PeterDavid.net

I have to confess, I've never made it through an entire Bond novel, or any other novel by Ian Fleming - I can't say I care for the writing style. Not to say it's "bad", it's just not my cuppa. (Then again, I don't watch the movies or play the games, either.) On the other hand, I find I can only enjoy Holmes in the original Conan Doyle works, or the Saberhagen pastiche (the Giant Rat of Sumatra, indeed! No wonder Watson wasn't comfortable writing of it back in the day!).

On the other hand, I can't see how this child's parents are able to look themselves in the mirror, knowing their children won't even read comic books - once regarded as barely literate! "Oh, sure, my boy spends hours jest a-watchin that durn ol cartoon, an playin his video-game thingy - he's a big fan! Huh? Read? Why would he want ta read?!? It ain't school!"

Oy...

The industry needs a shot in the arm. Perhaps if they spent more time using the films to market the comic books, they'd get some more credibility. Right now the only real comic book exposure on TV is that of Seth Cohen on The OC.

Can't wait for "But I digress..." if you're expanding on this, PAD. The problem with the industry is that these so-called "attempts" to garner new readers through incentive lines such as All-Star and Ultimates have only minor media exposure at best.

If a minor feature in Entertainment Weekly is the only attention that Frank Miller and Jim Lee can bring to the industry, what hope have the rest of them got?

SAM-EL

I think we should give the 7 year old a pass. Kids that young don't really read anything. And really, given the explosion of video games and 200 television channels even older kids don't read much anymore (with the exception of Harry Potter). My wife and I give books out as BDay/XMas presents to our neices/nephews and the kids look at us like we're retarded. But this is nothing new. New medias always crowd out older medias. Look what television did to radio serials, or comics and paperbacks did to Pulp Magazines.
When I make my weekly trip to the comic store, there are never people younger than about 16 in there. Comics companies need to keep us adults as customers, because at $3 a book most kids aren't going to be taking $20 a week into the comic store and spending it all (and it would take that to get every X-Man comic out there). Heck, even I question the expense now and I've been actively collecting for over 20 years.

1I wonder if the kid reads anything at all, which would make not reading Spider-Man comics just par for the course. And considering that unless his parents frequent comic shops or "regular" book stores, he may have very few encounters with a Spider-Man comic in the first place.

And what Spider-comic would a 7 year old kid read in the first place? Even Ultimate Spidey isn't really what most 7 year olds would find interesting.

Mike

"I think we should give the 7 year old a pass. Kids that young don't really read anything."

Untrue. I was reading comics when I was seven. Hell, Shana was reading "The Wizard of Oz" when she was four. Now if you want to rephrase your statement to "a lot of kids that young don't really read anything," then go ahead. To which I would respond: Yeah. That's part of the problem.

"Comics companies need to keep us adults as customers, because at $3 a book most kids aren't going to be taking $20 a week into the comic store and spending it all (and it would take that to get every X-Man comic out there)."

And that's the other part of the problem. They CAN'T keep adults as customers. Why? Adults get bored. Adults find other interests. Adults hit financial problems. Adults die. Attrition is a factor in any entertainment venue, and comics are no exception.

Our sprinkler was covering less and less area. Water was being choked off. Turned out there was a blockage of dirt and leaves in the connection so that almost no water was getting through.

Comics are a lawn and comic book shops are the sprinklers. The blockage is composed of video and TV and movies, and the water is the readership that's not getting past it. Without that continually incoming readership, we're going to wind up with non-functioning sprinklers and a dead lawn.

PAD

It really comes down to this...comics are like beer. Now forget about the jokes. I know that our spouses all get mad when we spend too much on either one. But seriously...the problem with comics is that they are a lot like beer. And that is why the prices keep going up (readership going down, age of consumers creeps up) while the price of other consumable items maintains or decreases.

See, for many years beer companies were faced with a problem...a stagnant number of beer drinkers. they could count on the number of beer drinkers to remain constant (for every person who died or joined AA, a new beer drinker was born) but the numbers never really grew. So they tried lots of gimmics. see if you remember any of these: Ice beer, Red Beer, Light Beer, Micro-brewed, Born-On dating, Specially Lined Cans, Imported, Exported, and my all-time favorite...Non-alcoholic. Now while that may have given one company a small spike in its beer drinker numbers, the overall number of beer drinkers never really increased due to these "revolutions" in beer drinking technology.

Sound familiar? How many of these gimmics do you remember from comics? Lenticular covers, Holographic Covers, 36 part crossovers, Hot Artists, bad Girls, young Guns, variant covers, shared universe, 5th ink, acetate cover, guest appearance, inter-company crossover, movies, television shows, saturday morning cartoons, movie tie-ins, action figures, archive editions, ashcans, die-cut covers, imports, exports, toy tie-ins, and my all time favorite... "the Death of..." Again, these all cause momentary growth in a particular title or company readership, but overall they did not contribute to a growth in the number of readers. (It can be argued theat the Death of Superman did bring in a significant number of new readers, but most of them were speculators. when the comic companies began to do major events every week, the speculators got out and crashed the system. it was a short lived glory)

Back to the beer. finally someone got a brilliant idea. Let's make something totally different. something that is unlike anything else in the beer-drining world. they created flavored malt beverages. It started with Zima and has grown to include Mike's Hard lemonade, Smirnoff Ice, tequiza, and a butt-load of other beverages (all owned by larger brewing companies). Now, people who would not normally drink beer (especially women) regularly order these alternative beverages. the overall number of people buying from these breweries (in beer numbers [which have not fallen off] and in alternative beverages) is well beyond what they were before the malt beverages were sold. the difference is they went outside the beer drinking community to bring in new drinkers.

What have comics done to do that? movies? well, movies are basically a 2 hour advertisement. did ads help the beer companies? No. So, a 2 hour ad isn't going to help the comics. More titles? Nope. Nore brands of beer didn't help. Scrapping all continuity in hopes of allowing new readers to "catch on." Nope. re-naming a product or putting it in a new wrapper doesn't help.

comics need to evolve. That isn't to say that there is no room for the monthly superhero book (remember all those beer drinkers???). Manga came along and overall sales of comic-like printed material rose. Didn't hurt comics one bit. Independant comics. they are helping get comics in to new hands, especially zines. But, the distribution and advertising mechanisms are too small for them. there needs to be another way to get comics into people's hands other than through Diamond orders. Web comics. Maybe. we'll see. the internet isn't the great frontier that it once was. trades are/were an attempt to get comics into places and hands, but it is just re-hashed content. there needs to be a real revolution. New content. New distribution. New advertising. More important...new flavors.

