Are Comic Books Running out of Steam?

Comic books permeate our culture to a greater degree than ever before. It seems that you can’t open a magazine, switch on the television, or even stroll through the supermarket without coming face to face with some spandex clad hero. And yet, despite this social acceptance of a culture once considered relatively niche, sales continue to be middling to poor, and the grand story arcs that set readers abuzz in years gone by have all but disappeared. Is the comic book industry one that is running out of steam?

Of course, it would be foolish to include the movie franchises that spin out of the pages of comics in this discussion. They are stronger than one could ever have imagined, and they rake in billions of dollars with each new release. No, instead it is the source material that has taken a fall from grace as writers just don’t seem to deliver the same excitement that they once did.

Let’s start with one of the most recent examples of a much talked about story in the medium. Batman recently got engaged to Catwoman in a narrative that felt like a long time coming. It was something that got people talking, made headlines in mainstream news, and promised to explore a new facet of the well-journeyed characters. All this potential, however, was wasted for precious little reason.

All the sense in the world would have dictated that the wedding should go ahead and an intriguing journey for the two should spin out of it for many issues to come. Instead, and this could be a spoiler for some, fans never got to see a wedding at all as Catwoman stood up the Caped Crusader. This certainly isn’t all bad, as the resultant "Cold Days" storyline is shaping up to be an interesting one, but it is hard not to feel like Tom King could have explored much deeper themes if he had elected to move forward with the nuptials. Imagining the dynamic between the two as Catwoman perhaps feels the pull back to the darker side of crime is tantalising and just serves to highlight how much brighter what could have been is when compared to what actually happened.

One can safely surmise that it is for reasons such as this that sales of most comic books are drastically down from where they were in the past. For instance, in 2018 the Batman wedding issue managed a decent 440,819 sales. That may seem a healthy number, and by today's standards it is, but looking back to the glory days of the 1960s one can see that even Uncle Scrooge was shifting copies in the millions. To further compound this point, the following issue of Batman managed just 111,549 sales. Changing times can be blamed for this too with more choice for consumers than ever before, but surely the failure of the industry to keep up with the times is a huge part of its drop in popularity.

It isn’t just DC that is struggling, as industry juggernaut, Marvel, is also finding that their printed tales just don’t draw in the punters any longer. In July, they released a number of first editions for new lines of comics. In the past this would have resulted in a temporary boost in sales as fans clamoured to own the debuting comic. In 2018, the move saw just 289,102 people buy "Amazing Spider-Man #1" and that was their best-selling comic of the month.

This isn’t to say that the glory days of comics featured wall-to-wall quality. The failures of those days are, in many ways, more laughably written than any of today's offerings. It is just that the good never quite manages to be great anymore. Scott Snyder is by far the brightest talent in the industry at the moment, producing engaging work with alarming regularity, but even his best stories aren’t able to live up to the classics such as "The Death of Superman" or "The Killing Joke." There is a sense of excitement, an "anything can happen" nature that is now missing as writers often fall back on old tropes that have long become stale. Nobody buys into character deaths anymore as they never stick. Why should fans flock to "The Death of Wolverine" when it is clear from the outset that he will be back before long?

What is needed is an injection of fresh ideas. An influx of new talents who aren’t afraid to push the envelope and give fans something that they didn’t see coming. This doesn’t mean that everyone should follow Marvel’s route of killing all their popular characters because that does not work at all. Instead, it would mean fan favourites finding themselves in entirely new situations, overcoming new obstacles, and moving forward in their lives instead of being in the constant state of stasis where nothing significant ever really changes.

A look at a smaller company such as Valiant will provide creatives with some inspiration for what can be done to change the status quo. They may not sell comics in ground-breaking numbers, but they do, more often than not, find inventive ways to tell their stories. Bloodshot and Divinity both prove that point superbly.

In the long run, it is likely that comic books will cease to exist as a printed medium. An online move is inevitable, as sad as that may be. That does not mean that the industry cannot reclaim former glory with just a few meaningful changes, though. They may be running on fumes at the moment, but a return to form is only ever one bright idea away.