Ah, another month, another column. I spent a good while
trying to decide what to write about this month, when it finally
dawned on me. I had forgotten an important issue in my three
part "What's Wrong With The Comics Industry Today" series and
I've decided to extend it to a fourth part, that being this
article. Now, on to the issue that I neglectfully forgot about.
Exclusive comics. I know you've seen them, and many of you
have probably bought at least one. I know I have. The two
main culprits, as it pertains to exclusive comics are Wizard
magazine, with their 1/2 comic offers each month, and the
world's largest mail order comics company, American
Entertainment. Many comic series, such as Mage, Quantum and
Woody, Witchblade, The X-Files, and Astro City, have had
exclusive comics. Why is this such a bad thing, you may ask?
First and foremost, it's akin to stabbing your readership in
the back. When people loyally buy a title month in and month
out, they feel betrayed by having to buy an exclusive comic.
They don't want to have to order from some mail order outfit.
If they want to have every issue of a certain series and
they're a huge fan, and one of the issues is an exclusive,
they don't have much choice. What's even worse is when the
exclusive book ties into continuity. It's simply an atrocious
thing to do to us, the readers, and while it does boost sales
in the short term, it often leaves many readers feeling
alienated, angry, and betrayed. One of the best examples of this
is the Astro City 1/2 debacle. Scores and scores of people
wrote and e-mailed Kurt Busiek, writer and creator of Astro
City, voicing their displeasure at the Astro City 1/2 Wizard
mail away offer. The backlash was so great that earlier this
year, Astro City 1/2 was reprinted with a new cover and new material.
Now, on to the second major problem with exclusive comics.
As I mentioned earlier, exclusive comics often times boost
sales in the short term. Many of those sales aren't from
diehard fans, but from speculators. Since I've talked about
speculators in my previous articles, I won't bore you with
that subject again, but suffice to say, anything that helps
keep speculating alive in the comics industry is definitely
a bad thing.
In closing, I'm going to reiterate a point that I feel
needs to be emphasized. With video games being a multi billion
dollar a year industry, and other forms of electronic
entertainment doing very well, the popularity of comic books
has plummeted. All the gimmicks I've discussed over the past
few months have, in my opinion, been attempts to resurrect
this dying industry and bring it back to the prominent
level it enjoyed for so long. What the big executives aren't
understanding is that any gimmick they try will, at best,
only achieve short term success. Bad Girl books, crossovers,
exclusives, and variant covers won't lift this industry
back up into a state of good health. Solid writing, art,
and interesting characters might, but even then, it's not
a sure thing. I hate to admit it, but comics might never
be able to fully recover. I don't doubt that the medium
will always exist, but I do think that the industry is
on life support. Recently, things have been looking up a
bit, but until people would rather read than play a
videogame, watch a movie, or listen to some music,
comics will never be able to compete with the more
popular forms of entertainment. Let's just hope the
industry is around in five years to even try.
