The Four Color Media Monitor

According to this writer on Comicon's Pulse (via Molten Thought), Secret Wars is what killed many major comic books of today with the overkill of company wide crossover "events":

For a very long time I read comic books religiously, perhaps literally so since Batman and Superman had a greater impact on my moral outlook than any church did. Even when I drifted away I would still occasionally visit the comic book shop or see a cover that caught my eye at the rare newsstand that still carried comics and pick it up to visit with my old friends.

I can’t do that anymore. If I pick up a mainstream Marvel or DC comic I don’t have a clue what is going on and I’m not going to get anything approaching a complete story. I’ll get one part of a six part story arc if I’m lucky; if I’m not I’ll get one part of a story spread over six different titles instead.

I understand the motivation. It is to get the reader hooked. If the story ends on page 22 they don’t have to buy the next one but there is no greater impetus to return next month than a blurb that says “to be continued.”

And if you can tie a whole bunch of books together you can make fans buy them all, or so you hope. “Hey, Superman has been selling pretty well lately but Aquaman could use some help. How about we continue the story over there?” I suppose if you’re super-power is swimming you need all the help you can get.

But unless the reader is already well versed in your fictional universe it’s heavy seas without a lifejacket and he’s drowning by page two.

That is the monster from under the bed slowly sucking the lifeblood out of the comic book industry; tightly woven interrelated continuity. I’m not calling for a return to the days when every story was neatly wrapped up in eight pages or twelve pages or even twenty-two but in order to be accessible to new readers there has to be a balance. Dare I dream of a complete entertainment story in one or two issues without crossing over into another title or are those days gone forever?

A story that takes just several pages and not several issues to finish is something I'd like to see making a serious return too. And if the publishers wanted to, I think they could get comics back into the bookstores more visibly without having to resort to just trade paperbacks to do so, and could make them more family friendly too. They could even come up with more interesting covers like what were seen up until the early 90s without just making it seem like some computerized pinup art. The ball is in their court but they're not tossing it correctly.

Labels: crossoverloading, history, marvel comics