| Posted: 17 May 2006 at 11:48am | IP Logged | 5
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To Stephen Robinson-I am positive that you are wrong. You may be right if you are only considering people that have been reading for a few short years. But how may people under 15 read comic books? Almost none. The vast majority of people that have been reading comic books for less than 20 years are between 30 and 40 years ols. Say they were ten when they started, and they have been reading for 20 years, they are now 30. Others started when they were 12 or 15. Others have only been reading for 8 or ten years and started when they were 20.
The FOx cartoon started in 1994 (almost 1995), under ten years ago. For that to have been the first experience with Spider-Man, I am going to say that they would have had to be pretty young, probably no older than 8 or 9 at the most. That means if they started reading Spider-Man immediately, they would only be reading for 8 or 9 years. So then you take all of the people who didn't watch the cartoon, were exposed to Spider-Man in the comics at a younger age, all of the people that were reading the book before the cartoon came out (but less than 20 years)...you will find that there is no way that even a really significant portion of the people reading Spider-Man right now were introduced to him by the cartoon and movies.
Of course there is no reason to think that how the cartoon presented the charachter makes one ounce of difference to the overall fanbase. The cartoons are there to hook kids on the concepts of Superheroes (and to sell toys). I think thatSpider-Man and his Amazing Friends had about as much a positive effect on the DC books as the Super Powers cartoon did, and vis versa. Kids understand that the cartoons and movies are like a "preview" of the comics, not the whole show. A kid seeing Spider-Man III knows that Spider-Man had seen and done a lot more than what he sees in the movies. When kids saw Batman and Batman returns, they really weren't confused because there was no Robin. They ask their dad and the dad says "The movie is from before Robin came along. Batman had had a long career and has done a lot of stuff. This is a younger Batman, they will get to that in another movie". A kid sees Spider-Man and MJ in the movie as dating and asks his dad, and the answer is "they haven't gotten married yet in the movie. Remember, Spider-Man has had a long career with lots of stories to tell. This one is about when he was young. They will get to it in another movie." I know this workd because I needed to use this line of answering on my nephew.
To Paul Greer-
There is a lot of talk about doing irreperable harm to charachters, in your words "killing the future of the franchises". That I just don't understand.
If someone has never seen or heard of Iron Man and somehow they pick up a comic book, the specifics of the book make no difference whatsoever really. What matters is that that one particular issue happens to be interesting to that one particular fan. If it is an old issue with Tony in the yellow armor charging up from a wall plate, or if it is a Jim Rhodes as Shellhead while Tony is wandering around drunk, or if it is an Armor Wars issue with Tony fighting Cap, or if it is a current issue with tony playing political games, it is all pretty much the same. I bet that if you handed out one issue of each of the above mentioned issues to 100 people who have never read a comic book, opinions would range from end to end on what was more popular, what would make people want to read more, what was viewed as dumb.
There are two types of people that you want to get to start reading a comic book.
Someone who has never read them before...
You think thatthere is a "certain" version of a given charachter is the only one that will appeal to these people. Why? Is it not just as likely that a completely new person would be just as likely to enjoy an Iron Man comic from 1990 as from 1980 as from 1970? If you maintain that (as an example) the 1970 Iron Man issues represent the "core" that should be returned to, then isn't it just as likely that a new reader would have an equal chance to be turned off by that book as he would be by any of the other books? Personally, I was never a big Iron Man fan when I was real young. I first got mildly interested in the concept just prior to Tony quitting and handing the armor over to Jim. It was that version with Jim that really hooked me, not Tony. Is Jim Rhodes anywhere near the core concept of what Iron Man is about? Not even close. But it hooked me into the mythos, and through that hook I became interested in the concept of Iron Man in it's entirety. Were they wrong in exploring that direction with the charachter because it wan't "text book" Iron Man?
Similarly, I have a friend that started reading comics in high school. He was big into the JLI, and his introduction into the concept of Green Lantern was Guy, not Hal or John. Guy just struck a cord with him in a way that Hal or John never would have. Is Guy the "core" GL concept? Heck no, Hal is. But Guy as the focus of that area of the GL concept was what was able to grab a new reader.
