Are Monthly Comics Soon To Be Extinct?

This seems to be a popular topic of discussion these days among those in the comic book industry, even to the point where non-comic-reading friends will send me links to articles about it. I definitely think it's something worth considering, especially if you're someone who buys dozens of new comics every month, like I do.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the supposition here isn't that stories about comic book characters are going to go away anytime soon. The two most popular doomsday scenarios simply threaten the existence of what's come to be known variously as "periodicals", "flimsies", and "pamphlets", among other terms: the monthly, 32-page comic book. No one really seems to think that you won't be able to read new, original adventures of your favourite comic book characters. Instead, the predictions are that comic stars will move online (webcomics) or will simply come out in the format currently known as "trade paperpback", or TPB, which have an advantage over their thinner cousins because they're also sold through regular bookstores. There's still too much money to be made off iconic characters like Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and Spider-Man, among dozens of others, for the companies that own them to ever want to stop putting product out there to drive other merchandising vehicles.

So what do I think about each of these two possible evolutions in the development of comics? Well, I'm one of those people who just can't excited about reading comic stories online. I suppose it'd nice to have them there as reference material, such as when you're researching something or want to check your memory. But the appeal of paying to go to a website each week to read the latest Batman story just isn't there for me, and if it comes to that, I suppose that will finally be the deathknell of my comic buying hobby. I like the act of buying a new comic, and holding it in my hands, and turning the pages, and flipping through a pile deciding which one to read next, and bringing a stack of comics up from the basement to re-read. Without any of those aspects, I'm not sure it'd work for me any more than watching movies on my laptop would. I want the whole deal - and I'm willing to pay for it - so anything less just doesn't cut it. But from a publishing point of view, there's a lot to be said for not having to print, staple and distribute the damn things every week, which may drive the industry's direction more than any old fans' desires.

I'm not nearly so strongly against the idea of converting the monthly periodical format into a less frequent but bigger package. If Marvel or DC decided tomorrow to start publishing all of the same titles they do today, but do so only in TPB format, I'd probably be OK with that, as much as I'd miss the 32-page versions. It'd make storing the new additions to my collection a small challenge, since the vast, vast majority right now are in "pamphlet" form and so the few TPBs I have just end up on available shelf space. Converting to having a lot more of the thicker books would necessitate some changes, but nothing too significant.

A bigger concern I'd have with either of these two developments would be whether they would result in the drying up of the back issue market, as fewer and fewer people would think of comics as being those flimsy little paper things that I have over 26,000 of! Put simply, the value of my collection might go down. A lot. But on the other hand, picking up many of the items on my Wants list should theoretically become much cheaper because if the market crashes, there should be lots of very affordable old comics to be found, and I'd be one of the people hoping to find them. My collection has always, first and foremost, been about the comics themselves, and not the value of them, so this trade-off wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. And fortunately the current re-sale figure of my collection has never factored into any retirement plans Vicki and I have made, meaning that a drastic drop in value would only make me sad, not frantic!

I suspect what we'll see, over the next year or two, are experiments in both of these directions. Some publishers are already talking about releasing webcomic versions of old comics, charging roughly the cover price of a new comic. The biggest flaw I can see is that those who want to read comics online probably also expect to do so for free - everything's free on the Internet, right? - so I would imagine the number of illegal copies floating around will no doubt go through the roof. The publishers are banking on the availability of the material driving more business for them, but that remains to be seen, in my opinion. People have already shown they have no moral compunction against stealing, if it's made easy enough for them, so why would comics be any different?

As far as releasing some new material in TPB format, I'd love to see some of that happen! One of my favourite releases of the last several years was just that: a JLA/JSA hardcover called "Virtue and Vice" that was the equivalent of several issues' worth of material except that it never came out in "flimsy" format. The only downside was that the price of that gem was more than four or five monthly comics, whereas TPBs are usually less, since they're reprinting material that's already made money when originally published. So which model will be used if more new stuff comes out that way? Sadly, I imagine it'll be the one that actually costs fans more money!