Intro
The following is an idea that has been sitting with me awhile. Believe it or not, I think it is heavily related to sustainability; I'm answering the question of how the medium of comic books can survive the coming years, as currently publishing practices are fairly unsustainable. My answer? I think that there needs to be a Netflix for comic books. 'But wait,' the more astute of you counter. 'There already is one, so we don't need another.' I'll certainly agree that a site already exists for perusal of certain independent titles, but the whole form needs to go much farther, with both Marvel and DC bringing a majority if not the entirety of their past titles to an accessible digital form. The market that they've created is neither sustainable nor necessarily profitable, and the interests of all parties would be greatly benefited by the implementation of this market.
Why?
No one can easily deny that Marvel and DC are still incredibly profitable companies with extremely fervent fan-bases dedicated to consuming their work.
I think however that it might be fair to say that comic books are no longer the most important monetary focus for the two major publishers. Marvel and DC dropped 2% of their market share from 2012 to 2013, with a drop of over 7% since 2008 (Armitage). That isn't total profit (which would be expected given the financial crisis of 2008 onward), but rather their percentage of the total industry. For Marvel this is fairly bad; they dropped from a 40.9% share in 2008 to a 33.5% share in 2013. For DC, even though the trend is positive, it isn't good news either; they increased from 29.94% of the market in 2008 to 30.33% in 2013. Rather than stealing Marvel's market share, they were able to grab only a small fraction of what was presumably stolen by smaller publishing houses. Pairing this with stats from Comichron, a better profit trend can be seen; with increased estimated sales in 2013 to $780 million in the North American market, Marvel's profits dropped about as much as DC's rose (23 million to 28 million). That doesn't seem that bad for DC, but this isn't including inflation and increased comic prices; factoring in only the former, $57 million of the $85 million increase over those 5 years was purely due to inflation ($695 million in 2008 to $780 million in 2013 (inflation calculator)). Add in the new norm of 3.99 comics, and most of that price difference is just inflation in action.
Why is that? If other profit centers using the same characters are only increasing in value, why would comics not be increasing in popularity? After all, to quote Lang,
"Marvel’s adaptations of its comic-books have been profitable for years, but following the $1.5 billion success of 2012’s “The Avengers,” their films have reached new heights. “Iron Man 3″ hit $1.2 billion, nearly doubling the previous film in the series; “Thor: The Dark World” reached $644.8 million, a 44% improvement on the first God of Thunder film; and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is finishing off with $713.2 million globally, a 92% hike from the patriotic warrior’s big screen debut."
I think the answer has three main aspects, spelled out fairly neatly by one example. Final Crisis was one of DC comics' most ambitious events as of the past decade, combining nearly every single aspect of their mythology in a breathtaking story-line that redefined the very means of storytelling itself, simultaneously providing creator Grant Morrison the chance to metaphorically outline the failings of the industry. Not only was the story creative and nuanced, it had, in my opinion, the scope, breadth, and storytelling importance of classical mythology.
Unfortunately, to get to experience all of this, one would need to buy around 60 separate comic books (and according to Wikipedia, those were only the ones collected in trade paperback). Assuming each were priced at the now-moderate price of $2.99, one would need to pay $180 to experience the entire story-line, which is the first problem with modern comics. Compared to the past, they're far too expensive. Since most story-lines of the past were both cheaper and shorter, people would pay less to keep in touch with their favorite heroes. They were less of a specialized purchase and more of an impulse buy; there's a reason drug stores once kept them near the register. At the now routine price of $3.99 apiece, two comics which might take you an hour to read are now the same price as a month of Netflix which allows unlimited streaming; if a person wants a good entertainment value, they'll probably vie for the digital media over the physical. Even if comics can offer nuance and intrigue, they pale in comparison to film, which can do the same, is cheaper, and available in larger amounts.
Second, as a side effect of the complexity of the medium, consumers need to read innumerable back issues to understand the story-line or even character of a given book. This isn't always true; certain story-lines simply say 'here's a superhero that you know nothing about, here are their powers, and now they're doing something cool,' (which I'm going to start calling the Guardians of the Galaxy storytelling method), but as a general rule you need to buy more comics once you've purchased one. Whether that's to complete a story line, figure out what was going on in your story, or understand more about the character, it serves to make comics more confusing and unapproachable to anyone but a die-hard fan. While it certainly can make each publishing house a great amount of money from these people, it excludes entire segments of the population who might be interested in starting to read about their favorite character.
A side problem of this is the "relaunch issue," the thing that sunk the market in 1993 and potentially might do it again (Last). To counter consumer confusion and encourage new readers, publishers try to make their books more accessible by rewriting continuity every few years, erasing past stories and relaunching old tittles while maintaining the same familiar characters as before. This works about as well as people might think; empirically it leads to temporarily higher sales and then readership plummets (Johnston).
