How Distribution has Saved and is Now Killing Comics 

Our family owned a couple of record stores growing up (yes, I'm that old) and we had similar problems. The final nail in our coffin came when, as the industry was dying, our own distributor decided to go into retail in competition with us. They were selling their records at retail prices lower than their wholesale price to us.

That's why Diamond is a monopoly.

I'm really glad this video was put out because FAR TOO MANY so called "experts" blamed Image ALONE for the "comics crash of the 90s and not on the GLUT of mediocre comics that were cranked out by Marvel!

I first became aware of Diamond as an entity when the local comic book shop didn't get anything for 3 weeks, and explained this to customers via a large window sign reading "F*** DIAMOND (X-Men isn't in yet)." Until I asked them about that, I had no idea how narrow the pipeline to stores was.

@@raycearcher5794 I sincerely sympathetize with your LCS. As I mentioned in my reply it has happened to me. I hope bringing this to people's attention that they will understand what their LCS is going through and stick by them bc I have lost business over this. Maybe LCSs should unionize in sorts.

R Ww Back in the 80’s I could but a 2000ad weekly. Now its just too pricey. Comics are meant to be cheap entertainment.

Behold, the internet. They need officially and I mean very officially tell people where to pay to read comics online, to have some more support.

internet changed distribution which empowered the reader

Worst value for money out there, esp. since publishers discovered the 5 issue storyline gambit.

@@bashsibda6289 Wondering. If a cheaper alternative of the same new comic, but printed on stock newsprint paper would you buy it?

Of course not. The situation is a disaster. The bar for a successful comic is so low its laughable. It's actually a cultural tragedy. Comics were the cornerstone of pop-culture and this amazing legacy that took decades to perfect and refine has been pissed away.

Caligula Pontifex you can thank the internet & social media along with video gaming for the comic downturn!

The problems are manifold. I was born in 1982, and I'm often told that mine was the last generation likely to buy printed books. When I started reading comics, they were 75 cents. Then they went to a dollar. Then a buck 25. These increases were incremental and affordable. But then they started jumping a dollar or more, and those increases weren't very affordable. If you were pulling 15 titles a month at 1.50, but now they've gone up to 2.99, then you had to decide which 7 titles you were going to keep and which 8 titles you were going to drop. What killed the comics industry in the nineties was oversaturation and investment speculators. Golden age comics were selling at record highs, and you started seeing a bunch of articles in the Wall Street weeklies like "comics are a great investment". So a bunch of normal, non-readers were buying comics in droves hoping to make a fortune. And the industry responded in kind by printing as many comics as possible with as many gimmick covers they could muster. That's why when you print a million copies of Amazing Dumbass Number 1 with 20 different variant covers, you begin killing your industry. Comics also at this time ceased being very readable. Everything had to be dark, gritty and edgy or it didn't sell. People were tired of reading the same book being published under a billion different titles by a billion different publishers. Much like today, where every title has to be a PC, positive social justice message gayfest of trannies, people are reacting negatively and have stopped buying titles from certain companies (DC & Marvel). Another way the industry shot itself in the foot was by abandoning the kids market. 99% of the books being published by Marvel, Image and DC in the 90s were kid/young teen friendly. Toward the end of the decade, those same publishers decided to market to adult collector/readers and ignoring the millions of kids who bought the books. There's now been three or four generations of potential new readers that have been ignored in favor of adults, thereby killing the cycle of new readers that the industry relied on for a hundred years previous. The final nail in the coffin was when newsstands stopped carrying comics. Traditionally, it was where kids were introduced to the hobby. A kid now has no impetus to walk into a comic store unless already a reader, so again, no new readers entering the hobby. I doubt at this point the industry will survive in its present incarnation, so it will be sad to see DC and Marvel abandon their comics line. It will be like adults today when we say "remember when MTV used to play music videos?" In 10 years, we'll be saying "Remember when DC stood for "Detective Comics"?

Marvin Harrison Smith II Apparently you haven’t been reading because the books are nowhere near the level of bad they were in the 90’s. It’s not PC to have LGBTQ people and there are only a handful of title comics character that are.

