The Four Color Media Monitor

Count on News2 from Charleston has a report on the impact Covid19 had on comicdom's business in the span of a year:

The comic book industry, like so many others around the world, has felt the impact of the coronavirus. The Pandemic has made this last year difficult for every aspect of the industry, including comic book shop owners, event coordinators, and even the creators themselves.

Comic books have maintained their popularity for decades by offering fans a fun escape from their everyday lives with fantastic tales of heroes taking on their villains and overcoming any adversity thrown at them. But last year, that adversity made its way into real life in the form of the global coronavirus outbreak.

If that's an allusion to the mainstream, a pity they won't acknowledge artistic collapse diminished DC and Marvel's popularity. All because modern ideologues decided to turn these famous figures and franchises into their political playground. The Corona outbreak only precipitated their decline some more.

“2020 was definitely an interesting year,” says Mike Campbell, owner of the Charleston comic shop ‘Captain’s Comics and Toys. He says his store survived the mandatory shutdown of non-essential businesses by working around the need for a physical storefront.

“We went mobile, we went delivery, we did a lot of online stuff through Facebook and Instagram, but the idea was to still stay connected with our fans,” Campbell continued, and he said that fan connectivity proved successful with customers adapting to the changes the comic shop had to make in order to maintain health and safety guidelines.

That's certainly a lot more connection than the Big Two are willing to lead with theirs. Having long since been devoured by conglomerates, DC/Marvel have cut themselves off from their fans, and have no interest in building a new fandom, save for one that's ideologically driven. That's one of the worst things about corporatism.

This store in focus is also holding conventions, and intends to resume under South Carolina health guidelines:

“The 13th annual Captain’s Comic Expo is Charleston’s biggest comic book event,” said Mike Campbell who is also the event coordinator for Charleston’s annual comic con, ‘Captain’s Comic Expo’. While this year will be the first for the Expo in a COVID-19 world since the mandatory shut-downs in response to the coronavirus outbreak went into effect after last year’s con, Campbell says they are well prepared to hold this year’s con, well within the parameters set by COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Well I wish them good luck. I just hope they understand why, as things stand now, it'd be better to emphasize independents rather than mainstream superhero fare, because the way they're currently run is plain awful, and doesn't bode well for anybody who needs real success after the severe damage caused by Coronavirus. On which note, I've seen a few video commentaries telling DC might be sold to different owners in the future, something I may try to comment on myself in time. If it happens, we must hope the new owers will be responsible people who don't adhere to PC mentality. And if it helps for DC to be sold to another owner (hopefully not Disney under the current situation), then we must hope Marvel will undergo a similar sales direction, if it leads to better artistic quality again.

Labels: conventions, msm propaganda, sales, technology