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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | 1
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Jack Michaels wrote:
| While I read comics as a kid, the biggest reason why I started reading in the 90s was Tim Burton's Batman. I wasn't a big comic reader when I was a youngin and never followed a book until I was 20.
Given the huge success of super-hero movies these days, I can easily see young adults starting a comic habit without having read them as a kid. Comics are a pretty important part of the geek scene, lots of opportunities for cross-pollination. |
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Hence my reference to the DSM. Taking an otherwise incredibly popular product and for the most part making it available only at comic book shops reduced venues through which kids could be exposed to them. When I was a kid in the 70s you couldn't swing a stick in just about any store that sold periodicals without hitting a comic book. Bookstores, convenience stores, gas stations, the airport, grocery stores. You name it. I started to see it dry up in my fairly big city of Minneapolis in the early 80s and by the early 90s they were all but gone except for a very few titles. By that time they were starting to be written for the aging fan who had been around for a decade or more and here we are.
As far as it being "easy to see" an adult getting into comics because of the movies? That's why I said my experience is anecdotal. Perhaps it's easy to see how it's possible, but I've never seen an adult pick up a comic for the first time ever based only on a movie or a video game and, more importantly, sticking with it to become a regular reader. Personally? I'm not holding my breath.
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Jack Michaels
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 June 2013
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 2
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Yeah, but what happened to all the non-super-hero titles.
When I was a kid in the late 70s, there was Little Lulu, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, Ripley's Believe or Not, westerns, war comics, all sorts of stuff.
They were all but gone when I wandered back into the habit in the early 90s.
Something apocalyptic happened to the industry. It sounds like the super-heroes hunkered down in the bunker that was the DSM to escape their fate.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | 3
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I think you've got it backward. The DSM didn't preexist as a bunker for Marvel and DC to take shelter in but was originally created as a way to give specialty shops a constant supply of back issues. However, it quickly morphed into what it is today because the companies made a huge profit on their no-returns policy. Why keep selling to all those outlets I mentioned above when they could make more money selling direct to comic shops while not having to take back product that didn't sell? Comics became harder to find for kids, but that didn't matter when the profit margins jumped. The downfall is that those Marvel and DC comics being sold all over the place were racked in grocery stores et al with other kinds of comics, those Harvey titles you mention. When the Big Two started pulling out of many stores, sales of those kids comics went down the toilet. They didn't have the DSM deal because kids comics like those don't have a huge back issue demand. In the end, comic shops were catering to adults (or kids old enough to find them on their own if they were lucky enough to have one in their city or town at all) and the other publishers were left in the dust.
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
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Location: United States
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | 4
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Matt Reed wrote:
| I get the notion that an existing audience would lose interest in an all-ages character. That's the way it was for decades. Hell, that was the entire foundation upon which modern superhero comics were founded. Kids picked them up, stayed with them for a time, and then left when they discovered other interests. This was all possible, of course, because a new crop of kids was always coming in. |
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Right, but the incoming kids didn't necessarily like the same stuff as the outgoing ones. Some characters were able to bridge "generations". Most weren't. Marvel characters had a disproportionate amount of success when it came to said bridging, which beggars the question of why. Superior initial premises or Marvel's willingness to mess with them?
Let me move this next bit up a little:
QUOTE:
| If your point is that maybe, possibly, some kids might not like a comic featuring a high school Peter Parker working at the Bugle and fending off Liz Allen, well that's nothing new. |
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Sure. The question is would enough new readers be attracted by the character and status quo to sufficiently cover the loss of the fans who had moved on ? And then do it again to make up for their loss? And then do it again? And again? And again? And so forth and so on continuously for decades? I think if any Marvel character could have done it, it would have been Spider-Man, but there's really no way to know.
QUOTE:
| First of all, what "incoming audience"? New adults? |
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Keep in mind I was speculating about an alternate 1966 onward. So still kids. Not trying to reverse the downfall, but to figure out the best way to aim the time machine and prevent it from occuring in the first place.
QUOTE:
| Anecdotal to be sure, but I don't know anyone as an adult who has picked up the hobby without having some past connection. |
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Agreed.
