Wait, Which Way Is It?
1991
“Comics don’t sell to a lot of people. They only sell to collectors/investors who buy multiple copies of everything they think they’re going to flip in the future to pay their kids’ college bills.”
2022:
“Comics —
” — Have —
” — Never —
” — Sold —
” — Better!”
I hope this guy’s kid is planning to attend a local community college:
(For more on this topic, check out this edition of the Pipeline Podcast.)
Yep. When you see the level of variants today, constant “events”, unending strain of stunts lke NFTs, it sounds like 1990 again and the system is about to crash. Again.
Why don’t people “invest” in something safer, like crypto-currency or Air Jordans lol
At least you can wear Air Jordans! Though I imagine far too many collectors don’t bother. It’s just amazing to me how many people think the comics industry is the vision of health and big numbers without considering how much of that is these inflationary non-reader numbers. Yes, obviously the growth of YA comics and manga would account for a huge uptick in readership, but when you’re talking about the typical Direct Market readership of The Big Two and standard comics, it’s not healthy. It’s all about working harder to cater to a smaller audience and get more money out of them. It’s been working for the past couple of years, but there are already signs of things crumbling in some corners. The BIG HOT graded books of a couple of years ago are already showing themselves as short term wins that aren’t healthy enough investments to make it past the next round of the MCU rumor mill. Eh, the whole thing is a mess.
And as someone who runs a site dedicated to comics, I can tell you there’s about zero money in advertiser dollars available. If I wrote reviews of vacuums, I’d probably be making 10x. People actually need vacuums….
Probably 1000x more on cute and funny cat videos 🙂