think it would be more one-sided preaching.
(Green Lantern #87 (1971) for those that are interested.)

Certainly wouldn't have anything to do with how the character was portrayed.
(I have to add that I'm being sarcastic since I doubt you'd realize it.)

>Americans
the whole world is fine black, gay and troony characters in their media, but not American media
Asians and Europeans too dislike American cultural colonialism and the pandering that comes with it
so maybe it's not the readers, but what they are reading no?

You don't have to go all-or-nothing. They can keep having Spider-man go on forever while also having separate comics that do have an actual beginning, middle, and end.

luckly for you, current writer and editorials think just like you! a Peter Parker dad and married would make it too old and unapproachable, and thus his story would gear towards the end.
no enjoy some more Paul and suffering

I don’t agree. I still enjoy Spider-man today. If you don’t, stop reading Spider-man instead of being a whiny c**t. It’s pretty simple concept.

No, people are not quitting Spider-man because “it has no ending point.”

>I still enjoy Spider-man today
You're one of a dying breed. Spider-man has been trash for over 20 years.

>I still enjoy Spider-man today.
>I still enjoy zombie Simpsons
Good for you, but why do you think your opinion matters when you admit to having shit taste?

If Spider-Man had ended when Ditko left the title or when Stan Lee left the title or later in the 70s or in the 80s or the 90s or the 00s, we'd miss out on a number of good stories.
It's also funny how it's only just Spider-Man fans who seethe about this. I never see Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, Daredevil, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man fans demand that their stories end or their characters grow old, retire, and get replaced. Just vicarious-livers really mad that they took away Spider-Man's marriage.

>I'm okay with that. The bad stories outweigh the good.
You yourself can always just stop paying attention at a certain point and move on.

That's because you clearly haven't read them. Spider-Man had a clear throughline with Peter growing up and maturing, and this happened constantly. It was a constant presence in the books and a big part of why they were successful. There has been none of that since you know what and that's a big part of why everything since then has been shit. We've regressed

It's doubly funny because this DOESN'T apply to his supporting cast who are for the most part growing up around him

>Spider-Man spent many years in college and then he spent many years as a graduate student and then a drop-out
They slowed it down but that was still progression. Even him dropping his studies was used to help his character grow
>Getting married was never part of a plan
It probably would've come down the line because it was part of the logical progression of Peter's life. Regardless, the marriage did happen, planned or not, and it continued the journey through his life and people were happy.
>After that he spent years as a married young adult with one stillborn child who was never remotely intended to survive.
She was absolutely intended to survive when they had the plan of replacing Peter with Ben as Spider-Man. And even then having a miscarriage progressed him as a character (for the short time it was acknowledged before Byrne fricked everything over for a bit).
Peter grew and changed and that was a constant throughout most of his publication history until editorial decided they'd had enough and hit the cosmic reset

I mean firstly, Wolfman is a terrible writer and a hack. Secondly, their intention at the time literally doesn’t matter because the stories as they ended up being told all had a fairly consistent arc of Peter growing up. Those stories happened, and people liked them.
And if we’re gonna get into the marriage stuff practically everyone against it fell into two categories: not muh otp and it made him too old. Worthless, petty reasons.

Tomb of Dracula is good because of Colan not Wolfman.

Spider-Man should've ended with him passing his mantle to his daughter and serving as her mentor. That's what Spider-Girl did, and people liked that whole thing a ton. Even though it was just an AU story, it ran for 12 fricking years.
Marvel is simply too scared to let Peter Parker go, and the same can be said about all other mainline heroes. I remember the same thing happening with Power Rangers - while Super Sentai always changed gears yearly, Power Rangers were too scared to let the Zordon story go until it completely ran out of steam. Then the whole thing went to Disney, they adopted the Sentai approach of yearly cast changes, and guess what - it worked just fricking fine for them.

The publishers I listed all produce genre work, the exact opposite of pretentious.

What makes it despise it more in Marvel/DC is that they can't bother to use their already established LGBT characters and have to retcon characters into becoming Gay/Lesbian when previously they were completely heterosexual.