Look around. How many comics right now are just re-hashes of old characters and teams? New Avengers, New thunderbolts, the New Scorpion, 10 spiderman titles. 25 X-Titles. that is just Marvel. Don't get me started on DC and their love of all things Hal jordan.

for all our love of the medium, there has not been a real change in comics since the 30's. that is fine. But we cannot expect something to go that long unchanged. Look around. typewriters have been replaced by computers. telegraphs and mail have been replaced by telephones. even the internal combustion engine is on the way out. But...cars are here to stay. People still write letters and communicate. why can't comics work that way too?

"The problem with the industry is that these so-called "attempts" to garner new readers through incentive lines such as All-Star and Ultimates have only minor media exposure at best."

Somehow I don't think that 5 pages of Vickie Vale in a nightgown is what most potential new readers are looking for in a Batman comic, no matter how nicely it's drawn.

My problem with both the All-Star and Ultimate lines is that it's being pushed and marketed towards the already shrinking audience comics currently have. Until the publishers can get comics out of the comic book store dungeons and out into the hands of kids, there will be no new audience. There really is no excuse for DC not to be advertising on the Cartoon Network (they have the same parent organization), and the appeal should be natural to the same audience.

Ok... comics themselves are fine, I think. It's the delivery that might need work.

I realize that this has been tried in various forms already, so I might be rehashing an idea that's already been tried. Dunno. Thought I'd toss it up, and see if it's gets shot down.

First, I'd continue to publish comics the same old fashioned way. Don't lose the audience that you do have.

But for those that want to read, but not necessarily collect, I'd suggest a change from a "subscription to my mailbox" to a "subscription to my inbox."

In same fashion as web hosting costs a monthly charge, or subscribing to a site to download your favorite songs... what about subscribing online to your favorite comics?

For, say, 5$/month per comic, you go online and read this month's edition. Nothing to download: you'd read it online. This would mean that you'd best be served if you had high-speed bandwidth like DSL or cable.

But I think the average family could be talked into spending $20 for 4 online comics automatically charged to the family credit card every month easier than if they go into a comic shop and suffer sticker shock.

If the cost ratio was low enough to getting those comics online, perhaps there would be enough monies left to mail out a physical copy to the subscriber?

I'm not sure. But I keep thinking that the only way your going to increase sales is by going online, and providing a product for a reasonable price.

Short on specifics, I might be. But I think this is the way to go if you want to keep costs low and increase sales.

RLR

Hey Peter,

think global - act local: next time at the playground provide the kids with a few free issues of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and I bet there will be some new comicbook fans around.

Sad that I was brought up in the now-bygone era where I actually pursued reading in my early years. I was reading at not-quite-3. By the time I was 7 (jeez, 1986), I think I already had a long box or two of comics (none inherited from my parents). I remember video games--had an Atari 400, but didn't play it all that much. I preferred to expend the brain power and enrich myself rather than watch pretty blinking lights on a TV and improve my eye-hand coordination by jerking a joystick back and forth. Rarely watched movies or TV, either. And today, in between working, I read quite frequently, don't turn on the TV a whole lot, and I listen to music.

I keep telling myself when I have kids, they won't be raised with the video games and the idiot-proof videos stuck in 24/7 while mommy and daddy ignore them completely. Of course, you know this means my kids will rebel, hate my guts forever, and that way lies madness.

I wish more kids read...not only that, but I wish more parents paid attention to their kids instead of pushing them off, ignoring them, leaving them in front of a TV 24/7, or giving them pills to take care of what they don't want to bother with. I'm cynical that way.

End rant.

~G.

No, TV, videogames and movies are not the fault. If anything, the fact that comics characters are popular among people who don't read comics is a sign that they have successfully transcended the medium. Those kids weren't going to be reading any comics anyhow. But some kids might.

I know when I was a kid if I was interested in a movie I'd go looking for the book it was based on and that was how I got to read Sherlock Holmes, War of the Worlds, the Time Machine, etc. But I was a few years older than seven.

As for the comics, how is a new reader to start? Go back 40 years and almost every comic had a self-contained story that a casual reader could just pick up and enjoy. Where can you find a comic that even has a self-contained story anymore?

For a long time now mainstream Marvel & DC have been investing almost entirely in the fan market. I can remember picking up a couple of comics at random to read on a long bus ride. I remember finding myself in the middle of a story with no explanation of what was going on and no clue who anybody was. I remember thinking what a waste of money that was.

I have no sympathy for an industry that bleats on about diminishing sales while making their products user hostile to the casual buyer.

See, this is why you should always carry one of your comics around in your pocket. You could have simply pulled out one of your Spider-Man comics, handed it him, and said, "Well, read this. I wrote it!" I bet he would have read it then.

I think it depends on the attitude parents have. My husband and me, we have a huge collection of SF books and comics. It was important for us that our daughter is introduced to the world of books as soon as possible.

Already when she was a baby she was delighted when we gave her a few cloth books just showing colourful pictures with textures she can explore by touch. Now she is nearly three and she is interested in everything.

She can just sit there for quite a while exploring junk mail and even the new telephone book got her attention. When I get new magazines she loves looking through them with me and she is already familiar with quite a few series and characters, including Spider-Man by the way. She enjoys looking through comic books and is already curious about adult books as well that only have covers but no pictures inside.

It adds to it that Jennifer was introduced to SF and in general what we watch from very early on. She already was fascinated by Spider-Man when she was still a baby. We told her that spiders are our friends, also because they eat flies. When she saw a picture of him in a magazine she proudly said: "Spider Man! Eats flies!"

Comics are wonderful tools for learning how to read. I know, when I was a child my English wasn`t advanced enough to read English novels but after reading English comics for a few years it was much easier for me to take the next step.

We will keep encouraging her and see what her interests will be at the end. But I think I can already be sure that she will also be a Spider-Man fan when she is getting older and will also be interested in reading the comics.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with the earlier post about 7 year-olds not reading. I have a 7 year-old niece, and she blazes through books as fast as she gets them, and has been since she was four. Every time I see her, I bring along a couple of new books, usually a year or two over the reading ability for someone that age and it doesn't even slow her down.

When I was seven, I'd already read The Hobbit, all the Wizard of Oz books, Heinlein, C.S. Lewis, all the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books I could get my hands on, and had already got permission from our local librarian to apply for an adult library card (our library was divided into children and adult sections). And I read as many comic books as I could buy with my meager allowance.

That said, I would agree with the assertion that many 7 year-olds don't read. My two nephews wouldn't pick up a book if it was covered in chocolate sauce and whenever we have family gatherings, one or the other is usually engrossed in a video game most of the time. Or on the Internet. Or watching a DVD. When I was seven, we had black and white TV with half a dozen channels. If you wanted to see a movie, you went to a theater. If you wanted to read a book, you went to the library.

Which brings me to my next point about why Johnny doesn't read comic books, which is that is that they're probably too bloody expensive. As I've already dated myself here, when I was a kid, comics were 12 cents apiece. If I was lucky to get a buck for allowance, I could buy eight comics and have change left over. Why should Peter's playground pal buy a Spider-Man comic when he could buy a DVD of either movie for the price of six?