For some people, their first exposure to the JLA since SuperFriends was the Detroit League. That is as far away from the overall concept of the Justice League as I have ever seen. But it did draw certain people to it. I think that if you had someone who never read a DC comic in their life, and you handed them the first few issues of the JLI, the JLDetriot vs Despero, the recent Chris/John JLA arc, any of the Jurgens JLA stories, and the last pre-crisis JLA/JSA crossover, there is not one particular choice of what would be considered teh best. Some of those stories are very similar to a generalized "traditional JLA" story, and some aren't.
My point in this is that when it comes to getting new fans, ANY style is just as likely to hit a bulls-eye in the dark as any other. Writing a charachter to his "core" is a coin flip on if a new reader will like or dislike it.
Someone who used to read but stopped....
As a former comic retailer I can say with some authority that relatively gentle changes in the direction of charachters in a book do not make people just quit generally. There are some extreem cases. If the Demon went from being written and drawn by JB to being done by Ellis and Dillon, that is a huge change in direction. Most fans actually DO accept gradual changes to a charachter. When Spider-Man got married, what % of regular readers just decided to stop reading because Spider-Man was no longer "right"? Not a lot.
Most people (in my humble but somewhat informed opinion) stop reading books for a combination of the following reasons (ome of them feed off each other)...
A) Outside influences such as time, money, their girlfriend giving an ultimatum, or something like that. These things happen, and really can't much be helped.
B) Art/story problems. More people will keep on a book for at least a little while if the writer changes to someone that they dislike. They are likely to leave sooner if the artist changes to someone they dislike. If someone likes Ms Marvel, say from her appearances in the Avengers, they will notice new series on the rack. If they like the writer but not the aritst, they will probably flip through it in the store and leave it. If they like the artist and not the writer, they are more likely to buy the first issue or five before deciding to drop it (if they do). If you really WOW them with part four and five of a story, they forget that 1-3 were terrible. Mostly anyway. The same thing happens with ongoing titles. Bad writing could be just a story that was a dud, of it could be actual bad writing. Even the best writers in the business will occasionally have a story that a particular fan will say "eh. I didn't like it". They promptly forget about it and pick up the next issue like nothing happened. With bad artwork (or at least bad from a particular reader's point of view), they will grab the first issue of the new artist on a book that they normally like just out of habit. Some will stay for the second issue. Very few will stay for the third issue of art that they don't like. As far as bad writing goes, it is not so much bad stories as bad charachterization, and trying to "cheat". Writer X comes on to write Captain America, but he doesn't like the charachter as he has been written. To writer X Captain america should act like THIS, and proceedes to write him that way, regardless of the fact that THIS is in contradiction to the way everyone else has written him. The right way is to take Cap over the course of time and move him from this to THIS in a respectful way. What we see now is the attitude of "THIS is the right way, and the way it always should have been. It isn't my fault that nobody else ever wrote him right." The fact is, sometimes THIS actually makes sense, but in cases like this the means are more important than the ends. I have heard very VERY few fans face-to-face ever complain about a charachter changing from A-B-C-D-E ofer the course of time. Quite a few have said that they liked A or B or C better, and even wish that they charachter would progress back to D then to C then to B. That is reasonable and makes perfect sence. But plenty of people have always had problems when I charachter is at A for a period of time and then the next month they are at D.
C) Overload. Believe it or not, it is not always a good thing to put another title out with the same concept or charachters. Shocking, I know. Lots of people stopped Spider-Man to some extent back in the day shortly after Todd M's title came out. It happened with Batman, Superman, and X-Men. Some peole go to the comic rack and see "oh, the X-Men. Cool. I always get the X-Men. I will grab it." They don't pay particular attenton to the fact that they grabbed Uncanny, Astonishing, New blah, blah, blah. If you ask them, they could certainly tell you the titles of all of the monthly X-Men titles. But if you ask them "you know two issues ago when the beast dumped that thermous of Kool-Aid over the Vanisher's head? What book was that in?" They will have absolutely no idea at all. These people pick up an issue of Detective comics and read part one of a Batman vs Riddler story, then a couple weeks later they will grab Batman looking for the part two, but it isn't there. Then the next week he get's to his shop late and it is sold out, or Detective was shorted to his store, or it shipped late or whatever, and he just gives up on it. This is the first step towards a fan who hasn't lost interest in a charachter, but who is starting to lose interest in keeping up with the charachter. With the proliferation, particularly in the X-Titles of the sheer volume of stuff they put out, there is no way to really keep track other then to get everything. The problem with that is there is so much stuff, lots of people wll choose to risk missing something that they like instead of wasting all the time and money on stuff that they don't.
