The Four Color Media Monitor

According to the Idaho Statesman, the answer is no, not for long:

Superheroes have become big moneymakers for Hollywood in recent years, but their success on the silver screen has had little impact on sales at Treasure Valley comic book stores.

While summer blockbusters like "Iron Man," "The Incredible Hulk" and the record-setting Batman movie "The Dark Knight" bring in a few new customers after hitting theaters, owners of the Valley's half-dozen independent comic shops said the slight bump in business is short-lived.

"Usually it will spike for a couple of months, then taper off," said Tim Doyle, co-owner of Outpost 12, 3890 W. State St., Boise.

And the spike, Doyle said, is typically limited to products related to the latest comic-inspired movie.

"I've seen a noticeable increase with comics and graphic novels pertaining to the movies - probably a 20 percent increase in those particular titles - but not really comics in general," he said.

Carol Morelock, owner of the Paper Back Place and Comic Book Co., 7011 W. Fairview Ave., Boise, said the films, to her surprise, have had no measurable influence on sales.

"I was amazed. I thought with all these movies coming out, people would want to find out how they started," she said.

I've got a feeling that no matter how well following films adapted from comics do, the earnings in comic book stores could become less, if the sales results for the latest volume of Iron Man are any indication: last month, the sales showed about 105,000 copies sold, which is actually pretty low for a supply ordered circa the time of a movie's release, then dropped to less than 70,000 this month.

The Comics Buyer's Guide editor tries to downplay the decline:

Nonetheless, the films are important to the comic book industry, said Brent Frankenhoff, editor of Comics Buyer's Guide, the industry's longest-running trade publication.

Earlier this month, Frankenhoff attended Comic-Con International - which draws 125,000 people to San Diego each year and is widely recognized as the largest comic book convention in the world - and noticed an increased presence of fans and people from the film and television industries, which aggressively mine comics for story ideas.

The movie and TV fans, Frankenhoff said, got exposed to comics in a big way, and ended up digging the scene.

"There certainly has been some crossover," he said.

Unfortunately, as the news in this previous entry shows, it's more like a takeover. So many movie and TV related items, yet so little room provided for comics themselves.

That's good news for an industry that hit a high point in the late 1980s and early 1990s - like sports cards, comics took a dive once the market got saturated by speculative production and investment - and didn't find its footing again until the turn of the century.

Almost, but alas, not for long, as continuity and comprehensibility were soon beginning to unravel under the leadership of Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio at Marvel and DC, and sales were still a far cry from the levels they'd been on up till the early 1990s.

Sales have been on a steady rise since. In 2007, the year of "Ghost Rider," "Spider-Man 3" and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," annual sales were up 9 percent, to $429.9 million.

Single-copy comic books remain dominant, but sales of trade paperbacks, graphic novels and hardcover books, which often anthologize complete story lines from the serials, increased 18 percent last year.

In fairness, the trade paperbacks part I can believe, because they're sold in major bookstores, making them more available to the public, but very few of the single copy pamphlets reach more than 100,000 copies ordered by comic stores now, with many more selling less than 50,000. A steady rise? Not really.

Traditionally, hard-core collectors have kept the industry afloat during down times.

The problem, as I've learned, is that some of these collectors may just be buying in hopes that their investments will one day be worth a lot of money. Unfortunately, even that's becoming less likely.

But there is growing evidence that a more casual fan, influenced by the high visibility of movie tie-ins and other branding strategies, is getting into comics.

Comic-Con, which has evolved from a comic book convention into a full-bore pop-culture extravaganza, sold out of presale admission tickets this year for the first time in its 39-year history.

[...]

Some new readers are getting into comics not because of the format, but because of the writers or subject matter.

Stephen King and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon are among the growing number of established writers making forays into comics.

[...]

"Big names are getting into comics, and they're bringing their fan bases with them," Phelps said.

But even that's iffy, and just one of the problems: some comics are being sold almost entirely on the writer, and not really because it's something fun. And some of the people who've come over from the novelist, movie and TV scene don't always respect the core values that make the comics they're offered to write work. And again, they're glossing over the fact that the San Diego ComiCon this year was more about movies, TV and celebrities attending than it was about comic books.

How it all translates to success for the independent comic shop owner in the 21st century is still being figured out.

A major challenge facing proprietors is an aging customer base, composed of "almost all guys in their early 20s up to their 40s," Phelps said.

Children are getting introduced to comic book characters through the movies, but it often stops there.

"Younger kids are seeing the movies, but they aren't necessarily reading the comics," said Ken Henningsen, owner of Arch Enemy Comics, 1553 N. Milwaukee St., Boise.

And sometimes it could be because of the overly adult content now turning up in many of them. And that's one of the reasons why many of today's customers are older.

Beyond movie theaters, major comic book publishers like Marvel and DC are attempting to reach younger audiences in other obvious places - video games and the Internet - but the verdict is still out on their success.

Yep. And there's no telling if even that'll have much effect.

Like countless other articles of this sort, this glosses over the deeper problems at the core of the matter, remains at a superficial level, and never mentions any of the problems that have dragged the industry down to the sad state it's in now. And there's no telling if future news coverage of this sort will ever be any better.

Labels: msm propaganda, sales