And finally, cementing my reputation as the forty-something old man of this forum, I really don't think web comics will ever catch on. I think this is something Peter has commented about in the past, but there's a certain tactile quality about comic books, particularly the old ones on newsprint that you just can't capture on a 17-inch computer screen. The best thing about comics was you could roll the up and put them in your back pocket or beat the living shit out of them, but as long as they were still readable, you'd never throw them away. I just can't picture a bunch of kids at their local playground, swapping comic books and pulling a handful of CD-ROMS out of their little plastic sleeves.

Damn, I'm feeling old.

PAD said: And why should he? How many have you, in the past five years, have seen a James Bond movie or played the video game? Now...how many of you have read a James Bond book? Seen a Sherlock Holmes film or a repeat of the Jeremy Brett TV series? As opposed to reading Conan Doyle or any of the many pastiches?

********************************

I guess I'm not the norm then. I've read all of the Bond novels. From Fleming to Gardner to Benson. I've also read all of Sherlock Holmes stories, which was not always easy to do. Especially when "A Study in Scarlet" zigged into dealing with the Mormons....

*Coming out of lurk mode*

Funny you should mention this. I'm reading Cyborg for the first time in many years and I consider myself one of the biggest Six Million Dollar Man. I'm appreciating it much more this time around.

I have never been interested in online comics. I am also not interested in ebooks for several reasons. I also don`t think that there will be a big market for them, not in the near future.

By the way, I very much disagree with it that comics are just for kids. I remember when I was a child who has always been a bookworm and interested in comics and SF, my mother was sure I would grow out of that "phase" when I get older. The opposite happened. I got a husband who shares my hobby and I am FAR more active now than I was then. Should I reach that age, I will still do so when I am 80 or 90.

I agree there needs to be more all ages comicbooks out there. They also need to be affordable for younger readers/buyers. Either that, or if a kid is going to plop down $2.99 for one issue of a comicbook, it had better be something that he absolutely _must_ have.

I just recently finished reading _The Essential Fantastic Four_ Vol. 4, and amid Stan Lee's ubiquitous purple prose, those stories also had quick re-caps at the start of each issue, and text narration (and where needed, footnotes) throughout the story. They don't have those things anymore. That makes it that much harder for a new reader to jump on board a story. Tony Isabella has rightly complained about that in recent issues of CBG.

Consider the following hypothetical scene in an issue of _Spider-Man_: Spidey is suiting up for battle. "I'd better bring along some extra web cartridges," he thinks. "Last time I tangled with Doc Ock, I nearly ran out because I was too busy worrying about what he'd do if he found out Aunt May's planning to leave him for the Rhino."*

*The Rhino Special #1- Smilin' Stan.

Now, if anyone cared to learn more about Aunt May's romance with the Rhino, they'd know where to find it. At least in the old days. Today, the scene might go something like this:

"I'd better bring along some extra web cartridges. I won't make the same mistake twice."

O.K., _what_ mistake? And when did it happen? Under what circumstances? No clue for new readers.

That's a minor point, of course. More problematic, of course, is when a character pops up in one comicbook and there are references to some past event concerning said character- but no point of reference. That was one of Isabella's complaints concerning _OMAC Project_ #1. The answer to at least one of his questions appeared in _DC Countdown_, but if he didn't read that issue, he'd never know, because there was no helpful footnote.

Or why not have a one sentence re-cap on the first page of a particular issue? E.G.:

Consider a splash page of Rick Jones running through the woods on a dark, moonless night, glancing fearfully over his shoulder as he does so. The caption reads:
"Last issue, Rick Jones made the mistake of eating the Hulk's last twinkie. Now the Hulk is _mad_."

There. You know what's going on, even if neither Rick nor the Hulk mention the twinkie during the course of the current issue. And if someone wants to know more about why Rick couldn't buy his own twinkie, they know what issue to buy.

But most current comicbooks from DC and Marvel don't give either re-caps or in-text footnotes. That makes no sense. Whether a particular reader is a kid or an adult, why turn away potential readers by making today's comicbooks somewhat inaccessible to newcomers?

As to reading in general, I think kids should be introduced to reading at a young age. Pretty much every present I've given my young cousins (the oldest is now 19) have been reading-related. Some of them have been books, and some have been comicbooks. These comicbooks have all-ages material such as _Akiko_, _Leave it to Chance_ and _Bone_. In the case of the last, I gave them _The Complete Bone_, but with _Akiko_ and _Leave it to Chance_, I gave them trades and/or individual issues. All three were generally friendlier to new readers than probably most of what comes out from the Big Two.

I say "probably" because for those of us who've been reading DC and/or Marvel comicbooks for years, we just "know" certain things about characters and situations, so we don't even think about it. I loved _Formely Known as the Justice League_, because I enjoyed the Giffen/DeMatteis run on _Justice League_, but a new reader is _not_ going to get all the in jokes.

Back during _Zero Hour_, there was an issue of _Robin_ in which current Robin Tim Drake met a young Dick Grayson. Dick asked if Tim is his future replacement, and Tim starts to say that he replaced Jason, before changing the subject.

Jason who? Would a newcomer to that issue have known that the answer is Jason Todd? Not likely.

Oh, for the record, I own the two-volume _Annotated Sherlock Holmes_, and recently began reading the stories contained within. I've read the stories before, of course, but not in this particular format.

I'm also re-reading the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, which I last read in 1988. I remember liking one book a lot, not liking another much at all, and don't recall one way or the other about the third. But when I saw the films, _nothing_ in them sparked a remembrance of a particular scene in _any_ of the books. So, I guess the books didn't impress me too much. But now I'm re-reading them to compare my 2005 feeling about them with my 1988 feelings, and to see how they compare, in my mind, with the films.

I also bought the books for one of my cousins, because she liked the films. Since she did, she might also enjoy the source material.

Rick

And why should he? How many have you, in the past five years, have seen a James Bond movie or played the video game? Now...how many of you have read a James Bond book? Seen a Sherlock Holmes film or a repeat of the Jeremy Brett TV series? As opposed to reading Conan Doyle or any of the many pastiches?

I've read all of Ian Fleming's Bond novels, and all of Conan-Doyle's Holmes stories, although I haven't read any of them within the last 5 years (I went through them all when I was at secondary school).

More generally, there were various headlines this week about Victoria Beckham ("Posh Spice") saying that she's never read a book in her life. At my last job, I worked with a guy who said the same thing (and that he therefore found it hard to maintain his concentration when he was reading a long article in a magazine/newspaper). Whereas I find that my brain starts to twitch if I go a day without reading anything. I learnt to read before I went to school (probably when I was 4 or 5), and I don't think there's been a week since then when I haven't read at least one book cover to cover.

There's other factors. The Spider-Man comic books, for the most part, are written for people who already read Spider-Man comics, not the newcomers.

