Any books that discusses the history of the comic book market or 90s crash?

[shadroch]

and currently the avg. age is 38+; and how (in parallel with comics) kids moved from cards to video games and non-traditional cards like Magic/Pokemon and how losing one generation will end up costing sports card companies ongoing generations when dads/parents move away from the hobby and therefore not exposing their kids to the hobby as well.

 

While inherently true, this trend has absolutely nothing to do with "exposing their kids to the hobby". You could drag kids to the local card shows all year and they'd still look at card pack prices of $100-$500+ a pop, and shake their heads.

 

It's all comes down to publishers/manufacturers choosing to target one market demographic (affluent adults) over another (mass market kids) in order to get an influx of short-term cash. Cards and comics are marketed directly at adults, priced for adult consumption, and written/printed with adults in mind. It's a strategy that will kill the business in the long-term, but a walking heart attack like Joe Q probably doesn't care.

 

In a scenario like that, there is no hope to "expose kids to the hobby" since there is no hobby for them any more. So they naturally gravitate to items directly created for, and targeted at, children, like Pokemon cards, video games and Manga.

 

I've been saying the same thing for while now... it's not so much that kids aren't inherently interested in comics anymore... it's more that comics are neither written for nor marketed to kids. The target audience now is 20/30-somethings. Whether this is good or bad for the hobby is debatable... media formats and technologies are converging in unpredictable ways these days so maybe the strategy makes sense but it's hard to say. I remain very comfortable however, that there will be no back issue market crash in comics in my lifetime... correction yes (and I think it's already started)... but not a crash.

What era are you talking about? If your talking 1930`s to 1970`s stuff I agree but if its post 1990`s and up stuff then I disagree because other then a handful of post 1990`s books there is no back issue market.

 

Nonesense. There's a big back issue market for 1997/98 books to the present and stuff prior to 89 or so. We're just not talking about much money per book, but there's a ton of these books selling briskly for a buck or so a pop around the country at shops, shows, etc. Of course, if you ignore inflation, if you were a dealer selling recent stuff en masse at a buck a pop in 1987 or 1994 you'd probably be pretty happy.

If thier selling these new books for a buck a pop then they are losing money as these new books cost over a dollar even after a generous discount from Diamond, retailers paying over $2 dollars to sell for a $1 sounds like a suicidal business practice model?

 

 

Thats assuming they bought these books from Diamond. A friend has a deal with a LCS where he buys alll the guys leftovers for thirty cents on the dollar. He resells them at flea markets for half coverprice.LCS generates some cash for what is essentially junk, and he makes decent money.