No, what I'm saying is that, comics other than capeshit only have extreme violence and degeneracy as their selling points. Modern Marvel meanwhile only has wokeness as a selling point. Meanwhile, Gwenpool, a comic with a literal joke character as the MC, got super popular just because the MC was really cute and the majority of the run was drawn by the same, talented artist.

only stuff older than my grandpa

>complains about modern Marvel
>praises Gwenpool immediately after

cape comics end all the time. Even the end of an individual writer's run is usually a pretty definitive end of a story arc unless it happens unexpectedly.

plenty of cape comics have definitive ends. Just because they don't wink at the camera about how it's not actually definitive doesn't mean they're not definitive or ends.

Immortal Hulk
Journey Into Mystery
Morrison's Animal Man
O'Neil's Question
Ennis's Punisher MAX

>Those are dying distributors,
that's why I said it was unlikely anon, I think the key point of people wanting a return of spinner racks/ newsstand comics is that it's was easy entry point for possible buyers to get the comic not in a specialized store LCS only cater to an already existing dedicated fanbase and can't really bring in enough fresh blood to keep it afloat.
already provided you with subscription and Marvel has its digital platform that gives you access to majority of their back catalogue and new comics with very minor delay already.
those services are to frank, pretty bad, especially compared to Japanese digital services like Jump+. Comixology has ripped apart into a husk these recent years by Amazon and both Dc and Marvel services are worse than what Piritate sites like RCO provide in terms of search functions and community function oddly enough. to trot out the old gabe newell quote of digital distribution "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" and currently the digital services for western comics are inadequate.

That's not what he said.

How exactly are manga able to get readers when they are not in news stands or spinner racks at the local store? The assetion that new readers can’t find comics makes no fricking sense.

If book store sell both manga and western comics when it can’t be an issue of distortion or people not being able to find comics now can it.

manga also goes through a severe and constant vetting procedure
if number drops it just gets axed or moved to a secondary, to give space to another title in the magazine
editors are half the reason titles become successful and they always study the market

?? what the frick are you talking about schizo? where did i ever talk about shonen jump?

how is that relevant to how manga is distributed in a tokuban format in america? or why it takes up more space in bookstores compared to comics

>must of

Quality matters here. Your pic is actually fine, it just degraded to shit. When you read official digital scans or reprints, you really start to appreciate how good the art was.

[...]

And this is just some Golden Age silliness.

>degraded to shit
Looks like a pretty good newsprint scan actually.

>Quality matters here. Your pic is actually fine, it just degraded to shit.
not talking about the print quality but the dialogue
again, they are explaining what is happening, even though we are already seeing it
it redundant, it's a double exposition
have the writer and the artists ever talked to each-others? no, and thats why manga is much better at exposition

>chest is throbbing need a few moments
>this wont stop me
>you're afraid...my face ripped off
>what a mess etc
this really feels like the writer gave notes to what to draw and then they added those notes as dialogue lmao
like an actor reading the directions instead of the lines

it's not the "wordy" that bothers me
it's how stupid that narration is
show not tell, it's a graphic medium
don't explain it to the reader in third person

have a nice day Narutard

So was Japan you moron

>Unironically going "UR A COMMIE!"
Yea, you're definitely too far gone.
I look forward to 3 years from now when you're b***hing about the "competency crisis" and how "no one wants to work" because of the terrible conditions for anyone who's not a literal mouthbreather such as yourself.

>Yoshihiro Togashi, one of the most talented and popular mangaka of all time nearly worked himself to LITERAL DEATH
No-name cartoonist Ian McGinty worked himself to LITERAL DEATH at age 38 and no one cared outside of comic industry people.

>The point is if that's the way they treat their big name high-selling artists
Bro, Togashi is literally the worst example you could choose, he has a golden parachute tier contract with Jump where he's able to constantly go on literal years-long hiatuses.
As shown in

Pictured: Yoshihiro Togashi "nearly working himself to LITERAL DEATH"

, Togashi was just genuinely lazy, the dude had to constantly be hassled by his editor to meet deadlines and was known for literally blowing off meetings with said editor to play video games.