Also, comic books are sold primarily in comic book stores. They are not a generally merchandised item; you have to know where the store is to find them. Hit a dozen drugstores and I'd be surprised if you'd find one that stocks comic books.

And as far as other media...I'm getting into an insidious area here, comparing one writer to another. But Dwayne McDuffie got nowhere when he was writing comic books like "Static" and "Icon." (Partly it was the comic book store problem; white kids didn't want to read about black heroes, and black kids couldn't get to the white kids' comic book store.)

McDuffie sold the concept of "Static Shock" to AOL-Time Warner. His series lasted three years on Kids WB and won awards for important messages about school violence and drugs. (Which he did in comics, pretty regularly, and got nothing for it.) Now McDuffie's producing and writing "Justice League Unlimited," and getting considerable acclaim and the attention of AOL-TW's media people. Chances are, he may follow the career path of Paul Dini, who also passed through comics and animation, and is currently writing for "real" television on ABC's "Lost."

If a writer has something to say - and if he doesn't, why is he a writer? - which place would he put his maximum effort? Comics which kids don't read and can't buy, or mass media?

It's interesting this topic comes up today. Friday afternoon we (finally) went to see Fantastic Four with our seven year old. She loved it. That wasn't a surprise, she loves all of the superhero movies that have come out recently. Leaving the theater, I mentioned to my husband we needed to point her towards comics because they match what she loves and supplement her reading.

The problem is neither of her parents were comic fans. I'm clueless where my nearest comic shop is. And because of my cluelessness, she has no idea Spiderman comes any way but by Cartoon Network and her DVD.

I'd lay the blame on parents for this one. As a large whole, we dropped the ball and spent entirely too much money towards things that no longer require exercise or intellectual process.

(For the person that said seven year olds don't read very much, 7/8 is second grade. They should be.)

Peter,

i blame the marvel & dc for that. for not making a push to advsertise their comics on radio, or tv, or cartoon network, or in any possible retailer. the $$$$ from licensing these 2 juggernauts make could afford them to take out billboards that say thing like read comics or find you local comic book providor. instead they do nothing. if they had more readers they could lower their prices of their funnybooks.

Joe V.

i think that the comic industry really needs its "harry potter."

actually, strike that. comics already had their "harry potter" and that's the problem. when spider-man and the FF and batman and superman all first came out they were the "harry potters".... but now they're too cannonized for new readers but nothing new can come in because the old readers will reject it.

create a new hero with powers and people claim its a rip-off of such and such and it fails before the new readers can really sink their teeth into it.

new blood, new heroes, new concepts, new ideas are needed to stir up they yoot of the nation. marvel age isn't gonna do it, and the ultimate universe isn't going to do it.

harry potter got kids reading again. the same thing can happen for comics, but as with all industries people need to stop relying on what worked in the past and look towards what might work in the future.

i could be wrong though...

Guilty as charged when it comes to Holmes and Fleming, but another example comes to mind, namely "The Wizard of Oz", and I read that (and all the Baum-penned sequels) well before seeing any Oz-related film. (One of my single proudest possessions is a set of first-edition Oz books, handed down from my mother's mother's mother. I had them read to me and then read them myself, read them to my little brother, and will read them to Katherine once she's old enough to understand them.)

I agree that a lot of kids aren't reading enough (or at all); when some of Lisa's cousins were younger, we gave them things like Narnia for Christmas and never heard anything about it later. I suspect they went unread.

Harry Potter seems to be something of an exception, in that kids are getting excited about the book well before the film, and most of them like the books better than their accompanying films.

I hate to say it, but I think the reason a lot of kids don't read much is that their parents don't either. Of course, this means that in a few years Katherine will put the lie to that by avoiding reading at all costs, but I'll worry about killing myself over that later. :-)

TWL

I've been reading comics since I was eleven years old. I used to ride my bike down to the grocery store and pick up a loaf of bread for my mom and buy myself a comic.

As I got older I took a break from comics and only in the past 4 years have I gotten back into them. I had to call a 1-800 number to find a place that sold comics near me. Now that bites. How is a kid supposed to get into comics when his parents have to take him down to B&N to buy a trade or find some hole-in-the-wall comic shop to get single issues?

Peter, when we met at Shore Leave, I told you I'd thought of falsely introducing my self as Malcontent X-Ray. My story is as follows.

Just over three years ago I was living in Southern Florida, working as a chef. I loved Stracyznski's work on Spider Man, and I collected many wonderful series on a regular basis. But being a chef was a very difficult lifestyle. Most waiters make better money as a rule, and it's not that they don't work hard, but it's not always as long and constantly demanding. Having worked both sides of the counter, cooking is harder, by and large. I never did the easy route, i.e. coke habit. Long story short: I crashed. Hard.

Now, three years later, I am making more money than I ever have in my life. I have new(unsecured!) credit cards, and my truck is almost paid off. But the love for comics I had and have has been such a low priority, I have not made the time or the budget changes to start collecting again.

And it's MY life that's the poorer for it.

i gave my 5 year old nephew a esscial spidey to read well be read to jim didnt work i told 5 fellow angel fans about the comic and there going to the comic store regluarlt now i think if you handrd some kids youer new book once it hits the stands they may read 2 by the way one of my earlist emerories is being about 4 and after watcging the spidey tv show in syndtion trying to climb up a wall i didnt acrually read comics tell i was 9 and my first comic was he man that my brother got me its all about placement.

i blame the marvel & dc for that. for not making a push to advsertise their comics on radio, or tv, or cartoon network, or in any possible retailer.

I recall reading something awhile back about comic companies and advertising on tv.

And it wasn't that they didn't want to advertise, it was that they couldn't - that the government said 'no' to that after Marvel advertised the GI Joe comics when the cartoon aired.

Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but apparently, nobody has been interested in changing things since.

As for prices, well, comic prices have risen pretty dramatically. Most were $1, tops, when I was a kid, now they're at least $3.

In the same time span, paperback books have generally gone from $4-5 to $7-8.

And, on the whole, a 300pg is far better bang for the buck than a 24pg comic book.

Even more amazingly, video game prices have *not* risen - the average game today is still $50, it's just the basic price of the system has gone up.

And while it doesn't seem like $50 goes as far as it used to, minimum wage has gone up, so kids aren't working as many hours in their part time jobs to get those games.

On top of that, alot of games have a much longer playing life than they used to. So, again, bang for your buck.

Comics don't have it, and neither do movies, for the most part.

But books? Video games? Yeah, they do.

It's been my ongoing project for several years to get my 12-year-old brother and my 15-year-old brother to read anything at all, in place of endless video games.

The 12-year-old WILL read Simpsons and Star Wars comics (and Dilbert cartoon collections, of all things), but only if I leave them lying about in a conspicious place and don't say anything about it. If I say anything at all, he'll get stubborn and refuse to read it.