Fantastic analysis. The seeds were planted back in the 90s. The industry never fully recovered. Don't forget, you also got a lot more story and art usually 28 pages for the $1.25 you paid back in the day. I don't see how Marvel and DC can currently make money from their publishing arm. I agree, at some point, Disney & WB will probably make a business decision and license out the writing, art and publishing of comics to a third party or completely stop publishing any new material. It was never that important to them anyway, all they ever wanted was the intellectual property rights to mine for their movie divisions.

Comic books are for adults & have been since the 80s. & when was the last time you actually saw an ice cream truck actually stop? They drive down the streets at double the speed limit looking for kids playing something like Pokemon Go, because most kids are inside on their butts playing mobile games all day.

Why did you leave cap

Cap, why'd you nuke the channel?

Because I don't have time to make videos.

Good luck with whatever you do.

it's over it's going to Wal-Mart..

Digital can never replace the feeling of paper, plus only works if your online.

Clay3613 Nope digital might work offline, if you download/cache it. I think I can see a future were you are allow to print a digital copy if you want.

Yes, that too. Good old "secondary market."

Cristopher Pardo gonzalez si que lo es

I saw a stack of 30 X-Men #1 sold for $2 at an auction, nobody really wanted more copies!

Quiro the most sold single issue in comics ever was in the 90s lol

And it collapsed soon after, as a result of the speculator boom just falling apart

@@yourdad9928 And those issues ended up worthless and trashed. Some were bought back for pennies only to rot in the back room of comic shops. I know....I had to work a back room or basement. Comic shops owners will be buried in X-Men #1s in Hell.

It also is the perfect symbolism of the comicbook community in general... "Oh, all my precious weird interviews and variant covers burnt, just for what... Training firefighters..?? Siiin"

Fahrenheit 451 . Fireman buring books for real .

I like the idea of saving on paper

I don't see why that would be a viable option in the same world where digital books exist. It seems to me like people who want physical copies of books buy them for reasons other than "I just want a physical version of this Harry Potter book to hold in my hands."

Ooh, I like that idea! All the freedom of digital distribution, but you still get to visit a cool place and end up with a physical book. The closest thing to that is Print-on-demand stuff like IndyPlanet, but you still have to order it online and get it through the mail. I'd love to still go to a store that's full of comic-book paraphernalia, and probably still has shelves full of older comics and collectables, and have the option of selecting new titles from a digital device and watch them print and bind the book, right in front of me!

I could ask someone who I know who does printing and ask about pricing. I think this could be expensive. There also seems like there would be expensive licensing procedures.

@@qty1315 I like physicals because of a kind of control feeling that I have, digitals are weird and easy to loose where you are.

Thanks LS Greger. Will definitely check it out.

He states that Mike Gruenwald after writing Capt America for ten years read the first Rob Liefeld Captain America comic, and despite being a healthy athletic man in his mid 50s who ran every day, he died of a heart attack after seeing Liefeld's first art and script. Yes Liefeld art was that bad.

I rewatched that series a couple weeks ago, good stuff.

Yeah, and it seems like he has such a backlog of reviews, that he can't get to newer Sci Fi like Stranger Things or the Expanse. I do enjoy his before the movie reviews too. His George Lucas making of the original trilogy review is also top notch.

He actually goes into distribution a lot if I recall correctly.

The research is all mixed up and much of it is flat out wrong. His enthusiasm for his subject is there. Many dozens of facts presented are simply wrong

Robert Beerbohm Pray tell, like what? If you have examples, give them.

In other comments here I have already done a few examples. Scroll down a few comments and you will begin to find same. I have been posting comics business distribution history on my Facebook page for a decade now. Back in 1999 Jon B Cooke placed in Comic Book Artist #6 #7 25,000 word Secret Origins of The Direct Market via TwoMorrows.com which one can either find the issues and/or download the PDF of those issues. Plus LOTS of stuff else where for decades now. This fellow Chris Piers definitely has a lot of enthusiasm, but sadly, fails the factoid(s) test ie not doing proper homework research to tell the story properly I take it you never heard of me? (I am crushed)

@@RobertBeerbohm yes, he left out the epic Ike VS Icahn kaiju battle. From what i've read it seemed as if Diamond was always going to be the soul survivor because of Marvel's bankruptcy.