D) Big, cheaply done crossovers. Most fans like the concept of big stories that tough and interconnect a wide variety of titles. It is good for the publishers too because there ARE books out there that some fans will like, but they don't see a reason to try them to find out. The problem is when it bocomes cumbersome, it being hard to keep track of what is going on from book to book bacuse it isn't coordinated well. Also the name-only crossover. An example was a FF issue clearly marked to tie in with "Disassembled". The extent of the crossover was that on one page they had (i think it was) Ben and Sue walking down the street saying "I hear the Avengers are having some problems." And that was about it. Late books cause even more problems with big crossovers then with just the general stupidity of it. It could be a major story point for a favorite book that is the point of the crossover, but the crossover looses them, so when the story that was launched by the crossover comes to pass, they are frustrated and drop the book.
E) Overall lateness causes people to lose interest. Now if it was a book that was a whole week late every single month, that could probably be handled with a grain of salt. But books that ae so late that they are a month late, even to the point where they manage to get only three issues out in a five or six month period? No wonder people lose interest in them.
F) Radical new directions going too far too fast. You want to mess around with Spider-Man's origen? OK. You want to give him new powers? OK. You want to change his costume? OK. You want to change big parts of his setting and supporting cast elements? OK. Do all of that in the span of like a year? Really NOT OK. Outside of the past few years' worth of free for all, the one biggest single change I remember hapening in a book was the Post JB FF when Reed and Sue were gone from the book. That was a pretty big change. But the dynamic between Ben and Johnny was consistant from before and after. They changes Ben's look, but not all that drasticly. He was big, strong, orange, and uglier, so then made him bigger, stronger, orangier (?), and uglier. Not a real stretch. They reintroduced an old element (Crystal) back into the mix, and one new element to keep it fresh. I am not saying that it was a great period in the FF. Or even an OK period, but it certainly fits within the whole structure of the FF world. If you picked up an issue during that run for the first time in five years, you would be confused momentarily, but not hopelessly lost. Someone picking up Spider-Man for the first time in five or ten years would see very few elements other then the superficial that they recognize. That may be bad, or not so bad, but it is. When Morrison took over Doom Patrol way back, the whole book was something out of left field in relation to the previous stories. In that case a radical departure worked I guess.
G) More and more popular lately, and by far the only one that is the fan's own fault. SPITE. The people that could not envision that Hal Jordan went bad and was replaced by a new charachter. The people picked up a few issues fully comitted to hating it from the moment it was announced. They "knew" that the book COULDN'T be any good, so it had to be horrible, regardless of the actual quality. The same people that talk about how Mr B "ruined" this or that and for some reason won't pick up anything that he does, even if it is their favorite charachter, or even worse, they will get it "knowing" how much they will hate it. I, for example, had no interest in Doom Patrol with the JB relaunch. I love JBs work overall, but I was never a fan of the charachters. It is tough to get me to like charachters that I don't like. It has happened on occasion, but not often. I didn't pick up the first few issues when they came out. I did pick up the first few as back issues a while ago. I didn't expect them to appeal to me, but I hoped they would. As it ended up, there was nothing wrong at all in the quality, they just weren't for me. I had the same situation with the new Avengers, except I didn't have as much optimism. Sometimes when you think something will suck, you are right. Conversely, I happened to pick up an issue of Young Justice because I was bored one week. I had no interest in any of the charachters except maybe Robin. But I liked the book a lot and it, and the charachters, grew on me. The Giffen SuperBuddies were a great surprise to me. I expected to hate it, but tried it anyway, and loved it. So many people are so...I guess stuck up is the right term....with what they think their standards are, that they won't let themselves enjoy the work.
The trick to getting new readers to catch on with a book is really a shot in the dark. There are things you can do to slightly alter things in your favor, but not by all that much.
The trick to getting old readers back is to identify what caused them to stop in the first place and correct it, if that correction doesn't lose more current readers than it brings back.
I have never ever met anyone who said that they stopped reading Spider-Man because he got married. There might be some, but there are a whole ton more who were there before he was married, were there when he got married, and then stayed after he was married. The ones that stopped reading after that point pretty obviously had other root problems with continuing. Therefore I can not understand how reversing the marriage would solve any problems or do any good for the books as a whole.
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