The 15-year-old reads his Harry Potter book every three years, and that's it.

Ironically, it was video games that got me into reading in the first place. Before the age of fifteen years or so I'd never voluntarily read a fiction book in my life. But then I played "Betrayal at Krondor", and was so fascinated with the world that I read Feist's Riftwar books, and now read 80 or so books a year.

I suppose the best way is to make the path easy for kids to read; if they want to go down the path, they'll go, but you can't force 'em.

You know, when I was a kid, I read voraciously. I has quite literally read through the entire childrens and young adult sections of the public library branch near my house by the time I was 10 (I got a very shiny award for it, too). On top of checking out upwards of 10 books a week, I had an allowance - and if I chose to spend it on books, the allowance increased by half again.

But I didn't pick up a comic until I was 14 or 15, and that was because I had an older boyfriend who read them.

Why didn't I, the landshark of reading, pick up a comic before then? No exposure. My parents didn't read comic books, the public library didn't stock them in any form, and there was no place around where I would have run into them.

Now admittedly this is different these days, in that public libraries have started to stock graphic novels. But public library attendance has also dropped in a lot of areas, and kids aren't seen in them in the throngs they were when I was a kid. (Might have something to do with the libraries often being closed...)

But comics are still difficult to find, if you're a kid and your parents don't read comics. They're not in most book stores, and you have to go to a special store to buy them. When you're 7, this is sort of hard. I know there's no way a 7 year old would be able to easily get to any of the comic stores in my city, and I can't imagine that's terribly different anywhere else.

Distrbibution itself is a big issue when it comes to getting people younger than their mid-teens introduced to and reading comic books.

-Kelly

I don't know about you guys, but maybe it had less to do with apathy about comics and more to do with some strange man was interrogating this seven year old kid on a playground.

PAD, maybe you should've offered him candy while you were at it. Sheesh.

We also have to look at that both here and in BID, Peter is preaching to the choir in a lot of cases.

Lets face it, how many people would be reading this blog unless we already knew Peter's work through books or comics. And BID appears in a comics publication.

The logical assumption here is that most of us are readers and see the world from that standpoint. And as such, we miss an essential point. To a lot of people, reading is not an enjoyable activity, its work.

I actually blame this on schools, which focus on reading a book and parroting back prepared responses about the content, with no allowance for different interpretations. Can't imagine why kids don't want to pick up another book. The exceptions noted here are ones where very often parents encouraged a love of reading at the pre-school age. (There's another point there).

How do we fix this? I don't have a large scale solution. But I do have a think locally strategy.

Several years ago at Shore-Leave (spike-con for those of you who recall), I attended a panel about the ST novels. I kid you not, at the end of the panel, a woman (who had apparently wandered into the room by accident), said to one of the panelists (Marco, I think) and said "I never knew there were books about Star Trek". Another audience member and I looked at each other, stunned, then promptly marched her to the dealers room and bought her a couple of used books. This was on Sat. On Sunday I spotted her again with an armful and said he, she informed me that she had not slept but spent the night reading.

So now, whenever I go to a con, I always grab a few copies of relevant books I like at the used book store or at a book dealer and give em out. Kinda changing the world one book at a time.

(BTW, Kudos to Shore Leave for making sure that books are represented at the con)

I think PAD makes very good points, and I agree with him.

But I also think that the declining readership in comics results not just from what Peter is describing, but from various other factors at play. Price is an obvious factor, but even getting beyond that, my biggest question is this: Are kids getting access to the comics themselves?

My personal story: I started reading comics when I was about 11. I'd had a few that my older brother had purchased back in the early to mid 70s, but I didn't really discover them until I went into a local pharmacy with my mother one day. I saw they had a magazine rack with about fifteen different comics available. I grabbed a Spider-Man comic and took it to my mom. "Can I get this?" She looked at the price: $1.25. "Cheaper than Nintendo," she sighed, and purchased it for me. For a few years there, I was getting my comic fix solely from local small town pharmacies and convenience stores.

Then, a funny thing happened. The comics stopped arriving. They weren't being stocked anymore. I had to switch to ordering my comics by mail, filling out money orders at the ripe old age of 13, using my allowance to buy what I wanted.

I lived in a small town. Nearest comic shop? 45 minute drive away. That wasn't going to happen.

Moral of the story from my perspective: I latched on to comics because my parents couldn't afford for me to indulge in video games, movies, or what have you. We didn't even have cable there for a few years, so comics were my source of entertainment. They were a reward for straight-As and academic awards.

Some kids don't want to read if they can play videogames or watch TV. It happens. But Harry Potter demonstrates that lots of kids do like to read.

As Peter notes, its essentially a problem of access. Movies, cartoons, video games...they provide easier access to these iconic characters for some kids than searching out the books themselves, especially in rural areas like I grew up in.

Will comic books be around in 30 years? I don't know. I'd like to hope so. I'd be terribly sad if they weren't.

Grace: Does your community have a telephone/business directory? You might be able to find a comic bookstore listed there.

-----
I remember when I was a kid (back in the 70s/80s) Spiderman was definitely my favorite superhero. I read the daily comic strip, and saw him on the Electric Company and Spiderman and Friends.

I think I knew comic books existed, but I'm not positive. I read over a thousand books in first grade, so reading wasn't an issue. It may have been the inverse problem. By first grade I was quickly being weaned from "picture books". And reading the daily comics section in the newspaper became a guilty pleasure by high school.

on Online Comics

I think Online Comics (or comics in your inbox) could work. The price structure suggested is a bit off since $5/month per comic is twice as expensive as several current titles. The comic in your inbox has to be cheaper than the paper copy. But I do follow several webcomics. I'd suggest $1 or $1.50 for the equivalent of a monthly issue.

But if you want the 7 year old kid reading a comic book, there needs to be a comic book the kid's parents feel is appropriate for the 7 year old kid to read. My niece will be turning 7 in October, and I gave her several Disney comics last December. I'm not sure what's out there beyond that which is really suitable for her, though.

i have to agree with many of the people who've said that exposure is key.
i'm 27, and just old enough to remember comic books in a rack near the checkout line at the local grocery store.
but the earliest exposure to comics that i recall was on a rack at the barber shop for kids to read while waiting to get their hair cut (i think we often read them while getting our hair cut, too.)
it'd be really cool if waiting rooms at doctor's and dentist's offices would have a few comic books on regular subscription.

I am a teacher. I teach 4th and 5th grade at a public school in Portland Oregon. i have comic books in my class room. They are available for kids to read during silent reading. I buy the graphic novels and trade paperbacks from my local library outlet store.

The parents think I am nuts. they cannot believe that I stock/approve of such base objects as comics in my classroom. My response..."the kids are reading." I challenge anyone who has a child who is a reluctant reader to plunk a trade of Sentinel down in front of him/her and see what happens. Luckily my Principal is supportive or I could have a real headache on my hands.