QUOTE:
| Second, what's different about kids today that they wouldn't be interested in the kinds of comics I read at their age? |
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Each generation has its own interests. That's why Hawkman was a reincarnated Egyptian prince in 1940 and an alien police officer in 1963, or why Green Lantern was a test pilot in the 60s and a young artist in the 90s. Romance comics were huge in the 50s and marginal at best in the 70s onward. It's also true these things go in cycles. I remember My Little Pony as a kid and I've seen new ones, but have they been around continuously?
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | 5
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Of course they have their own interests particularly if those interests weren't even around when I was a kid. The internet for one. Couldn't have done an origin around the internet in 1972. That said, I'm not talking window dressing. I'm talking specifically about certain states of being that we are here in this thread. I can't think of a kid that is both interested in comics and also shares a life experience of being in high school and feeling like the outsider that wouldn't enjoy reading a comic book with Peter Parker in high school as the outsider being rejected by women and who finds it fun to dress up and play someone he's not in his every day life. Make him a photographer or a young web developer (Egyptian prince/police officer) doesn't matter. It's the core that counts...which is why I can certainly say that same kid wouldn't be interested in a twentysomething married Peter Parker who got the catch of a lifetime in supermodel MJ and has nearly all of his money problems solved. I'd say that, but I know you and I disagree pretty hard on that subject.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | 6
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...which beggars the question of why.••• Sorry, you just pushed one of my pet peeve buttons. The phrase is "begs the question," meaning to ask it. To "beggar" something is to weaken it, or call it into doubt.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | 7
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In my head, it was "begs". Not sure how it ended up as "beggars" on the post. Sorry.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | 8
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Jack Michaels wrote:
When I was a kid in the late 70s, there was Little Lulu, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, Ripley's Believe or Not, westerns, war comics, all sorts of stuff.
They were all but gone when I wandered back into the habit in the early 90s.
Something apocalyptic happened to the industry. |
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Yes, but it happened in the 40s. That's when the decision was made to keep comics at 10 cents and cut page counts rather than stay commensurate with the other magazines. From that point on, it was only a matter of time. Shelf space is limited. Do you shelf the stuff that makes you a dime per copy or something that nets you 50 cents per? And by the time someone at the comic companies realized their cheap price point might be a problem, it was too late. Attempts to raise the price and page count landed like a lead balloon because they weren't paired with an attempt to consolidate the line (so buying the same series/features as the month before ended up costing you double) and by then fans were too accustomed to only buying the features they liked so anthologies tended to not do too well.
Around the 70s, things started to hit a crisis point. Even though sales of individual comics were at levels that make today's "successes" seem laughable, the print runs necessary to get those sales meant they weren't making much per book and things were starting to get pretty rough. Heck, I've read somewhere that the Star Wars comic saved Marvel. Can't speak to its veracity, though.
Enter the direct market. The "backbone" provided by the direct market helped save the industry. Books had guaranteed profit and were able to better weather bad sell-through periods. The problem is that the direct market tends to favor "fan-favorites." (Read: super-heroes.)
THe other problem was the speculator boom. Super-heroes previously followed a roughly ten-year boom/bust cycle. You have the 40s boom, then in the 50s superheroes went mostly to the side in favor of horror, crime, romance and science fiction comics. Then by the 60s superheros were all the rage again. Then in the 70s it was monsters, Conan, Star Wars, etc. By the 80s we're back to superheros again. Once we hit the nineties, it was about time for another compression cycle. Instead, a small army of people who thought buying the first issue of a second X-Men title would one day be worth the same as the first appearance of Superman flooded the market. By the time the bubble burst, the damage was done. Comics had effectively "skipped" a generation, disrupting the influx of new readers. Meanwhile, they were still too cheap for most businesses, so more and more business was handled by the direct market, which made it that much harder for new readers to discover them. Old fans prefer old favorites so the incentive to create new properties was also lost. (And of course, the generally unfavorable deals offered by the companies for new characters don't make it any better.)
And here we are.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | 9
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Nice summation, Dave.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | 10
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Matt Reed wrote:
| I can't think of a kid that is both interested in comics and also shares a life experience of being in high school and feeling like the outsider that wouldn't enjoy reading a comic book with Peter Parker in high school as the outsider being rejected by women and who finds it fun to dress up and play someone he's not in his every day life. |
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Maybe, but is that really Peter Parker? The notion of Peter being "rejected by women" was gone by #6. He may piss them off, but they always seem to come back for more. And Spider-Man was an atonement for him (albeit one he tried to make the most of), not a diversion.
