Mark Millar: Marvel, DC, And Independent Comics Only Make Up 9% Of Comic Book Market In North America 3 3

[Carl Elvis]

Mark Millar decried the state of the comic book industry in reaction to the news that JHU Comic Books in Manhattan will be shutting down.

He then declared, “A strong Marvel and DC urgently required again for the health of the overall American industry. This is an iceberg tip!”

Millar would also provide more details on the state of the comic book industry revealing that much of the domestic market is now dominated by manga sales.

He wrote, “79% manga. The rest mostly Dog Man. I love Dog Man. I love Manga. But the complete collapse of the American industry is as devastating as the collapse of the British industry in the 90s for hundreds of American writers and artists.”

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/09/26/mark-millar-marvel-dc-and-independent-comics-only-make-up-9-of-comic-book-market-in-north-america/?fbclid=IwAR3y5xO15OYmm73s8aFNS2Wfv9KS3qiskz0RfQUA_UkAKkKvyeiShhjIdNU_aem_Ad_t3lyjsy8slbtWLSdVRsqXYDM0ghU8lSm6putDStYiqwuCD_wlv7v5RLfDXoTWSJY&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

[Murphman13]

WTH is dog man?

[Dick Pontoon]

On 9/27/2023 at 9:29 AM, Murphman13 said:

WTH is dog man?

It's a kids book series. It's good and even moms and dads can find it entertaining but I never thought of it as being part of the comic book market, though it is indeed a drawn story told in sequential panels.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Dick Pontoon

[MattTheDuck]

So Modern Marvel and DC books are rare.

I think the wrong question is addressed here, or at least not answered directly.  Is this current disparity in favor of Manga-type publications due to a dramatic increase in Manga sales, or a decline in sales of more traditional comic books from Marvel, DC, etc?  The background of the story seems to imply lower sales in "traditional" comics but there's no data offered to support that conclusion.

In any case, it's sad if true and I'm sorry to see this shop close.  People can change their interests over time and something super-popular goes into the cultural recycling bin.  Maybe we need a "Manga" forum on the Boards.

[toro]

I'm sure that the shop in Manhattan must have been big bucks to lease.  LCS don't have huge profit margins.  From their ebay and website, it doesn't look like they deal much in high end back issues.  My LCS has more in ebay sales and he hasn't done much recently.

[Muno42]

JHU was victim of ever-increasing rents in the area they are located. Over the years, they relocated to less expensive spaces, but became harder and harder to find. With few residents in that part of the city, covid must have been a gut punch.

[VintageComics]

On 9/27/2023 at 7:31 AM, Carl Elvis said:

Mark Millar decried the state of the comic book industry in reaction to the news that JHU Comic Books in Manhattan will be shutting down.

He then declared, “A strong Marvel and DC urgently required again for the health of the overall American industry. This is an iceberg tip!”

Millar would also provide more details on the state of the comic book industry revealing that much of the domestic market is now dominated by manga sales.

He wrote, “79% manga. The rest mostly Dog Man. I love Dog Man. I love Manga. But the complete collapse of the American industry is as devastating as the collapse of the British industry in the 90s for hundreds of American writers and artists.”

Interesting. I was just saying this two weeks ago (that while American comics sales seem to be slowing down Manga isn't).

On 9/27/2023 at 5:31 PM, Muno42 said:

JHU was victim of ever-increasing rents in the area they are located. Over the years, they relocated to less expensive spaces, but became harder and harder to find. With few residents in that part of the city, covid must have been a gut punch.

Yep.

The rising rents are due to Venture Capital companies buying up 10,000s of properties across the country over the last few years causing a quick driving up of prices exactly the way it happened in comics. The difference is that Venture Capital companies don't ever need to sell the way you or I do, as they specialize in liquidity. They just continue to buy + hold while raising rents and increasing profits.

The equivalent would be a comic dealer who is very liquid and doesn't need to sell. We have a few of those in the hobby as well and their books are not for sale because they don't need to sell, so it takes ridiculous money to loosen up a desirable item, driving up the price drastically. 

This may help explain why we see the top end prices either rising or holding steadier than lower grade prices. 

Combined with the unprecedented rise in energy prices, these two things are making normal life impossible for the majority of people.

We're likely watching the decline of the middle class and quite possibly the US' decline as the world reserve currency in real time. 

What's happening is impossible to sustain indefinitely and something will have to give. 