My father has recently changed careers and is in the linguistics program at the local university. It is his goal to teach English in foreign countries. He brought up the idea of having high interest reading material available for kids (such as comic) in the classroom. He was treated like a heretic for making such a statement.

The simple fact of the matter is that comics are still treated as "literature" on par with pronography (also sold almost exclusively through specialty shops and the internet) and MAD magazine (which is a much less literate magazine than it was 25 years ago). So what do we do? I am doing my part, but I am one man. And while I hope I am molding and shaping America's future (there is a frightening thought) comics are still not readily available to kids (even my kids who are actually interested in getting more comics).

Marvel just signed a deal to get comics back into 7_11 (I still remember spinning the rack at 7-11 and buying Secret Wars #1). Comic shop owners were wary. They saw it as more competition. But, how else are kids going to get comics??? Free comic book day is DESIGNED to get comics into the hands of new readers. But, I live in a city of almost 1,000,000 people in the metropolitan area. Was there ANY advertising outside of the comic shops? NO. I know there were shops around the country that bent over backwards to get people in the door. They contacted the media. They hired Stormtrooper. They took out ads in the paper. But, these shops were the exception to the rule.

I passed out 75 postcards and fliers at my school (all the 3rd, 4th , and 5th grade students got one). These are media savvy kids. They have internet access. They watch tv. They listen to the radio. not one of them had heard about it. A couple of them made the trip to my comic shop (Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay across town) to see what it was all about. They walked away with several Star Wars comics (some free, some they bought) all because someone told them about it. Where is the marketing for people outside of the general comic fandom???

In my previous post I mentioned beer. I mentioned alternative beverages. Now, think to yourselves..how many billboards have you seen for Mikes hard Lemonade? How many Zima ads have you heard on the radio? How many Bacardi ads have you seen on TV? All of these are alternative beverages that brought in new drinkers for the beer companies. All of these products are available in a regular supermarket, as well as convenience store. You do not have to go somewhere special to buy them. It doesn't even require a "FREE ZIMA DAY," (although I would probably show up for that!)
Where are the ads for the comics? Why is it that kids and parents don't know where to buy products that are being produced for them? (yes, there are some good comics being produced for kids. The marvel age line, The Stardust kid, some of the stuff from Alias). It is bad marketing all around. New outlets are a start. New marketing is a must.

Can you imagine what the comic market would look like if Marvel and DC got their product into supermarkets and instituted the "drug-dealer" marketing strategy that Alias uses? First issue only 75 cents!!!! Once they read one, they want to know more. they know where to go back and get more. Oh look! Another comic for 75 cents!!! I'll try that too!

"I am a teacher. I teach 4th and 5th grade at a public school in Portland Oregon. i have comic books in my class room. They are available for kids to read during silent reading. I buy the graphic novels and trade paperbacks from my local library outlet store.

The parents think I am nuts. they cannot believe that I stock/approve of such base objects as comics in my classroom. My response...'the kids are reading.'"

Rather reminds me of a gentleman from Africa who was in one of my college English courses. During one discussion, he was lamenting the fact that he couldn't convince his nephew to read anything by George Orwell. I asked him if his nephew was reading anything else. His despairing answer - "All he is willing to read are comic books!"

How old was his nephew? 7.

I pointed out that while he may have enjoyed Orwell as a child, that was exceptional, and at least his nephew was reading something...

Yes, comics have gone up in price. But I sell a ton of Manga to kids every day, even 7/8 year olds. Their parents will buy them a ten dollar Manga, but not a comic? Not true. I sell some DC/Marvel comics to kids, but mostly, the trend is to Manga.

And girls? As a female, I'm estatic that girls are buying Manga. Cuz when I was in high school, I didn't talk comics to my girl friends. Tell a boy I read Sandman, X-Men, Spiderman? Their jaws would drop...and they would back away, slowly, as if I was poisonous.

So, while I'm loving seeing girls finally, proudly, buying comics/Manga, I'm a little sad they aren't buying Spider Man (my fav!). And at the same time I understand why Manga appeals more to them. They actually have female characters who are females and not men just in women's bodies. And the storylines are different, very different from what DC/Marvel dish out. And they don't seem to repeat as much.

*blinka* And yet, though I work in a bookstore, I go to the comic store for my comics.

No easy answer to getting kids back into comics. I just think their focus is elsewhere right now and that it'll cycle through to traditional comics again. Meanwhile, I shall continue to support my local comic store (even if they are the 'competition').

When I was in third grade, my teacher, Mr. Short, had comicbooks in the classroom for us to read. I'm sure it was one of several factors that made me enjoy reading so much.

When I was doing my student teaching back in the early 1990s, I brought comicbooks into the fourth grade classroom I was working in. It was a short-lived experiment, since the primary teacher didn't want the students reading the comicbooks during class time (understandable); but a few days after distributing them, I did have a discussion with the students about what happened in the particular issues they read.

My reasons for giving them the comicbooks was two-fold: I wanted to (re) introduce them to the medium; and I wanted to encourage them to read- but not make it an assignment.

Did the gift of those comicbooks spark a long-term interest in comics among those kids? Did it contribute to a long-term love of reading? I've no clue. But I'm glad I gave those comics to those kids. Who knows, maybe I've passed Mr. Short's baton to a future teacher who will one day have comicbooks in his or her classroom.

And speaking of teaching English in foreign countries, _Akiko_ began as Mark Crilley's teaching tools when teaching English in Japan and Taiwan in the early 1990s. I quote from my article about Crilley in _Hogan's Alley_ #10:

"While teaching in Japan, Crilley began seeking innovative ways to teach English to his students, so in 1992 he began drawing comicbooks."

So, Garbonzo, I encourage your father to go for it with regard to using comicbooks- whether he draws them himself, or uses existing ones.

Rick

When kids pay $4 per pack for Yu-Gi-Oh! and $10 for a Manga digest, it's not the price of American comics that's the problem. It's the content and the distribution. When Spider-Man is a 30-year-old science teacher married to a supermodel, we have a problem. One of the things I'm hoping comes out of House of M is a permanent change to Spider-Man, bringing him back to the classic Spidey and removing all that dumb baggage.

Probably the top reason I stopped buying single issues is that they are just too expensinve, especially when you have to buy multiple titles to keep track of a single story line. Like the previous poster said, it's all about "bang for your buck." I didn't start picking comics up until I was already paying for them myself, and it took me a couple of years, but I realized that the cash amount-to-entertainment time ratio just didn't add up.