Spider-Man's the "misunderstood outsider," not Peter Parker. Peter Parker has friends, mentors, women who love him despite his flaws and family. Spider-Man had none of that. Maybe the Torch I guess, but even that was more of a friendly rivalry at best.
QUOTE:
| I'd say that, but I know you and I disagree pretty hard on that subject. |
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Yeah. Hopefully, you understand why I feel the need to defend my childhood from time to time.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | 11
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Dave Phelps wrote:
| Maybe, but is that really Peter Parker? The notion of Peter being "rejected by women" was gone by #6. He may piss them off, but they always seem to come back for more. And Spider-Man was an atonement for him (albeit one he tried to make the most of), not a diversion. |
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It morphed, sure. He screwed up with women he liked and misread the signals of those who liked him. Sounds like just about any kid in high school to me. That's pretty much out the window when the guy is in his 20s married to a supermodel unless your idea of fun as a kid is reading about marriage troubles.
QUOTE:
| Spider-Man's the "misunderstood outsider," not Peter Parker. Peter Parker has friends, mentors, women who love him despite his flaws and family. Spider-Man had none of that. Maybe the Torch I guess, but even that was more of a friendly rivalry at best. |
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Outsiders have friends. Outsiders have families that love them and adults who want to help. Girls are attracted to the quirky guy. I'm not saying Peter was ostracized by the entire student body, his family and everyone around him. Popular kids didn't like him throughout Ditko's run and even the marginal kids in school felt he was weird. I know I felt like that in high school. Flash Thompson didn't like him for a good time after that and even then their relationship was tenuous at best until he was all but written out of the book. The Spider-Man identity wasn't a job for Peter. He relished it. You can't say that it wasn't an escape for him...unless you came of age during the early 90s when it was more of a burden and it looked less and less like he actually enjoyed putting on the costume to webswing around the city crackin' wise while he stopped a burglar or fought Doc Ock.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 07 February 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | 12
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I grew up in the 80s. One of my first comics was Marvel Team-Up #106. I believe my first "solo" Spider-Man was actually Roger Stern's "Secret Story" book, which included reprints of Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #80. My first real issue of Amazing was #232 and I got at least one monthly Spider-Man comic from then on until someone decided it would be a good idea to have Norman Osborn knock up Gwen Stacy. Thanks to Marvel Tales, I got Peter Parker as high school student, to line up with college student Peter in the main books who before too many years had passed became married Spider-Man. So for me, ALL of that is "the real Spider-Man".
Just establishing where I'm coming from. Now on to the current topic:
Matt Reed wrote:
| The Spider-Man identity wasn't a job for Peter. He relished it. You can't say that it wasn't an escape for him... |
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From Spider-Man #17 (or Marvel Tales #155 to me):
Peter Parker wrote:
A lot of GOOD it does me to be Spider-Man! Sometimes I wish I have never HEARD that name!
Why don't things ever seem to turn out right for me? Why do I seem to HURT people, no matter how I try not to? Is this the price I must always pay for being... SPIDER-MAN??! |
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This is supposed to be an escape for him?
In Amazing #4, he finally convinced Liz to go out with him, but he broke the date because he felt obliged to go after Sandman. Hardly using Spider-Man to get away from his cares then.
The whole notion of "with great power comes great responsibility" precludes Spider-Man being his way to get away from it all, which is borne out by most of his problems as Peter Parker being either caused or made worse by him being Spider-Man.
Betty breaks up with him because he shows up bruised after a fight with the Master Planner's men and worries that he'll meet a bad end like her brother. Aunt May almost dies because of his radioactive blood, which in turn led to him making a pretty poor first impression when he got to college. His schoolwork suffers because he's too busy trying to stop the villain of the month to study. (Hmmm... that one might be outside my self-imposed boundary of the Lee/Ditko period.)
On the other hand, Spider-Man gave him a livelihood and faking confidence as Spider-Man helped give him real confidence as Peter Parker. He never would have even met Betty if there was no Spider-Man. There's a lot of fun to be had by doing what he can do, which he makes the most of.
But from the moment he realized who killed Uncle Ben, Spider-Man has been as much (if not more) a burden than an escape for Peter simply because he can't NOT be Spider-Man. If Spider-Man is needed then Spider-Man must be there and Peter Parker will just have to deal with the consequences.
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Topic Closed)
