Post by G on Jul 14, 2011 20:23:43 GMT -5
Remember the song by Cinderella "Don't know what you got until it's gone"?
With the rise in digital comics, revamps, dwindling sales and growing frustrations and alienation, do we almost need for comics in the print format to almost disappear before they can make a truly legit comeback?
I mean as it stands now, comics keep putting out the same kind of covers, crossovers, revamps and ways of doing business. There is a real push to get digital to make up the difference. While I do believe there is a market and a place for digital, I think it currently comes at a cost that sacrifices the long term and established and almost forgotten collector. The sales numbers continue to dwindle month after month, year after year. Now we have gotten to the point of what is perceived as radical thinking.....restart our entire Universe of comics over again from #1. While this may have some short term immediate success, most are skeptical that it will have any game changing long term effects. That eventually it will bring us back to where we were before and maybe even worse. Where do we go after that?
Does the shift continue to be towards digital and the comics medium in print format continues to dry up? Do we need to go ahead and let some more big names and even big companies collapse? Do we finally have to get to a point where comics in print format are almost non-existent before we can find someone or some company who knows what the missing fandom truly wants? At which point someone will actually "do it right" and for the first time in years the numbers will actually start going up again?
Maybe it won't happen quite this way but what I'm really asking is do we need to go ahead and just let things fail completely on almost all fronts before we can really truly gain anything of substance back? Or does it really not matter....we're going to go down the road of extinction regardless of how things go? Or finally yet, is the death of comics in print format just simply overblown and it can survive better than newspaper and magazines and its here to stay no matter what moves are made now or in the foreseeable future? That really the sky isn't falling and all is actually well?
If however the sky truly is falling and all is NOT well, do we need to lose it all or most of it all before we finally start realizing what it takes to get some of it back or at least reverse the downward trend?
With the rise in digital comics, revamps, dwindling sales and growing frustrations and alienation, do we almost need for comics in the print format to almost disappear before they can make a truly legit comeback?
I mean as it stands now, comics keep putting out the same kind of covers, crossovers, revamps and ways of doing business. There is a real push to get digital to make up the difference. While I do believe there is a market and a place for digital, I think it currently comes at a cost that sacrifices the long term and established and almost forgotten collector. The sales numbers continue to dwindle month after month, year after year. Now we have gotten to the point of what is perceived as radical thinking.....restart our entire Universe of comics over again from #1. While this may have some short term immediate success, most are skeptical that it will have any game changing long term effects. That eventually it will bring us back to where we were before and maybe even worse. Where do we go after that?
Does the shift continue to be towards digital and the comics medium in print format continues to dry up? Do we need to go ahead and let some more big names and even big companies collapse? Do we finally have to get to a point where comics in print format are almost non-existent before we can find someone or some company who knows what the missing fandom truly wants? At which point someone will actually "do it right" and for the first time in years the numbers will actually start going up again?
Maybe it won't happen quite this way but what I'm really asking is do we need to go ahead and just let things fail completely on almost all fronts before we can really truly gain anything of substance back? Or does it really not matter....we're going to go down the road of extinction regardless of how things go? Or finally yet, is the death of comics in print format just simply overblown and it can survive better than newspaper and magazines and its here to stay no matter what moves are made now or in the foreseeable future? That really the sky isn't falling and all is actually well?
If however the sky truly is falling and all is NOT well, do we need to lose it all or most of it all before we finally start realizing what it takes to get some of it back or at least reverse the downward trend?