Of course, another big reason, and one of the reasons that I've gotten more and more into manga in the last couple of years is that the big names in american comics are deathly afraid of changing the status quo. For example, there are, what, 4 or 5 characters from the X-Books who have actually STAYED DEAD since the title's inception. If you remove Death's teeth, you take away a LOT of dramatic tension. That's one of the reasons Stormwatch, Rising Stars, and a lot of comics out of Asia are a breath of fresh air. Even in books geared towards a younger audience in Japan, when a character dies, more often than not, they're freakin' DEAD. And that's only one way the Big Two resist change.

DC esentially hits the reset button every decade or so to ensure that its main characters remain relatively young and spry. Time and age are just plain fluid in the Marvel universe. Both are ways to ensure the companies can continue to sell the same characters ad infinitum. Manga, as a general rule, END, regardless of how popular they are, and remain under the control of their creators, with one or two notable exceptions. It gives a sense of dramatic closure to the audience, not to mention a greater measure of literary credibility.

If American comics want to maintain, or even gain more audience, they have to give the people what they want. Kill off a Spider-Man or a Woverine and LEAVE HIM DEAD. Shake things up like Star Wars did with the New Jedi Order or PAD has done with New Frontier. Bring back some tension. Give the audience a sense that nobody is truly safe. THEN people will actually have a reason to read.

The bottom line is that so long as the American comic companies just continue to milk their cash cows while Japanese companies are actually telling stories, the trend of Manga absolutely burying the American competition will only increase.

-Rex Hondo-

"DC esentially hits the reset button every decade or so to ensure that its main characters remain relatively young and spry. Time and age are just plain fluid in the Marvel universe. Both are ways to ensure the companies can continue to sell the same characters ad infinitum. Manga, as a general rule, END, regardless of how popular they are, and remain under the control of their creators, with one or two notable exceptions. It gives a sense of dramatic closure to the audience, not to mention a greater measure of literary credibility."

if the big two went by a reasonably realistic chronology, we'd never have had Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, PAD's run on Hulk, or any number of absolutely great comic books, because those series would have finished before a number of us here were born.

creator controlled characters are great. comic books with more realism are great. but there's something to be said for the icons that become bigger than their creators (ideally the creator can own the characters, but let other people work with them).

i'm happy to think that my 4-yr old niece, who's just getting into comics (probably helps that her dad draws them), will be able to read brand new stories starring Batman, Superman, Captain America and all the characters i loved growing up.

some characters are timeless. maybe it's not very literary, but it's good comics.

This reminds me of all the newspaper articles I have been reading about Hollywood fretting over the decline in box office receipts.

There were a million ideas why the summer blockbusters weren't doing as well as in previous years but no one mentioned the obvious: have you been to a movie lately and payed for it? They are too damned expensive for your average joe, with a $9 or $10 ticket price you have to be selective with what you watch.

I think some of that is also true for the comics. Kids can't afford to buy comics, when I was growing up you could get them for $75 a piece, nowadays, that doesn't buy you even one.

I say publishers should have more promotional issues and 25 cent books, but that would be less profitable wouldn't it?

So the kid is stuck watching movies where Spiderman's eyes are blue, and he ain't funny.

I frequently watch Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice.

I've played James Bond for the PS2.

I've read Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love and was intrigued by the character of Red Grant, as well as Olga Klebb.

I've seen Sherlock Holmes And The Woman In Green.

I've seen several Jeremy Brett episodes.

I've read The Adventure Of The Dancing Men.

As for Spider-Man,

I have the '60s Spider-Man cartoon DVD set.

I have both Spider-Man movies on DVD.

I read Ultimate Spider-Man each month.

I've played both Spider-Man games for the PS1 and PS2.

My first Spider-Man was The Amazing Spider-Man #86, with the Black Widow's new costume.

Steve the Spider-Man fan.

A valid point, indestructibleman, and honestly, I do pick up Batman trades since I still need the occasional Dark Knight fix. Unfortunately, though, your examples are in the minority. The Killing Joke is one of the few DC stories that have had true, lasting repurcussions(sp?) for the characters (namely, Barbara Gordon). Frank Miller's Dark Knight books are officially considered Elseworlds titles, if I'm not mistaken, and therefore not canon. (not to mention the fact that The Dark Knight Strikes Again STUNK to high heaven)

Honestly, the Batman books have consistently been better about these things than most other titles, but still, they end up pulling stunts like resurrecting dead sidekicks.

Now, I feel I should point out that I don't blame the writers. God knows I don't want to crap on anyones bread and butter, much less authors like PAD whose work I truly respect. But, the companies who make the big decisions need to realize that they need to take a good hard look at the formula they've stuck to for the last 50 or more years. Comics buyers aren't disappearing, they're taking their finite comic-buying budgets elsewhere. It's a global market now, and the American comics industry, like any other, needs to reassess the way it does things if it wants to survive amongst the global competition.

The American comic buying public is telling the publishers, with their purchases, that they want something different. The guys in the big seats just have to listen if they want to turn things around.

-Rex Hondo-

I've read Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and am working on Doctor No. I have to admit that I prefer the character of Bond in the books (as opposed to the walking film cliche of Bond that has been making ridiculous money for MGM/UA). In addition, I've read and re-read The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and, for a change of pace, Tropic of Cancer. In my opinion, anything involving the written word is hemorrhaging readers, because it's easier to be a moron. I know I'm being unfair, but life is unfair. To quote Bill Hicks (who, unlike myself, was a believer):

JFK? Dead.

Martin Luther King? Dead.

Jesus? Dead.

Reagan? Wounded.

In all honesty, I weep for people who don't read, just I weep for anyone who refuses to listen to anything outside of the latest, most popular Top 40 drivel, or anyone who refuses to watch any TV show or film that requires introspection. I weep for them "as I weep for the village idiot," to quote Calder Willingham.
While I love to unplug my brain afew times a week, I deal with enough mulletheads and goobers in a day that if I don't attempt to boaden my horizons, I go nuts. As far as why people are so intellectually lazy, it's the same reason that people don't save money, or don't quit smoking, or (fill in the blank). It's because doing nothing is the national pasttime; to hell with baseball for these folks. (And people ask me why I don't go out and party more often...)

PAD,

I don't remember for sure how old I was when I first read a comic book. But I do know that even though I was an above average reader, there were two problems: story and availablity. For whatever reason, I was looking for issues that had a complete story. It was not until I was in Jr. High and got copies of hardbound Marvel comics such as Dr. Strange and Spider-man that I began to change my mindset that a comic book was a serialized story not a complete story in each issue. And when I did get hooked on comics, they were not anywhere I could find them. It was not until I was as college that a friend introduced me to a comic book store.

On top of all this, times have changed. Comic books do not hold the same mystery, in my opinion. When I was a kid, there was not the range of options available now. Why read about Spider-man when you can BE Spidey in a video game? I hate to say it, but some comic books (PAD excluded) are no better than playing pong. When they are so hard to find, and hard to get into, why bother?

(Having recently picked up some Star Trek novels, the same could be said -- there are some jewels mixed in with a lot of trash!)

