libraries are not a demonstrable source for
what comics so desperately need: new readers, new sales.

Too true, too true. Libraries operate (well, mostly) as ideals themselves. They encompass ideals, while constantly battered by the reality of an Internet culture and disposable income and ethics.

Libraries are at the mercy of cultural affluence; without poor people, libraries soon become museums. Affluence serves to isolate individual society, for who has need for "free" exposure to "ideals" when they can afford to ignore it? If you get my meaning.

I think it's worth stating, if it isn't obvious to anyone reading here, the libraries aren't receiving these books for free, they purchase them with State/Federal money, tax free but usually at a discount from bulk sales companies. I understand this is besides the point, it's just for the edification of anyone mistaking "free" in our terms against library terms...the money comes from the taxpayer, and believe me, there are tons of folks who don't like that arrangement.

The Companies can't target libraries, and aren't inclined to do so. Bookstores are the target de jour. What I don't get is why there isn't a larger schism between what is available to bookstores and what is produced in the monthlies.

If the monthlies are pandering to an adult audience still "hooked" on the monthlies, the bookstores have packaged trades waiting for the adult consumer who wants more bang for the buck. The monthly audience is "paying for the privilege" of an "advance screening" of the trade.

This seems counter-productive to good business. If the trades are raking in the dough, why not focus the adult storylines in trades only, and use the monthlies as the starter point for kids/new readers (from teen to Whenever?)

The monthly format requires a specific story-telling device. Mostly single issues with short mult-part sub-plots.

The adult audience as it stands is willing to be "strung out" in the melodrama, and the creative talent is designed around "decompression", so the two are made for each other. Trades of the adult tales, devoid of monthly considerations, solve all of the problems inherent in "decompression". Without a clear beginning or end, these trades would simply continue infinitum. Audiences will watch six seasons or more of a television show in much the same way...they want a steady diet of what they know.

Why isn't DC and Marvel capitalizing on this? The adult trades eschew non-Continuity followers, while the new reader-centric monthlies assimilate the "public" and mesh with a clearer identity to draw the movie-going pre/teenager seeking to further the adventure they just witnessed. In time, if they do not "move on" from comics, there is a whole Continuity-choked "Dungeons and Dragons" adult sub-culture like a raging river never-ending, never-beginning, awaiting them.

It is a sad comment on the state of the industry -- ie, that comics have become over-priced fanzines -- that the writers who supposedly grew up reading this stuff have no idea how to do it.

I am convinced that this is at least partially responsible for late books. It's not about "growing roses". It's about artists losing the energy to get out of bed in the morning, when they know that all that lies ahead of them is page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page of talking heads.

There should never be a superhero comic book with scenes of "talking heads."

The way I thought it was done, if the story required the characters to figure stuff out, there was ALWAYS accompanying visuals. Either flashbacks or visual speculation of how Villain A escaped the fall into the volcano.

If there was just talking heads, it usually had a very strong impact on the plot, such as a revelation of some kind, some melodrama, a threat, a vow.

I get sick of reading drawn out tough guy talk between antagonists, or worse yet trivial pop culture references and simpering self-immolation (honed to a science by Spider-Man comics.)

If you broke down a real comic book story, it should look like a game of Solitare. Every pillar represents a character, the cards a plot point, an action. Then when you see the connecting card, you move the whole pillar/cards to another pillar, and it falls into place.

but couldn't the kid who read Essentials in
a library go out and buy exactly those issues.

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Wish my kid could afford Amazing Fantasy 15 or Fantastic Four 1 or Giant Size X-Men 1. Of course, if she could, odds are I would already have these gems and she wouldn't have to go buy them unless she wanted her own copies...