Third, there's no real way to expand the market. I don't mean getting consumers to buy more issues about their favorite character, I mean getting them to either attract their friends or pick up new, experimental titles of less popular or wholly new characters. People recommend films, not comics, so expanding the sales figures to friends of customers is mostly out for various publishers. Besides attracting people to a new book by advertising well regarded artists and writers, publishers have barely any options. At the high price to commit to a new issue, people are less likely to buy, forcing publishers to rely on industry icons like Batman and Spiderman to support publishing more obscure characters like the Martian Manhunter.
Last argues that this is perfectly fine, noting that
"...in 2009, Disney paid $4 billion to acquire Marvel (DC was already owned by Time-Warner). The reason for this gaudy valuation is that the comic books themselves are no longer important to the comic-book industry. They’re loss leaders. The real money is in the comic book properties, which power toy and merchandise sales, theme parks, and above all else movie franchises. Since 1997, 26 comic book adaptations have gone on to gross more than $100 million at the box office. Twelve of these grossed more than $200 million. More—many more—are coming soon to a theater near you."
But while his logic makes sense and does a great job of explaining why comics still exist in a physical form, I think he misses the point. There may be an explanation for why the publishers operate in this manner, but this doesn't need to be the manner in which they operate.
The Solution
Now that I've explained the need for change and the problems that plague the industry, I can return to my original proposal; Marvel and DC need to start an online comic book Netflix for their older titles.
Both companies currently offer digital distribution of their works via their respective sites, and offer some dealers like Comixology. The problem is that this operate exactly like a normal comic book shop but with no physical copy and access across any mobile device a user owns. While sometimes slightly cheaper than physical editions, the same problem of price remains; these comics are took expensive to encourage routine buying.
But what if each company set up their own distributor that offered the majority of their archive for a small monthly fee? $10 a month from even just their current fans would likely be a huge jump in revenue, and that guess of users is extremely low. It's not like they're losing money; dedicated fans would still pay full price to read monthlies on time, while everyone else might wait a year for it to be transferred to the site. Each comic would be from the past; after the first month they never expect to see any more money from it anyway so they would only be increasing revenue by rehashing old content they've already made. And most of them are already scanned and digitized on their online marketplace; slowly adding more would keep users paying month after month while the current offerings would more than justify the price. Since users aren't even paying for the comic any more, but rather access to it, DC and Marvel can completely cut out the resale market and keep profits within their publishing houses. Comic book stores might lose as well, but this could easily turn comics into a collectible again since they now will become a far rarer commodity.
Why not smaller publishers? I mentioned earlier that DC and Marvel were losing market share and this is the biggest reason; smaller publishers are increasingly selling more of their books. Since there are more readers than there were a decade ago, diversity in interest has greatly risen, meaning more obscure titles might sell more copies to a specialized audience. Smaller publishers would only undermine themselves by putting their works out in the open for a small fee; they've been experiencing the best physical growth of the industry.
This neatly solves the problems I outlined earlier; comics would be cheaper, they would become a revenue stream again, consumers could be exposed to more story-lines, and would be more likely to read more obscure titles. I'm not saying it solves all of the current problems with the industry nor will I claim that the solution is perfect, but it definitely resolves some of the more immediate and pressing concerns of the industry. If you want to further the discussion, please feel free to post a comment; otherwise, thanks for reading.
Citations
Armitage, H. Marvel, DC Comics see declining market share. Digital Spy. 9 Jan, 2014. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1uYKPcl
Byrne et al. Best Shot Panel. Uncanny Xmen #132. Apr, 1980. Photo. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1xUxLkz
Comichron. Comic Book Sales by Year. Comichron.com. 2014. Chart. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1opaHcb
Ditko et al. Peter Parker Finances panel. Amazing Spiderman #24. May, 1965. Photo. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1o3i09Z
Gibbons et al. Rorschach 'Do It' panel. Watchmen #12. 1 Oct, 1987. Photo. Retrieved from http://on.mtv.com/1kgejgZ
Johnston, R. The War of Attrition in Comic Book Relaunches. Bleeding Cool. 15 Apr, 2014. Print. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1uZ4CIJ
Lang, B. Box Office: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Astounds With $160.4 Mil Global Debut. Variety Magazine. 3 Aug, 2014. Print. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1xTYTzT
Last, J. The Crash of 1993. The Weekly Standard. 13 Jun, 2011. Print. Retrieved from http://tws.io/1tLdnVd
MacEntee, S. ideas. Flickr.com. 7 Mar, 2010. Photo. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1p30naB
Netflix. Netflix Logo. Netflix.com. Photo. Retrieved from http://onforb.es/1j3k3aR
Sharing Machine. great ideas. Toothpaste For Dinner. 26 Aug, 2010. Photo. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1pyqcyc
Wikipedia. Final Crisis Promo. Wikipedia.com. 17 Jul, 2007. Photo. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/UVmEuL
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