The State Of The Comic Industry

Brian Hibbs, who owns the Comix Experience store in San Francisco (which Vicki and I visited in 2007), also periodically produces an online column called Tilting at Windmills at the Comic Book Resources site. His latest article in that forum, entitled "Time's Up", so perfectly sums up my own feelings about the comic book industry right now that I urge anyone who cares at all about that medium to go check it out and thus save me the trouble of yet another bloggy rant.

He makes many dead-on observations, including:

"The movement of focus of the market from “mostly long-term ongoing series, with a few minis and one-shots” to “mostly mini-series and one-shots” has led customers to be skittish about new titles and makes every “jumping on” point a “jumping off” one instead.

The trend of “deconstructed” storytelling, where writers aren’t as focused on writing jam-packed single issues, but, rather stories paced for the “inevitable” collection, when coupled with the incredibly stupid and greedy price increases has directly conditioned many buyers to look for reasons to not buy a new book."

I could not possibly agree more enthusiastically with those statements. That's exactly how I feel, and precisely why my monthly purchases have been waning over the last several years.