I was buying them up to like 1980, and we used to go everywhere to try to find them. It was so easy to miss an issue you were collecting, because no one place ever seemed to stock the same comic all the way through. Then buying a direct subscription, from Marvel at least, always gave you the bent issue, which we all hated. I think my first and last subscription was to Marvel Team Up, and once I saw they were bent, it sure was a downer. But it was great actually getting something in the mail you looked forward to, even if it was damaged. Can you imagine being a really serious collector of several of them, if you didn't mind bent issues, and maybe getting a comic every week through the mail? Must had been heaven. Thing is, we were buying from stores all the time, so we probably were getting at least a comic a week. We used to hate grocery stores that didn't carry comics, and of course my Dad's main grocery store was one of those. He didn't mind us pigging out on comics, but being comic-centered, it was always a tragedy to go some place that didn't have any. I was always a big Marvel fan, though I would glance through DC like maybe at the barber shop. The closest Kroger to our house sold DC, but they had them all in packs of like four of five. So you could tell what the outer comics were, but not the inner ones. I bought one, only once, as the outer issues must had looked good. One of those I still have with me now, in very good condition. Why? because it's an issue of I think it's Teen Titans on the cover, but inside it is a Fantastic Four issue. I got rid of almost all my comics except for one small box, but I always kept that one special issue. I think it's the only DC, if you can call it that, which I have.

When I was a kid in the 2000s I was never able to purchase a comic book, I desperately wanted to read them but they were nowhere to be seen, I didn’t even know comic book stores were a thing, and when I found out, no way I was going to convince my mom to take me to one, and when I was actually able to go one time, i didn’t buy a single issue because they were too expensive. I’m amazed the industry is still alive tbh…

I would just hop on my bike & travel to the nearest grocery store or gas station. Comic book stores? That required getting on a bus to the next town, & my mom wasn't having that. To this day, comic book shops remain in inconvenient locations near nothing.

@@charles2241 my initial go-to locations to buy comics in the 60s were 'smoke shops' where cigarettes, magazines, and such were sold. Two in my hometown, and usually at most pharmacies there would often be a spinrack of comics, as well. By the early 70s comic shops were popping up everywhere and that was that.

@@chrisjuricichxl5 Sadly for me, if the comic shops were popping up, they sure weren't anywhere in the burbs anyway. They did get quite a few in the eighties, but that was too late for me. BTW, that Teen Titans I mentioned? Allegedly, there's only three of them like that in the world. I've seen one on the net which I think is phony, but mine is genuine.

The theater I work and have been there for 12 years has independent films all the time, we even host our counties independent film festival once a year. We still get the big blockbusters movies. Theaters are not required to get every Hollywood movie. The only time they are is if it is stated like if you want movie A when it comes out in 2 months you must take movie B when it comes out next month and have it for at least 3 weeks. The reason art houses struggle to survive is cause they don't have enough screens to get enough movies and have to rely on the independent films because they can't have the same two Hollywood movies for 6 weeks if the contract states that. Big movie theater chains also all the time play non Hollywood movies too, so I really don't know where you got your info.

+Thomas Signer There have been hundreds of articles and books written about the monopolistic practices of Hollywood film distributors. I just did a web search and found dozens of newspaper and magazine articles about it, mostly in non-US publications. It's possible film distribution may work the way you describe in the US, but I know for a fact that in Canada, theatres are required to lock into a specific distributor, and that comes with the condition that they do not show any other films. It's been a long-standing problem dating back decades. And when you refer to "independent," don't mistake it with Hollywood's so-called "indie divisions" like Vantage and Miramax, which are still owned by the Hollywood studios. The distributors give theatres a Hobson's choice of more mainstream and "indie" films, but all of them originate from the same studios. Genuinely independent films are locked out. The distributors won't work with a theatre which screens independent films.

The entitled elite treating everyone else like lower functioning cogs.... this fits communism too. Regardless of what system wicked leaders use as a tool, whether it be a monarchy...etc... there will be the same spirit of oppression and tyranny behind all of them, if the authority figures that are running those systems are corrupt people.

Oh they have independent movie makers though. They are mostly shills for Hollywood like Michael Moore. If you make an anti trump movie I guarantee Hollywood will take it.