Edited September 28, 2023 by VintageComics

[musicmeta]

On 9/27/2023 at 7:41 PM, VintageComics said:

Interesting. I was just saying this two weeks ago (that while American comics sales seem to be slowing down Manga isn't).

Yep.

The rising rents are due to Venture Capital companies buying up 10,000s of properties across the country over the last few years causing a quick driving up of prices exactly the way it happened in comics. The difference is that Venture Capital companies don't ever need to sell the way you or I do, as they specialize in liquidity. They just continue to buy + hold while raising rents and increasing profits.

The equivalent would be a comic dealer who is very liquid and doesn't need to sell. We have a few of those in the hobby as well and their books are not for sale because they don't need to sell, so it takes ridiculous money to loosen up a desirable item, driving up the price drastically. 

This may help explain why we see the top end prices either rising or holding steadier than lower grade prices. 

Combined with the unprecedented rise in energy prices, these two things are making normal life impossible for the majority of people.

We're likely watching the decline of the middle class and quite possibly the US' decline as the world reserve currency in real time. 

What's happening is impossible to sustain indefinitely and something will have to give. 

Like the line in the movie Wall Street... "It's all about bucks kid. The rest is conversation"...well almost..It's about the power it brings as well. 

[Brock]

On 9/27/2023 at 10:43 AM, MattTheDuck said:

So Modern Marvel and DC books are rare.

I think the wrong question is addressed here, or at least not answered directly.  Is this current disparity in favor of Manga-type publications due to a dramatic increase in Manga sales, or a decline in sales of more traditional comic books from Marvel, DC, etc?  The background of the story seems to imply lower sales in "traditional" comics but there's no data offered to support that conclusion.

In any case, it's sad if true and I'm sorry to see this shop close.  People can change their interests over time and something super-popular goes into the cultural recycling bin.  Maybe we need a "Manga" forum on the Boards.

For a data rich discussion of what the comic market actually looks like, check out Brian Hibbs’ regular “Tilting at Windmills” column at comicsbeat.com. His annual dive into bookscan data is eye opening.

Our end of the comic market is a tiny fraction of the American comic market, and it’s kind of like we live in a strange alternate universe. In the real comic publishing world, Marvel is a non-entity and though DC is a bigger player, they are both dwarfed by the largest comic publisher in America - Scholastic Books. The biggest and best-selling comic creator in the world is Dav Pilkey, who knocked Raina Telgemeier off that pedestal a couple of years back. Kids are reading comics in record numbers, but they could care less about super-heroes, or about floppies.

Dive into a couple of years of his reports, and you’ll have more data than you know what to do with…

[grendel013]

On 9/27/2023 at 5:31 PM, Muno42 said:

JHU was victim of ever-increasing rents in the area they are located. Over the years, they relocated to less expensive spaces, but became harder and harder to find. With few residents in that part of the city, covid must have been a gut punch.

I gonna miss JHU. 

[Dr. Balls]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:43 AM, MattTheDuck said:

 Maybe we need a "Manga" forum on the Boards.

That’s not my genre, but it’s a helluva good idea.

I guess rebooting characters every 12 months wasn’t the way to go - but perhaps it was the only option left to stimulate activity at Marvel and DC. Either way, the Manga bell has been ringing for years, and I’m not sure what the draw is to Manga and not regular comics (stories? Art? World building? I don’t have any idea).

This could be a comic dead zone for awhile until it’s reinvented again down the line.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Dr. Balls

[VintageComics]

On 9/28/2023 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Balls said:

I guess rebooting characters every 12 months wasn’t the way to go - but perhaps it was the only option left to stimulate activity at Marvel and DC.

The writing has been on the wall for YEARS and people have been living in denial, but you can't stop or reverse the laws of physics.

What happened to Marvel and DC is what happens to every large organization that puts quality of profit over quality of product...it necessarily eventually collapses in on itself as it feeds on itself because it has no other way of feeding the big profit machine. It's pure, simple, unadulterated, unavoidable logic.

Marvel / Disney and DC / Time / Warner are literally collapsing before our eyes but nobody wants to admit it.

From what I've heard and read the DC / Warner offices in Burbank are LITERALLY an empty shell with no employees.

And they managed to run themselves into the ground by cannibalizing profits while pretending to put out a good product. 

The science is pretty simple. 

On 9/28/2023 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Balls said:

Either way, the Manga bell has been ringing for years, and I’m not sure what the draw is to Manga and not regular comics (stories? Art? World building? I don’t have any idea).

Content. Culture. History. So many reasons, but the main one is in my opinion, that comics, being exclusively an American art form are limited in a sense by the younger and less mature culture and therefore the values of the West. 

