Are there too many comic books?

Thoughts on the current state of comics retail

Editor’s Note: It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s New Comic Book Day and another edition of Amazing Journey!

The Amazing Journey column will touch on a comics-related topic, such as writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose.

Amazing Journey back issues

True believers unite (#1) | My comics origin story (#2) | Comic event series (#3) | The comics of Kickstarter (#4) | Single issues or trades? (#5) | From prose to comics (#6) | Adapting a celebrated fantasy series into a comic (#7) | Charting a career in comics (#8) | Comic book spoilers (#9) | Lessons from Kieron Gillen’s masterclass (#10) | Comics marketing 101 (#11) Designing memorable characters (#12)

As discussed back in issue #11, comics marketing is hard for indie creators. But it’s also hard for the big publishers as well. Nowhere is that more evident than in David Harper’s latest feature on SKTCHD about the current state of comics retail.¹ After a huge uptick in 2020 and 2021, comics retail treaded water in 2022, but now it seems the sheen has worn off, and shop owners are left with a flood of new titles every week, not enough marketing support to move them, and rising costs from all fronts.

Walking into a comic shop on Wednesday, your typical customer is met with dozens of new issues from that week, plus dozens of new issues from the prior week, and even more going back to the beginning of the month.

On the one hand, it’s exciting to browse and see so many new issues to choose from. But on the other, it’s completely overwhelming to your wallet and your limited free time.

As the retailers observe in Harper’s piece, there are too many titles being sold without enough justification as to who they are for or why they are there in the first place.

This is less of a problem in indie comics being funded on Kickstarter, where price economics are different:

• issues can be priced higher because they are longer/using higher quality paper stock;

• issues come out 2-3 times a year (for more aggressive creators), so people are more willing to spend more on a single issue; and

• readership tends to increase campaign over campaign.

Kickstarter-funded books thus don’t need as many readers to be profitable, if the creators are able to build up a readership over time.

But in the direct market (i.e. comics sold at comic book shops), these economics are reversed:

• prices are lower, meaning less margin for stores on each issue;

• the issues come out monthly, meaning readers are constantly having to buy new issues; and

• readership and sales almost always peaks at issue #1 and then decreases issue-over-issue.

So you have a spiral of too many books, not enough of which have an audience, and that, barring a blowout for issue #1, will end up just taking up space on the shelf by issues #2 or 3 (or not even being ordered).

Interestingly, the one near-universal thing that the retailers interviewed in Harper’s piece said was working was the Dawn of DC initiative, which was a relaunch of most of DC’s titles following last summer’s Dark Crisis event. It features new creative teams on almost all of the books and consistent branding across the top of the physical issues. New readers can look at that branding and know they are jumping in at the beginning of the story. Unfortunately, DC then followed Dawn of DC immediately with its summer event in which the entire line is going on hiatus for two months and is being replaced by a Knight Terrors mini-series and 20 two-issue Knight Terrors minis focused on specific characters:

Now, I know I waxed nostalgically for exactly this sort of line-wine event last week, but…

If a publisher has managed to achieve the rare feat of pulling off a successful line reboot, it makes zero sense to have long-time readers and new ones wait 2-3 months for the next issue and instead replace those new titles with something completely unconnected and that doesn’t build organically from the current plots of the books.

What I would like to see instead is new books launched together with purpose. For the Big 2, it probably means a line-wide relaunch (as much as that might generate a lot of eye rolls).

Phase 2 of Marvel’s 2012 Marvel Now! relaunch

Getting all of your big titles in sync at the same time can generate a feeling of cohesiveness and if that relaunch is paired with some shared event a year or two down the road, then you can build on the launch excitement as the event approaches.²

Editorially, this is challenging, as you want to empower individual creators to tell the stories they want to tell and not to merely do something just to serve a story that they had no role in creating. But with enough lead time and by bringing in those creators to help shape the line going forward, such an effort will probably be more successful.

For the smaller publishers’ non-licensed books, it means more marketing support for shops and more outreach to shops. Each book has to stand on its own, on the strength of its creative team, and that represents a different challenge.

Ultimately, the health of the direct market depends on single issue sales not flatlining. New comics help get people in the door each week, and standout single-issue series become perennial sellers for comic shops for years to come.

If you are fascinated by the economics of owning a comic book shop, I urge you to read all of the SKTCHD piece and to also check out

Brandon Schatz

‘s newsletter

The Indirect Market

. Schatz owns the comic shop Variant Edition in Edmonton and writes about comic book economic issues and marketing, in addition to writing about new titles that are worth checking out.

That brings me to the Question of the Week and your second chance to enter the July giveaway. To enter, simply leave a comment with your answer to any of the Questions of the Week from any July Amazing Journey post.

What’s your favorite recent issue #1? Or, if the answer is you don’t have one, what’s your favorite issue #1 of all time?

What I’m reading this week

• Immortal X-Men #13: I don’t normally get excited by solicit copy, but this week’s issue is an exception: “LISTEN CLOSELY. Time is running out. Fall is here. Doug Ramsey is the voice of Krakoa. It’s time for Krakoa to speak.”

• The Hunger and the Dusk #1: This new fantasy series from G. Willow Wilson where orcs and humans are forced to work together to stave off extinction at the hands of an ancient race is giving off major Warcraft II/III vibes in an excellent way.

• X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday #1: Long title aside, this new mini-series from

  Marc Guggenheim
  will chronicle the lead-up to the seminal Days of Future Past event from that doomed future timeline. Should be a lot of fun and the Saturday morning cartoon variant above is a must-buy this week.

Backlist Recommendation

I’ve been meaning to read volume 1 of the Kickstarter comic phenomenon White Ash from Charlie Stickney, Conor Hughes, and Fin Cramb, and luckily last week’s trip provided some free pool time for me to do so!

This series is set in the titular White Ash, a small mountain town in Pennsylvania that Aleck Zwerg longs to escape from. But after a terrible accident at the local mine stalls his exit, Aleck’s world is about to turn completely upside down. I won’t say anymore, but do yourself a favor and head to the most-recent White Ash Kickstarter page to read the free 29-page preview.

What are you picking up this week?

1. If you are a comics fan, you need to subscribe to SKTCHD. You’ll thank me later.

2. Of course, Marvel Now ended at Secret Wars, with the entire Marvel universe being destroyed, but based on my unscientific survey of the non-Hickman books from this era, creators were simply told to make sure their stories were wrapped up by a certain issue because all the books were being cancelled. This led to Jason Aaron’s Thor ending with the identity of the female Thor being revealed, followed by a tagline of “Next month: Secret Wars!”