Saturday, August 20, 2011

I think I finally figured it out... sorta


I think I finally figured out what is wrong with Comic books today and why there is trouble having new readers want to go look for back issues... they (Marvel and DC) do not make it easy to do so.

Used to be, if a past event was mentioned, there was a small footnote box saying where that storyline, or event took place.  You had the information so if you wanted to, you could go and ask your comic book store if they had that back issue.

Just read a book where they mentioned a past event...but no footnote, no nothing.  Um, what if I wanted to read that book?  How am I supposed to find it?  Go the comic book store and ask the person behind the counter if they know what issue this and that event took place in?  What if they don't remember... or just don't know?  They have just lost a sale.

And, let's follow this thought.  The footnotes would have a reader be able to look at a storyline they might be interested in.  And after reading that story...they would be directed to other stories, which might introduce them to new characters that they might want to read about and want to go find old issues AND new issues with that character, which would lead to... (Yes I know that this is a run on sentence, but I wanted to illustrate the connectivity of the thought, so, ppppbbbtttz).

I am not saying that this is the main reason that the comic book industry is shrinking, but I think it is one of them.  By making it harder, if not impossible for a reader to go and find older issues, the companies are not investing the reader in the stories and the universes, and therefore they have no emotional investment to keep on collecting.  They might collect for a while, but in the end, by just being shown this small segment of the history, and not the whole, they are not connected and can walk away from the stories as soon as the one story is over.

Just something to think about.

1 comment:

  1. Not only that, but Marvel and DC have abandoned their core audience of male readers 8-15 years old. On top of that, many of their titles are little more than soft core pornography and DC/Marvel don't understand the idea of "brand."

    ReplyDelete