"The film distributors maintain a monopoly by locking out any theatre which shows any film other than theirs. This means independent films can't be shown in a theatre unless that theatre is willing to forgo all Hollywood films, including all the big blockbusters." Where did you see that? What are your sources? " "Distribution" really amounts to arbitrage, pure capitalist parasitism which turns the industry on its head, with films (or comics) being made to serve the profit of middle-men rather than serving the art itself or even the general public." You get that someone still has to get the movies from the studio to the theaters, don't you?

I agree...if i saw a comic at the grocery store I'd probably buy it like I used to, as a matter of fact, they had some small collection of books like Avengers and X men, Archie that had multiple issues spanning the years of each title in colour and I bought it , had about 6 or 7 issues in each , just for the read and then gave it to my kids ..it as about half the cover size of regular comic book like a digest

Comics are NOT struggling - if look at the numbers juvenile and/or manga are doing very well Its the "superhero" comic book publishers which are struggling

basically yess--- all that.Toss on a current predilection for the characters who are (to my knowledge) barely sparking interest as they are, the desperate attempt to update/grade/etc the characters; altering their ethnicity, their gender and god knows what else. I used to resist the notion that the mainstream publishers had gone 'woke' but I'm seeing mounting evidence that it seems to be the case. I can't confirm that it's true; all I know is that DC and Marvel's output currently simply doesn't appeal much to me at all.

I think it also doesn’t help that many of them are long running stories/characters with seemingly no easy path to begin at, where as at least in my generation (tho probably not exclusively), many of us are more anal about where to start off if we’re gonna get into a series. Like, why bother going into seemingly the first thousandth issue of Batman or Spider-Man from way back when when you can just start at their movie adaptations? I think it also explains why manga and graphic novels have gotten arguably more popular in recent years: Most manga series tend to have a more easy-to-follow beginning to end, with rarely any crazy off shoots or extra more that you now need to pay extra attention to. Graphic novels also tend to be either short length series themselves (like Maus) or even under one singular book (like Fun House). I also theorize that kids books alone have actually gotten so much better over the years that they’ve basically made comics less appealing as they might’ve been before. Like, what did kids read in the 50’s, Dick and Jane? Definitely not as interesting as what they’d probably rather read. My generation had stuff like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Girl, Goosebumps, Captain Underpants, Big Nate, etc,., books that are a lot more fun to read to kids, yet also don’t really entice them to find alternative reading material for them in the same way as comics were way back when (or at least the comics from Marvel & DC that come out nowadays).

@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 yah, I think that's the bdest way to describe it--superhero books are on the fall...

You mean, like Shonen Jump? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shonen_Jump_(magazine) That lasted ten years in the U.S., then Viz moved to a digital version.

@@TorstenAdair Manga and anime have become much more popular and mainstream in the past 5 years, Shonen Jump will be more successful these days if they relaunch it today.

Those DC Giant collections are pretty good, but if they printed them as ashcans and made them a dollar I'd buy one every time I went to the grocery store.

R M I always wondered if Marvel & DC published a double digest in the grocery store like Archie did, would it lead to more sales?

@@derekbartonart7004 Out of curiosity, how much were the Archie digests and what year? I just saw Marvel now has sealed 3-packs for $9, and the DC Giants are still $5 apiece. DC is winning my interest on that front, but an ashcan digest would be even better. I don't care about color. They just need to put them in a hanging rack next to the tabloids in the checkout lane instead of hiding them on the kid's aisle. Had to stand next to some really weird guy and a bunch of 9-year-olds running in circles knowing everyone else was probably looking at me weird too.

Marvel attempted to do just that, but comic stores lost their minds when they announced it, so it was abandoned immediately. Marvel also played with the idea of running their own Marvel-brand comic stores, but that also fell through. It seems to me that there's no good answer for the comics industry's woes. Having only one distributor is good for publishers, they only have to print to meet Diamond's needs, but then Diamond holds all the chips and can screw the comic stores as they see fit because they're the only game in town. Going digital will kill both the stores and Diamond, but most readers like to collect, as well as support their store, which offers more than money can buy - a community of people with shared interests, where you can get together and make friends over comics. The bottom line is that print media as we knew it is dying, which means comic book stores are dying, and any attempt to try and save them is just treating the symptoms and not the illness. My town had 3 comic book stores for the longest time, and within the past 2 years, 2 of them have gone out of business. Yes, they sold other things, like most comic stores do nowadays, which just goes to show that the business model is strained, at best.