Not that anon but the industry grew more self-aware in recent years about that shit, at least the big editors. They realise that burning out your authors is a bad idea, that's why you got Oda taking regular break week so he dosn't kill himself working.

Still insane work hours by western standard, but at least they are aware letting their author work too much is bad long term

They may have realized it's bad PR and bad for business in general if they burn out their top sellers and can no longer get work from them, but I seriously doubt that's translated into any kind of serious change for the workers who haven't made a name for themselves. Japanese work culture is way too fricked up to the point that they apply that shit to literal children in school, weebs just don't want to admit it.

A good chunk of the Manga I collect have writer/artists who've burnt out and quit, died from stress, or take GRRM-esque hiatus to prevent either.

I suddenly don't feel so bad about the state of my flat

They literally have a word for people dying on the job for being overworked and they're expected to keep their mouths shut about it until they flat out get a stroke or a heart attack. American workers are exploited, but it's nowhere near as bad as Japan's willful slave labor culture.

Americans are pretty indifferent to the floppy comic at this point. Weebalos like to gush about how Manga are outstripping American comics, but overall neither have much traction here among the general populace.
The Manga industry is supported by it's domestic fanbase. America's consumption of them is less than Italy's.

Anon, America has over twice the populace of Germany and France combined. Manga sales are Japan>>>>>>

[...]

>>>>> individual Europ countries

[...]

.

China's population becomes a lot more modest when you only talk about the ones living a European/Japan level lifestyle with money for frivolous hobbies.

I could find them for you, but you could find them yourself, China's prosperity gets intensely studied by American industries looking to sell them luxuries.

Anon, a massive number of those are only middle class because they are eyeball deep in the real estate Ponzi that is an entire THIRD of their economy.
It's collapsing, people are getting afraid to spend their savings, the Chinese economy is teetering.
There won't be half as many in another year.
Basically 4/5ths of their middle class is "dogecoin rich".

Americans in particular have substantial savings/investments and consooming has barely paused because of it.
Chinese middle class is basically invested in Bored Apes in the form of empty, half-finished apartment complexes that no one can afford to live in. It's the American Real Estate Crisis of the past times 1000.

nta but it seems the somewhat disingenuous to compare the decline in cinema box offices to the entire chinese real estate market

>Every streaming service has been losing money and subscribers outside of maybe Netflix, so no, try again.
That's because Streaming has no decent financial model, they all burn money to boost cheap subscription numbers "achieving scale" they call it.
It's still the massive drain that's beating up theaters, regardless. You can basically give something away and kill the guys trying to sell it on the premium, and STILL you aren't making money.

That's streaming and theaters.

>Bro, the American box office is down like 30-40% from 2019
Streaming
Incredibly cheap bugman big-screen tvs.
Covid broke people of the unpleasant theater experience and the first two things I mentioned just reinforced it.

>Americans in particular have substantial savings/investments and consooming has barely paused because of it.
Bro, the American box office is down like 30-40% from 2019, frick are you talking about?
Don't even get me started on all the people who had to move back in with their parents because they couldn't afford rent over the last 3 years.
You sound like one of those silver spoon c**ts who lives off of mommy and daddy and doesn't know how the actual average American lives.

Americans in particular have substantial savings/investments and consooming has barely paused because of it.
Chinese middle class is basically invested in Bored Apes in the form of empty, half-finished apartment complexes that no one can afford to live in. It's the American Real Estate Crisis of the past times 1000.

>box office
>China
SHUT THE FRICK UP
This thread is about the comics industry

>Mango would also be a failing industry without it's rabid Bugman financial base.
Manga would fail if people didn't buy it? No shit, moron

To be fair these seem more creator based, its fricking hilarious though that Alan Moore is getting beat by Five Nights at Freddy's.

no doubt but imagine being robert kirkman and getting beat in sales by something called toilet bound hanako kun.

I’m always confused on why Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun of all series sells so well. It’s so weird seeing that in numbers, even in Walmart racks, along with the usual suspects.