I find the range of interest for people born / raised outside of the West is far broader than people born and raised with a North American mindset and who only tend to think locally. I find people from outside of North America tend to think in broader, more worldly ways and this leads to a much more broad depth of culture to draw stories from out of. 

-------------

Additionally, people from outside of North America - and ESPECIALLY Asians tend to be motivated by different things than those within North America. I've worked with people who worked or lived in Japan where Manga originates from, for many years and they have ALL told me that people in Japan have a very high sense of respect for each other among the general population.

Honor and integrity were the highest motivators in Japan, not profit.

That's not the case here, is it? 

And so, in much the same way, because of both history and culture, and Asia being among the oldest and most mature cultures in the world will have a very different culture to draw ideas out of than the West giving them a much different rudder to steer with.

------------------------------------------------------

The parallel of automobile industry that I used a few weeks ago illustrate this perfectly:

For DECADES the Big 3 (GM, Chrysler and Ford) were putting out an inferior product after the oil crisis of the 70s, while trying to convince the public they weren't because the corporate boardroom did not want to reduce profit...so they reduced quality instead.

The Big 3 kept cutting costs each year and put out a slightly inferior product while pretending they weren't and sold you what was supposed to be an improvement over the previous year. And the American public bought it for many years but they couldn't do it forever. Eventually, it was impossible to unsee: 

They went from this in 1959:

 

To THIS in just 20 years in the 1980s.

 

 

What did the Japanese do? I'm glad you asked. 

While General Motors was cannibalizing their flagship marque into something unrecognizable THIS is what Toyota's flagship looked like in 1982.

Do you think it's a co-incidence that it looks EXACTLY like the fugly Cadillac above? 

By continuingly putting out a QUALITY product year after year, Toyota came in on Cadillac's coat tails, managed to capture the entire auto market, becoming world industry leaders and Toyota went from being an afterthought in the 80s to the TOP MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD year after year. 

And how did they stay there?

They just continued to put out a better product, because that is ALL that will sustain any business perpetually.

If these companies want to be successful, all they need to do is put out a good product and people will pay for it. 

Or not. 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2023 by VintageComics

[MattTheDuck]

On 9/28/2023 at 4:41 PM, VintageComics said:

people in Japan have a very high sense of respect for each other

Well, that certainly explains the creation and popularity of Monster Hentai.  It's all about the respect the artists have for women.

[VintageComics]

On 9/28/2023 at 8:45 PM, MattTheDuck said:

On 9/28/2023 at 7:41 PM, VintageComics said:

people in Japan have a very high sense of respect for each other

Well, that certainly explains the creation and popularity of Monster Hentai.  It's all about the respect the artists have for women.

The US has a rape rate 27 times that of Japan's but I'm not sure if this is the place for that convo or the point you were trying to make. 

[KCOComics]

 

On 9/28/2023 at 7:41 PM, VintageComics said:

The writing has been on the wall for YEARS and people have been living in denial, but you can't stop or reverse the laws of physics.

What happened to Marvel and DC is what happens to every large organization that puts quality of profit over quality of product...it necessarily eventually collapses in on itself as it feeds on itself because it has no other way of feeding the big profit machine. It's pure, simple, unadulterated, unavoidable logic.

Marvel / Disney and DC / Time / Warner are literally collapsing before our eyes but nobody wants to admit it.

From what I've heard and read the DC / Warner offices in Burbank are LITERALLY an empty shell with no employees.

And they managed to run themselves into the ground by cannibalizing profits while pretending to put out a good product. 

The science is pretty simple. 

Content. Culture. History. So many reasons, but the main one is in my opinion, that comics, being exclusively an American art form are limited in a sense by the younger and less mature culture and therefore the values of the West. 

I find the range of interest for people born / raised outside of the West is far broader than people born and raised with a North American mindset and who only tend to think locally. I find people from outside of North America tend to think in broader, more worldly ways and this leads to a much more broad depth of culture to draw stories from out of. 

-------------

Additionally, people from outside of North America - and ESPECIALLY Asians tend to be motivated by different things than those within North America. I've worked with people who worked or lived in Japan where Manga originates from, for many years and they have ALL told me that people in Japan have a very high sense of respect for each other among the general population.

Honor and integrity were the highest motivators in Japan, not profit.

That's not the case here, is it? 

And so, in much the same way, because of both history and culture, and Asia being among the oldest and most mature cultures in the world will have a very different culture to draw ideas out of than the West giving them a much different rudder to steer with.