I know. Marvel and DC always have books where I notice creative is cutting corners. Marvel has many pages that are just shading and washed in a single color, or they don't have backgrounds. All comics need to work on dialogue and fight scenes though.

It actually sounds kinda fun, like when when you buy magic cards or something and don’t know what you’ll get

And still two years further along. Much like how streaming affects movies today (not that is can be directly compared). As boring as it is on the surface, logistics matters : )

I wish everybody could read this. We are having the same problem with action figures.

Richard McDowell the Code was the industry "regulating" itself. It applied mostly to the writers/publishers and served as a scapegoat to legally be able to blacklist writers and artists.

Marvel comics almost went out of business due to the code.

No, that is a myth. NOT because of the Code. Rather Goodman closed up his self distribution, went to American News Company. Then ANC closed up in 1957. Had NOTHING to do with the Code.

snakebitgoat The code put quite a few companies out of business ranging from Fiction House and the Simon & Kirby studio to Lev Gleason’s Crime titles among others and many writers and artists of that period cited the code as the main reason they decided to get out of comics altogether during that time, it by no means only affected EC as a company. The only comics company unaffected by the Comics Code at that time was Dell Comics.

cha5 Way too simplistic. Dell was over HALF the comics business in the USA all by itself. Fiction House gave up ghost late 1953. Same as Fawcett stopping super heroes in 1953 resurrecting with Dennis the Menace. Simon & Kirby's Mainline along with Andru & Esposito's MikeRoss plus LB Cole's Star Pubs, all self-publisher upstarts, distributed by Leader News, secretly owned by Harry Donenfeld, were yanked in 1955. S&K's stuff passed the Code confines. Lev Gleason's crime title was the only title affected. The word "crime" being made a bad word. It was the 1957 implosion of American News Company which was the nails in the coffin more so. All detailed in my forth-coming book Comic Book Store Wars.

JMuise same issue with video game and as the price only temporally goes down during sales there are games from 5+ years ago still on sale for £30-£50 digitally which is annoying as by this point the physical copies are sold for about £5-£10 in video game stores even if they are "new" still

I seem to recall that when digital comics were first offered (at least from DC), the publisher purposely set the digital price the same as physical for the first 30 or 60 days in order to protect comic shops from a sales collapse. Because if sales collapsed and stores closed, the publishers would be in big trouble.

Why? Because they do not need to be. Publishers are making money at current prices, so the digital comics do not need to be cheaper... that market, mostly via Comixology, is successful. Amazon slashed prices on ebooks originally so that people would buy Kindles (AKA "Amazon terminals"). Once that market dominance was achieved, the prices became saner, and now Amazon uses Kindles to market directly to consumers. You browse on an Amazon computer, you buy on an Amazon computer. Apple did the same with iTunes. Sell the specially formatted songs cheaply, people with buy the iPods to listen to the music, and continue to buy from the Apple iTunes store.

I actually liked the difference of reading a comic on my phone/tablet... but then I saw most of the prices... lol no way am I paying retail for digital. For such a hands on medium it makes no sense. With an actual copy I can skip through go right to where I want it’s just so much better that I think digital should be 99c an issue and 4-8$ for GN’s . Until then I won’t bother. I mean I can get current as of last week/month comics for a buck each at my local.

I really like 2000AD cause along with the epic length stuff like Apocalypse War or Necropolis they also contain a lot of single or double issue stories in between.

Dalvyn McBride I miss strong superhero heroines. Not this fake ask me about my feminism bs but in the 60s-70s they had great stories of female super heroes. What made them great? They were just like any male superhero and didn’t mention their gender once. They were in it to save innocent people or get revenge. I miss those great comics

@@williehawaii9967 lol sure man.

You must have dream because There was not great super heroïne comics in the 60's, outside maybe Wonder Woman, all the female character in this book general dasmelles in distresse or jealous minx, look Invisible Woman in the first run of Kirby and Lee she barely do anything in the first year, even the reader complaining aboot her us uselessness! The 70's however.

I hste how rushed they can feel thst way, but don't always have a chance to grab every issue. I prefer omnibus volumes.

