The Decline of the American Comic Industry

[garbanzo]

My hot take - comics took a nosedive in the 90s and never bounced back.

EC, Warren, Skywald, Curtis, Pacific/Eclipse... Star*Reach and Witzend and Web of Horror... Very little published in the US in the last 30 years is in the same league as any these.

This isn't nostalgia speaking. I grew up on Uncle Scrooge and Richie Rich, and didn't get seriously into comics until the last 15 years or so. I've tried many, many times to get into new stuff, and very rarely does anything stick.

[johnnypt]

For me, the break started when the whole Avengers Disassembled thing happened, then they totally lost me by 2010 or so. Any time a series came along that trisd to tie their stories to the past, it’s almost as if they targeted it to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Has any iteration of Thinderbolts come anywhere close to the original concept that was forcibly abandoned?

The little thing that was the canary in the coal mine? When they removed the little notes talking about events from previous issues. What confused me was Tom Brevoort who was as well versed in Marvel lore as anyone was so adamant those note be removed to help modern readers. History showed the opposite happened, which many of us told him at the time (God bless the old AOL boards).

[Jason Aiken]

People going after a retailer for speaking the truth, a sad state of affairs.

[johnnypt]

Interesting that he mentions Miles Morales. He was originally created for the purpose of replacing Peter Parker with a more diverse character and wasn’t really accepted. When they had him exist alongside Peter, that allowed readers to look at him as a character. When they developed Kamala Khan and Kate Bishop, it was done in part for diversity purposes, but they still remembered to create interesting stories for them to have readers see the characters on their own. They seem to have forgotten this lesson and now appear to just jam characters in demanding acceptance.

[Jason Aiken]

That retailer hit the nail on the head. Current writers want to self insert and write characters as extensions of themselves. Even pre-existing characters!

If they created their own new character, nobody would want to read it. As tanking sales indicate, people don't want to read this shit anyway.

If you question it, the Cancel Pigs (a new term Mark Millar coined for sjws) come after you.

[johnnypt]

Dec 9, 2023 16:32:03 GMT -5 Jason Aiken said:

That retailer hit the nail on the head. Current writers want to self insert and write characters as extensions of themselves. Even pre-existing characters!

If they created their own new character, nobody would want to read it. As tanking sales indicate, people don't want to read this shit anyway.

If you question it, the Cancel Pigs (a new term Mark Millar coined for sjws) come after you.

Chuck Austen was the first real instance I remember of this. He’d had a traumatic childhood and chose to take it out on Hank Pym, throwing out years of character rehabilitation because “he didn’t deserve it”. HE’S A COMIC BOOK CHARACTER! Please do not work out your therapy in the pages of someone else’s comic. Now they take things to ludicrous extremes.

[Jason Aiken]

The people running the Big Four love pushing this message without saying the North American comic book industry is being supported by Manga, Scholastic "comic books" and crowd funding, that local comic shops don't carry in any large quanities!

[terryallenuk]

Not sure if we have a thread on AI so thought I'd drop this here

A list of over 4,000 artists whose work has been used to train the Midjourney AI and other similar projects has been leaked, and it's not looking great for those behind the theft of pre-existing work.

As war on generative AI continues (now with lawsuits) and high-profile companies such as Wizards of the Coast keep damaging their relationships with customers and users, more has been uncovered about Midjourney and other AI tools' dubious methods to create the datasets used to train AIs.

Via ICv2, Riot Games storyboard artist Jon Lam has denounced (with screenshots straight from Midjourney's Discord server) what CEO David Holz and developers have discussed as straight-up 'laundering' and stealing from artists. Among the artists in the list they linked to, we can find big names such as John Romita Jr. (but not Sr.), Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Frank Miller. The list of manga artists includes Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon), and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball).

Unsurprisingly, Black artists "appear to be under-represented" even when their work is being stolen. Names such as Kyle Baker, Brumsic Brandon, and Barbara Brandon-Croft are on the list, but Brian Stelfreeze, Ronald Wimberly, or Afua Richardson aren't.

Also unsurprising, given the cards' famous art styles, is the fact that many Magic the Gathering artists are included: Reid Southen, Melissa Benson, Richard Kane Ferguson, Ron Spencer, Susan Van Camp, Rob Alexander, and Donato Giancola, just to name a few. Holz even admitted "huge swaths of MTG cards" were rendered as "test sequences."

According to ICv2, the list is currently available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and is also publicly available "as an exhibit to a class-action lawsuit filed by several artists against Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt." 2024 has only just begun, but it seems like it'll be a crucial year regarding the regulation or (hopefully) outright rejection of generative AI, especially when it comes to what tech bros are passing off as art.

www.thepopverse.com/list-of-comic-manga-magic-artists-midjourney-ai-uses



www.thepopverse.com/list-of-comic-manga-magic-artists-midjourney-ai-uses

[Jason Aiken]

Japan, stay strong!

[hun]

Really unhappy about this one, I'll go and see them before they close down. Not much left in Central London, we've lost the Mighty World of Comicana, Orbital Comics and now Mega City:


Mega City Comics Of Camden, London, To Close After Four Decades

Link:
bleedingcool.com/comics/mega-city-comics-of-camden-london-to-close-after-four-decades/ 

[Jason Aiken]

Sad to see that, hun but not surprised. I go to my local shop to pick up my Conan comics every few months and can't believe all of the unsellable shit they have on the racks. Marvel and DC aren't doing comic shops any favors with their woke agenda publishing comics no one wants to read, let alone buy.

[Von K]

At least in this case it's due to the owner retiring. Let's hope for comic fans in the local region that a buyer steps forward, but they'd probably need a lifetime of experience in comics to keep it profitable.

Forbidden Planet must be one of the last big outlets for Londoners now.

[johnnypt]

Too bad no one would step in and take the business on but not surprising these days. More trouble than it’s worth unfortunately.

But there are little signs of hope here and there. We took my niece out for her birthday in Princeton to a diner right next to the Record Exchange. She actually asked to go there and spent around 20 minutes looking for stuff, just like we did in the old days. So the youngsters CAN do it . All they need is the opportunity and a place to go…and a reason to go there. Something the comic shops haven’t been able to give much of these days.

[hun]

Dec 1, 2024 18:53:23 GMT -5 Von K said:

At least in this case it's due to the owner retiring. Let's hope for comic fans in the local region that a buyer steps forward, but they'd probably need a lifetime of experience in comics to keep it profitable.

Forbidden Planet must be one of the last big outlets for Londoners now.

It is a shame, great shop for back issues. Yeah, it is gonna be tough finding someone with the experience for Mega City Comics.

Forbidden Planet is slowly taking over. Nevertheless, the independent comic shops that have survived seem to know what they're doing, still a very tough business selling comics.

I should add there are potential candidates in the area, I dunno if they would take the risk of a new business, but you never know!