You have to at least try to get these things in venues
outside of dwindling comic stores and book stores if
mainstream comics are to have any future at all.

"This is art, so we don't want to make it like an assembly line," he said. "Once you say 'You can't do this' it sucks the creative life out of the room."

This is the long-sought reason why Marvel and DC don't function as businesses: they don't even want to.

I appreciate art. Mainstream superhero comics are mostly worse art than they are entertainment. So they're doing one thing badly because they're busy doing another thing very badly.

IMP.

Robert, the argument I've heard is that Walmart etc can't be bothered to collect the smaller sums each comic cost.

That must be why they don't sell sweets (candy). Or newspapers. Or anything else under three dollars. In bucketloads.

IMP.

Robert, the argument I've heard is that Walmart etc can't be bothered to collect the smaller sums each comic cost. Except comic collecting kids tend to buy many issues at time, (and there are still cheap children's comics in my UK newsagents.)

***

Yet WalMart carries the Archie digests by their checkouts and in their books and magazines aisle.

"This is art, so we don't want to make it like an assembly line," he said. "Once you say 'You can't do this' it sucks the creative life out of the room."

God, the pretentious douchebaggery!

What we, and I mean most of us who work for a living, can never digest is how a bunch of trifling frat boys in jeans and Keds who never had a deadline they couldn't weasel out of could possibly become an "assembly line."

That would be expecting men not to be the slovenly college 'roids they were five to ten years ago, but to be actual professionals. I hate to just take shots at these talents at Marvel and DC, but really..."creative life"? So, sitting around a board room giggling, watching movie trailers and sipping Diet Coke while saying things like, "You know what I'm thinking? You know what would be cool?" is "creativity?"

They are what would be termed in military speak as "F.S.P."s. F*cking Sniveling Pukes.

Yet WalMart carries the Archie digests by their checkouts and in their books and magazines aisle.

Our WalMart equivalent carries Marvel and DC comics.

I'd be down for an extremely limited superhero output from DC and Marvel, spread to the most visible areas of every major store in the U.S. Like, ten titles per month from each company.

New titles and mini-series can be pimped just like any corporate movie or television show, mostly to be found in comic shops.

The idea is to focus all that "creative life" onto the best and most accessible characters. Have a couple of Superman and Batman comics and do the old 1980s schtick of continuing stories from one to the other. Crossovers are frowned upon, just keep each title whether it's FF or Wonder Woman in their own "universe." You don't have to have comics that are all done in one issue, but you can insure Wonder Woman readers get an ongoing story without having to buy any other comics from DC.

This might sound contrary, since Marvel/DC whores their characters in every title they can in order to suck fans dry. But at least Marvel/DC is guaranteed that Wonder Woman reader, month in and month out. If done correctly, if Wonder Woman is strongly produced to the right age bracket, that one WW reader becomes tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. Every teenager wants to be in on the Next Thing. Every kid wants to be associated with something cool. 

Comic books haven't been a source of ghettoized entertainment in any other part of the world except here, where they were originated.

Manga is gigantic in one of the most media-saavy cultures in the world. You're saying those Japanese kids and young adults don't have more to distract them from comics than American kids? That's the Big Excuse why comics aren't fashioned for kids in the most general, accessible way possible in the States?