John - you know what you're right - but M***** are just TOOOOOO STUPID to simply put Shooter/Byrne/Marcos back on the Avengers or Stern/Buscema back on Spider-Man (or even Thomas/Pollard back on Thor) and watch the sales go through the roof...

Anyone "younger" reader would by definition be the ones who are only accustomed to the married Spider-Man, because for them to be as familiar with the unmarried one would have had to have been reading for OVER 20 years.

A 17 year old that has been reading Spider-Man for 6 years for example would fit that category.

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I'm positive that more younger fans encountered Spider-Man on TV (the FOX cartoon) and in the movies, in which he was single and a student (high school in the first film, college in the TV show and second film) and lived with his Aunt May.

Sadly, the comics borrowed "organic webbing" from the films but none of the others.

To Dave Phelps:

Based on what do you say that "no one seems to want" MJ? Plenty of people do.

To John Meitus:

Unfortunately there really HASN'T been any other kinds of toys or entertainment (except POSSIBLY comis at their hight) that engage kids' time and money the way that video games do now and have been doing. It started out maybe close to 20 years ago with Nintendo (Atari, Coleco, and the rest really weren't quite so big) and hasn't stopped growing since. I think you can look at the figures and see how the two events coinsided.

These days it is hard to say that the kids are wrong too. A kid can be hard core into comics and spend anywhere up to 50 bucks a week if he reads a lot of stuff (and we would hope that he would!) and spend an afternoon reading them. And lets go on a limb and say that he spends a few hours a week in addition to that reading some back issues. As opposed to that, they can spend  from about $20 on a video game, and spend dozens or even hundreds of hours playing it by themselves or with their friends. Or they can just rent a game from a video store and play it for three days for a few bucks.

As far as repeatability goes, I could re read a long run of one of my favorite books. Let's pick JBs FF, Walt's Thor, or whatever. After actually finding the books that I am looking for (not always an easy task) I could go through the particular run in a day or two and be done with it, and be prefectly content, not having any desire to read those books again for a good while. Or I could dig out my old Sega system (that I wish I still had) and spend the better part of a week's worth of free time playing an old game that I used to love (something like Shining Force or Might & Magic) and be happier doing that because there is no problem with leaving stacks of books on the floor to get stepped on by me or spilled on by my girlfriend, or laid on by the dog.

There is also the availability issue. Is a kid going to spend an hour or more finding and getting to the nearest comic shop every week, just so he can spend three hours worth of "payoff", actually reading the books? Or is he going to go to the local video store for some instand gratification?

QUOTE: Based on what do you say that "no one seems to want" MJ? Plenty of people do.

No, I said no one seems to want to lose MJ. 

Thank you Gregg - someone finally gets it... 

Dave Phelps: Yeah, but then you lose Mary Jane, which no one seems to want.

I'm not against that idea.

I was a kid that grew up on video games and comics. Just because one is succsesful does not mean the other has to die, in all honestly, they fit different positions.

Comics were easy to find, read, and collect. A whole world was availaibe at your finger tips. The sucess of Manga and Manga magazines prove that kids still love this sort of thing.

The problem is that comics are no longer easy for kids to get into, and for kids to buy, end of story.

"Unfortunately there really HASN'T been any other kinds of toys or entertainment (except POSSIBLY comis at their hight) that engage kids' time and money the way that video games do now and have been doing. It started out maybe close to 20 years ago with Nintendo (Atari, Coleco, and the rest really weren't quite so big) and hasn't stopped growing since. I think you can look at the figures and see how the two events coinsided."

Isn't it mostly adults buying and playing video games?  I think the industry's own figures show that the majority of their sales are to 20 and 30somethings.  When I talk about kids reading comics, I'm not talking about getting kids to spend 30 bucks a week or even 30 bucks a month on comics.  I'm talking about getting kids to do what they always did...read just a few comics.  I know when I finally sat down to make a list of what was in my collection, I was actually surprised to find out that when I was a kid I didn't buy comics every month.  I'd buy an issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, miss a month, buy two months in row, miss three months, buy the next issue and so on.

I don't think kids ever bought comics to the extent that adults do now and I don't think you could get kids to ever do that.  But getting a kid to buy a relative handful of comics, so they're exposed to the medium and can, maybe, return to it when they're older as a fan doesn't strike me as an impossible dream - videogames or no videogames.

Mike

Yeah, but I totally agree with Mike Bunge here.  When I was a kid, I wasn't "supporting a habit" so much as I picked up what I liked to read.  At most, it was three or four titles a month.  That's what I'm talking about, not getting kids up to adult levels of spending money on comics by shelling out $50 a week.  So we're really talking apples and oranges here.  $12 a month max or anywhere from $20 (and those aren't the instant gratification games, as they're priced that way because they've been out for a year or more...doubt kids are running to pick up a "greatest hits" game over the newest, hottest game on the market) to $60 for the latest 360 game.  I'd also contend that the vast majority of video gamers are not teenagers, but adults, also like Mike B. says. 

Listen, I've always contended that there have been all sorts and manner of things vying to take up a kid's time and money.  Always.  There was when there were no video games and computers, when I was growing up, and there are now.  It's how the market reacts to the competition that really matters.  In that light, Marvel and DC have done a shitty job reacting to the competition in general, not specific to video games.  THAT'S the real problem, not that kids have other things to occupy their time...which they've always had.