Plenty of kids could have $4.00 for entertainment. In 2018, kids have more than $4.00. A lot more. But no sane parent is going to give their kid $4.00 for a comic if money is tight. ... because video games are a lot better value. Video game consoles and video games are a much better value for the money spent. Yeah, an Xbox One is expensive at $250, but if the current generation of hardware lasts as long as the last, that's 7 years. That's literally less than 15 cents a day for ownership cost. On top of that, games are about $70 a title these days, if you get twenty hours of entertainment from it (pretty likely if it's a multiplayer title for a kid). It's pretty cheap per hour. A comic book? $4.00 for something full color glossy comic ... that he's done looking at (I'm not going to say "read" because these Marvel and DC "top shelf" titles are so vapid these days) in 15 minutes then becomes landfill or bagged in plastic likely to be never looked again? Those hideously overprice theater movies are a better value for entertainment time than a comic book.

On top of that, there just aren't many comics produced that are kid friendly. So, not only are kids only going to comic shops if taken by their comic-buying parents, but when they get there they are met with an entire wall of adult-themed comics and a tiny section for kids. I live in one of the biggest cities in the US and the largest comic shop in town has about six titles in their kid section.

I couldn’t agree more

Good observation. Then again, there's the 1 buck comics bin of old issues.

HAHAHA! Go to your public library (or school library). You'll see numerous graphic novels suitable for kids. How many millions of copies has "Smile" sold? "American Born Chinese"? Actual comic books? Duck Tales, Marvel Super Heroes, Archie, Teen Titans Go, Scooby-Doo Team-Up (recommended for EVERYONE!), Star Wars Adventures, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, Marvel Digest, plus all the old Showcase and Essentials reprints that were aimed at kids originally decades ago. The good stores do market towards kids and parents. The Android Dungeons are dying out. And then there are webcomics, Comixology, Marvel's subscription service, Scholastic Book Fairs...

Stephen Nootens Most American comic book shops that I’ve seen have a Manga section of some sort, our local one Austin Books has about four shelves for different Manga books covering everything from Tezuka’s Astro Boy to Attack on Titan to Ito’s horror comics. Any shop that doesn’t have a Manga section is rather short sighted in this day and age.

Sadly the closest comic shop by me is short sighted.

Stephen Nootens The finite nature of most manga series outside of cash cows like DBZ (which I've long since stopped supporting), combined with the greater variety of manga created (which can span so many more genres than one would think) and distribution by demographic are all key differences in Japan's comic market vs the West. Manga magazines can also be found at convenience stores, train stations, you name it. And yes, it's amazingly socially acceptable to read them in Japan no matter your age or gender. There are some magazines only distributed at book stores, department stores and manga retailers, but there are so many such magazines there are probably many distributors as well.

Age and really gender is the big thing they need to crack in the west. You are just as likely to see a fifteen year old girl picking up Boys over Flowers or the latest hot yaoi title as you are to see see a teenage boy picking up Fairy Tail or the latest ho harem comedy and of course there's stuff like Ranma 1/2 that cuts cross gender. I also thing it doesn't help that their so few places for you to find comics in the use, and it should be noted how odd it feels in the places like a comic book shop. I'm a guy and I've been in a couple to pick up a comic for by brother used into a American comics and every time I feel like I don't belong. I can't imagine what it would feel like for a female who might be interested in comics going in for the first time.

Japan's anthology releases are actually screwing them over, because scanlators subscribe to them, translate them, & post them on sites where they can be read for free. Japan & South Korea do weekly comics fairly differently. Compare Weekly Shounen Jump & Monthly GFantasy to Lezhin & Line Webtoon. China & Korea have taken to webtoons recently, especially after the manhwa market crash brought on by libraries letting people read comics for free. They start comics off in long receipt-like pages & sell chapters individually online like microtransactions in a game. Only if a comic sells well enough will it ever get a reformatted physical release.

They also need to put text boxes back on the covers so people actually know what's in the comic instead of these movie-poster covers.

You sir are correct! I am a Wal-Mart associate and they really do need to make them more visible. And I do not buy them to resale for profit. There are times where I do work in the self check out and do see a few kids pick them up. Sad thing is not always does the parents buy it which sucks cause they denie the kids interest.

@@jesusuribe6527 Yeah, they need to put them in hanging racks next to the tabloids so every kid can see them.

BS research, actually. This guy is NOT an historian who knows the comics business.

Seriously.