------------------------------------------------------

The parallel of automobile industry that I used a few weeks ago illustrate this perfectly:

For DECADES the Big 3 (GM, Chrysler and Ford) were putting out an inferior product after the oil crisis of the 70s, while trying to convince the public they weren't because the corporate boardroom did not want to reduce profit...so they reduced quality instead.

The Big 3 kept cutting costs each year and put out a slightly inferior product while pretending they weren't and sold you what was supposed to be an improvement over the previous year. And the American public bought it for many years but they couldn't do it forever. Eventually, it was impossible to unsee: 

They went from this in 1959:

 

To THIS in just 20 years in the 1980s.

 

 

What did the Japanese do? I'm glad you asked. 

While General Motors was cannibalizing their flagship marque into something unrecognizable THIS is what Toyota's flagship looked like in 1982.

Do you think it's a co-incidence that it looks EXACTLY like the fugly Cadillac above? 

By continuingly putting out a QUALITY product year after year, Toyota came in on Cadillac's coat tails, managed to capture the entire auto market, becoming world industry leaders and Toyota went from being an afterthought in the 80s to the TOP MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD year after year. 

And how did they stay there?

They just continued to put out a better product, because that is ALL that will sustain any business perpetually.

If these companies want to be successful, all they need to do is put out a good product and people will pay for it. 

Or not. 

 

 

Toyota was making quality, well built vehicles before the 80s. 

 

[KCOComics]

 

 

When my kids started reading Dogman and Captain Underpants, I was excited.  It may have been graphic novels,  but kids were reading comics. 

My ten year old reads marvel,  but mostly because of me. He also reads Manga and Naruto. 

It is kind of an interesting time. On one hand every lunch box and backpack in my younger sons kindergarten class is a super hero.  Batman, Spiderman, Hulk, Cap . They are huge. But my kids aren't reading marvel and DC anymore. 

So the movies and shows have given the characters relevance, but floppies have largely fallen out of favor. 

[VintageComics]

On 9/28/2023 at 9:14 PM, KCOComics said:

 

Toyota was making quality, well built vehicles before the 80s. 

 

Yes they did. They had a few flaws for the American market (learning to deal with the extreme weather conditions is usually the largest engineering challenge for imports) but eventually managed to work that out. 

My real point though, was that by the time companies like Honda and Toyota were ready to jump into the American markets in a big way, the quality in their products were already on par with best products America had to offer and they only got better from there.

This is why MOST Japanese cars from the last 30 years hold their resale value so well compared to almost ALL other manufacturer's vehicles. 

No matter which way you check your math, forwards, backwards, erc, the answer always comes out the same: People will pay for a quality product and poor products will fail.

And why consumers keep falling for the opposite is the real question that everyone needs to consider, because it keeps happening and it keeps perpetuating the same problems. 

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

On 9/28/2023 at 9:21 PM, KCOComics said:

When my kids started reading Dogman and Captain Underpants, I was excited.  It may have been graphic novels,  but kids were reading comics. 

My ten year old reads marvel,  but mostly because of me. He also reads Manga and Naruto. 

It is kind of an interesting time. On one hand every lunch box and backpack in my younger sons kindergarten class is a super hero.  Batman, Spiderman, Hulk, Cap . They are huge. But my kids aren't reading marvel and DC anymore. 

So the movies and shows have given the characters relevance, but floppies have largely fallen out of favor. 

Right. One of my kids was a voracious reader but she had little interest in super-hero stuff. She read Jeff Smith's Bone and everything else she could get her hands one, though. 

[KCOComics]

On 9/28/2023 at 9:23 PM, VintageComics said:

 

My real point though, was that by the time companies like Honda and Toyota were ready to jump into the American markets in a big way, the quality in their products were already on par with best products America had to offer and they only got better from there.

 

I know! I just wanted to show pictures from my other hobby! 

I've driven Toyotas my entire life and grab vintage toyota stuff where I can (usually to go with the Land Cruiser). Today I have 3 Toyotas, including a Yaris with almost 300k miles that drives like it just came off the assembly line. 

[jimjum12]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:41 PM, VintageComics said:

We're likely watching the decline of the middle class and quite possibly the US' decline as the world reserve currency in real time. 

What's happening is impossible to sustain indefinitely and something will have to give. 

Corporate America is killing the American Dream. Woodrow Wilson's "Serfs and Lords" initiative is evolving as we speak. GOD BLESS.... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)