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Harry Dounis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 October 2022
Location: United States
Posts: 115
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 1:26am | IP Logged | 1
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Comics are no longer visible to everyday people, living every day lives. Newsstands no longer exist. What book and magazine racks there are in markets are too small to turn any space over to comic books.
Regrettably, I think this is true. Having taken my daughter to a mall not too long ago I came upon some Comic book store whose name escapes me. I had to walk all the way to the back while wading through T-shirts, Legos, board games and general dreck to finally come upon a pitiful assortment of graphic novels, not a single comic book! Later venturing to what I once deemed as THE comic book store in Forbidden Planet in NYC wasn't all that different. At this point I just read online and collect comic-art, an occasional statue and some CGC graded copies of what I once could only dream about... Sad actually, I couldn't wait to make it to the local shop as a kid when the deliveries would come in!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133860
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 1:53am | IP Logged | 2
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Equally sad, the “local comic shop”, tho few recognized it at the time, was an early warning of the end. A mass market product becoming niche market. As a fan, every comic I bought was an impulse buy, from the newsstand, the grocery store, the bus station. So many venues. And somebody thought it was a smart move the shrink the number of venues and make the buying of comics a deliberate act, requiring the customer to seek out a specific location.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3557
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 2:24am | IP Logged | 3
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Yeah. Comic stores were good for the artform for quite a while but because there were fewer and fewer places for people to casually happen upon comics outside the stores (and the stores themselves could sometimes be openly hostile to ‘outsiders’), it was unsustainable for the market. And it’s of course unfair to blame the stores or the owners, as the big two and Diamond found they had a middleman they could screw over more than newsstand retail. The details are fuzzy, but IIRC the structure was set up so that comic store owners had to eat unsold orders while newsstands could return unsold copies (coverless) for credit.
That having been said, even if comic stores hadn’t inadvertently killed the newsstand market, the rise of digital platforms would have killed the monthly comic in due time, after all.
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Brian Rhodes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3351
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | 4
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My sis mentioned that she didn't watch comic-book movies but then went on to disclose that she'd was a fan of the Fast & Furious franchise & spinoffs. I thought it was strange that she would happily watch a popcorn action flick with overblown set-pieces, but that superheroes were just a step too far, no matter how well they were done.
I've run into this. People that will watch F&F (or similar) but won't get into superhero (or sci-fi) movies because...what, they're somehow more juvenile and unrealistic?
Edited by Brian Rhodes on 04 February 2025 at 2:43pm
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12819
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 5
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I have a 31 year old son and a 17 year old son and an almost 2 year old grandson.
Actual comicbooks were not a part of my older son's life, nor my younger son's, and I can't imagine them suddenly being something for my grandson either.
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Brennan Voboril
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 January 2011
Posts: 1749
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | 6
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My children are in their 30s - one read Ren and Stimpy, the other Barbie. The only reason they did is because I would bring them home copies after work. Neither sought them out, as I did when I child. The same was true for their friends.
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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 2009
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | 7
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“ Equally sad, the “local comic shop”, tho few recognized it at the time, was an early warning of the end. A mass market product becoming niche market.”************ I recall a very perceptive individual writing that comics have become like jazz. Both were once entertainment forms of mass appeal that everyone experienced at some point in their life. Now, pretty much all the consumers are people who are trying or who previously tried to become creators.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133860
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | 8
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My sis mentioned that she didn't watch comic-book movies but then went on to disclose that she'd was a fan of the Fast & Furious franchise & spinoffs. I thought it was strange that she would happily watch a popcorn action flick with overblown set-pieces, but that superheroes were just a step too far, no matter how well they were done.+++ I've run into this. People that will watch F&F (or similar) but won't get into superhero (or sci-fi) movies because...what, they're somehow more juvenile and unrealistic ••• Same mentality as people who won’t read comics but do read graphic novels. One woman was appalled when I told her I had done a She-Hulk graphic novel. I had to explain to her the term referred to format, not content.
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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1447
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | 9
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The Walking Dead TV show title sequence includes the text: 'Based on the graphic novels by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore & Charlie Adlard'
It was a comic series that ran for 193 issues!
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4893
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | 10
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I have the impression that comic book readers are less stigmatized than comic convention attendees are.
It doesn't matter what your interest is if it's not mainstream. if you're obsessive about it you're going to be seen as a nerd. whether it's Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books, tabletop games, video games, Lord of the Rings, etc. Obsessive fans of entertainers, athletes and yes, politicians get plenty of public scorn too.
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 62
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| Posted: 04 February 2025 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | 11
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When I was a teen in the 90's, there was a period of time where I hid my comic book fandom from many of the people in my life. I can remember one time getting my haircut after picking up my weekly holds from the local shop, and literally hiding the comics from the woman cutting my hair.
But it's been a long, long, long time since I cared about how people perceive me. I'm a 45 year old man who reads comics, watches cartoons, loves sci fi and super hero movies, attends WWE events, plays video and board games, reads fantasy, and truly and honestly if anyone in my life expressed a judgement about any of that, then it says a lot more about them than it does me. Now if you excuse me, I'll go back to working on my Lego Voltron set while admiring my Galaxy's Edge lightsaber collection.
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