That logic makes sense. I guess it’s more that it’s surprising that such a series seems to punch way above its weight in presence in the US compared to Japan. Most of the time, the popular series you see are either huge in both Japan and abroad or are much bigger domestically (at least some of those will get animated adaptations that give them the international jump). Rare to find the opposite of the latter, a series being outsized outside of Japan compared to its domestic presence. Maybe that’s just me underestimating that series’ popularity in Japan though.

>Maybe that’s just me underestimating that series’ popularity in Japan though.
Partially.
It's also pretty popular in Japan, but it is one of those series where the gap in sales is a lot closer than most others.
It sold about 1.4 million volumes in Japan last year compared to the 800k it sold in America.
I think the only manga that sells more in America than it does in Japan on a regular basis is Berserk, but even then I think it's only slightly more.

Well damn now I had to look this up
>20 volumes since 2014
>~8 million circulation (amount of stock, so assumed sales are lower) in mid-2022
That’s pretty good but nowhere near the level of the big action series that usually dominate. Even the most popular romcom Komi-San has 50% more circulation while being 2 years younger (admittedly with 50% more volumes though), yet sold significantly less than TBHK in the US. You look at that one sales list alone and you think that it’s just a step below the big battle shonen series when it really isn’t overall. So it does look like the series does have an outsized impact in the US market relative to its domestic standing. Can probably say that for a few other series like Wotakoi as well.
Still an interesting list overall. Dog Days from the Captain Underpants guy the single best series, and several non-Big 2 series doing well, but the list is mostly manga. At least from this it’s fair to say there are some good series outside of the Big 2, but Japan just has much higher volume coming out and thus a lot more stuff that makes the big leagues.

That's a general board room analysis; it just amounts to dumbing down the product for mass appeal and making it cheaper. The result would still be missing the literal QUADRUPLE release rate of most popular manga vs comic books, and the rock solid synergy with the animation industry built across literal decades. And then there's the added risk of literally starting from scratch with brand new "passion project" products built from nothing.

And I'm not saying manga publishing had the foresight to actually aim for the results they're getting now rather than it simply stumbling upon them. It's just acknowledging how essentially impossible is to replicate the formula in its entirety, and how likely the results of simply implementing what seems logistically viable would be to fail proportionally.

made a good point that Japan had decades to organically develop the magazine->individual volumes->anime and other multimedia ecosystem. Barring massive but unlikely investment to kickstart an ISI-like process, it’ll take a long time to create a comparable system.

Reminder Berserk is the best-selling Dark Horse title ever, not best-selling Manga, not best-selling licensed property, but their best-selling title period.

>and Berserk is always been a shit seller lmao, even in Japan
Uhh...what?

Top kek. Berserk is big enough that it got its own exhibition when Miura died.

There is no shortage of articles claiming most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I'll post one example.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/even-on-100k-plus-more-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck#xj4y7vzkg

The fact that people live paycheck to paycheck contradicts this statement.

>Americans in particular have substantial savings/investments and consooming has barely paused because of it.

>but I still would be fricked if my job skipped my paycheck.
No you wouldn't.
Anon was right, you are absolutely a silver spoon, most Americans don't have $250k in a 401(k) or any property, you are not living paycheck to paycheck.

What's your point? We're talking about the American comics industry and manga being its competition. If you bring up the film industry, we have nothing to talk about.

Italy is a huge market for manga so you're not making the point you think you're making.

this board bearly discusses non big two american comic, once in a blue moon we might get some discussion on french or UK comics and but considering this board is mostly made up of americans this bies in what talked about is hardly surprising

They're not comics. And Avatar is an "original" story and out-grossed all of them.

The best part of his debut as Spider-Man writer is having to write each intro to his 5 part story with the sentence "Rise above it all", then by the 5th part he ran out of things to use and just had to say "The purpose of smoke... is to RISE ABOVE IT ALL!"
And then you have his decades on Spawn where he constantly invites new creators, they last a little bit, he begins meddling with what they want to do, he takes over writing again, and the thing keeps spinning in place nonstop.