Bottom line, I am sorry to see the decline of comic books. I am not sure if they can be revived, or if they will one day be like the horse and buggy -- historical items that have no relevance. I do read the books, and often prefer them to the movies (unless they are poorly written novels based on the movie). But I suspect I am in the minority.

Iowa Jim

>I think we should give the 7 year old a pass. Kids that young don't really read anything.

Count me in to those who were reading avidly (and not just comic books, add in TOM SWIFT and other 'juvenile' fare) at 7.

As for the Flemming Bonds? Only FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Didn't much care ofr it. Prefer the Hall QUILLER spy novels. Loved Conan Doyle's works, however. Not just Sherlock.

>I'd suggest $1 or $1.50 for the equivalent of a monthly issue.

One problem with reading on-line. Will the issue still be available to re-read a month, a year, a decade from now? My 'paper' copy is.

>Their parents will buy them a ten dollar Manga, but not a comic?

The art in many blows away much of what we see on the stands here, the stories are much more varied than just the superhero genre, and $10 for 170 pages (the average page count in a French translation of the CITY HUNTER manga) beats the heck out of $3 for 24 pages.

I hear about people unable to find shops, and people unable to find certain titles stocked (Fallen Angel!), and I think there needs to be a greater awareness of online retailers. www.mycomicshop.com is a monthly stop for me where you can almost always find whatever title you're looking for.

I know there's an appeal to being able to flip through titles before you buy, but a lot of publishers offer sample pages on their websites.

I appologize to comic store owners for the lack of business, but out of the 80 titles (yup!) I grab each month, at least I know they'll be "on the shelf" where I shop.

You know, I'm still thinking about the comics and beer comparison.

Perhaps if we advertised comics the same as beer? Guys sitting by a pool, reading the new issue of FANTASTIC FOUR while bikini models drape over them, saying "Oooohhhhhh.... the HUman Torch gets me hot!"

Just a thought...

Comics are a funny thing. Like any consumer industry, they absolutely depend upon generating sales, and that means drawing in new readers, and keeping the existing ones for as long as possible. Back when I was heavy into comics, I think the average life span of a comic-reader/collector was like 4 years. If you kept a reader longer than that, chances were you had a customer for life. I'm not an avid collecter, or even casual, really (the only books I've bought in the past 2 years were JLA/Avengers, PAD's entire Fallen Angel, and trying to get Serenity), but I do continue to be a fan. So, while my active collecting years lasted almost 15 years, I still follow the industry, and keep open the possibilty that some day, my son may want to venture into collecting on his own.

But, just as Hollywood is finding that they aren't the only option around anymore, comics aren't just competing against other comics anymore. There's a broader entertainment competition going on, and interactive entertainment is taking huge chunks of the traditional market away from movies, books, and comics. Even TV is suffering as the next generations discover that it's much more fun to actually participate with the story, or even create the story yourself, than it is to just sit and observe, especially when the passive entertainment is so often lacking in truly compelling moments. So-called reality TV was such a hit, I think, because it was something new, and even if we all knew that it wasn't really real life, we could fool ourselves for a while.

Comics still struggle for mainstream exposure. The movies help, but only a little. And as Steve demonstrates, that little exposure is often not enough.

I was nosing around Wikipedia this weekend, and read PAD's entry there. At least according to Wiki, the Death of Jean DeWolf was PAD's big break into writing. In many ways, that was also the story that got me hooked on comics (not sure if I should thank you for that or not, PAD...when I think about all the other things I could have done with the thousands of dollars I spent on funny books...). But that story had a lot of things that far too many stories lacked, and that's rather simply put, a compelling story. Without the human element of a good story, comcis are just people doing incredible things in funny costumes. The tricky part is writing something that crosses beyond the simple fantastic of a man that can fly, and making you care about what that man does THIS month...and the next, and the next.

One problem with reading on-line. Will the issue still be available to re-read a month, a year, a decade from now? My 'paper' copy is.

There are never guarantees with digital copies. It's why I'm still hesitant to use iTunes, and am thoroughly disgusted with my experiences with MLB.com.

The MLB.com situation was this: I had the games downloaded and backed up to a DVD. They were from the 2003 playoffs and another, classic game.

So, I had them backed up. Went through a hard drive wipe.

Went to watch the games, and it said I couldn't. I called MLB.com and they said that, at the time I bought the files, the info for the games was on my hard drive, not my MLB.com account.

Well, they never told anybody how to back up that information as well.

They said they'd adjust my account so I could access those games again, but that never happened. So I gave up, basically throwing $15 out the window.

I figure, maybe one of these days, I'll call them up again and make them try again. And if they question why I waited so long (like they did last time), I'll grill them on why the hell they can't do what they say they're going to do.

So, like I said, there are no guarantees, and that's part of dealing with any DRM stuff.

It's funny that we try to say that kids won't spend $3 a book but they will spend $50 - $60 a clip for the latest video game.

Does anyone know the calculation for present/future value of money that would show how much a $.50 comic in 1980 would cost today? I think $3 is ridiculous too but I buy my books online at 35% off so I don't really feel it as much.

On line issues can be a mess. My wife tried to purchase a song from Wal Mart, and it took 3 days before she was able to play it. And then, she could only play it on the PC that she originally downloaded it on.

I'm waiting for the RIAA to feel the backlash from their campaign to stop illegal downloading. And I'm not talking about the backlash from consumers that decide that crappy product = low sales. I mean the legal continuation of their view that you don't purchase a song or an album, but only a limited sets of rights to listen/play those songs for personal use. Because that means that the rights you buy aren't tied to the physical CD or whatever medium you get...they're intangible rights, and as soon as my CDs start to become unplayable, I except the RIAA members to be providing all us consumers with replacement access to the rights that we bought from them.

This goes to the long-term re-use value of an on-line comic. Or book, or anything, really. In addition to my comic collection, I've got a large collection of fantasy/sci-fi books. My wife asks me why I keep them around, and I reply "because I may want to re-read them someday." I'd like to think that my memory is good enough, now and forever, to not need refreshers on my favorite stories. But just as I occasionally, once every few years, want to flip through Crisis, I want to revist other stories, too. If the only version of a story I have access to is a digital one, I can only access that so long as the digital technology remains viable.

According to one source (http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/infcf16652005.xls) a $.50 comic in 1980 would cost $1.17 today. Granted, since then, the paper quality, color durability, and other cost inputs (talent, marketing, etc) have also gone up, and the comic you're getting today most likely has relatively higher input costs than the comic from 1980, so it's not a straight comparission.

It's funny that we try to say that kids won't spend $3 a book but they will spend $50 - $60 a clip for the latest video game.

It's not so funny when said comic gives you 10 minutes of entertainment, and a video game can give you dozens of hours.

You do the math.

It’s funny that everyone is talking about the decline of comic readership, yet every other day there’s a news story about the most recent Marvel/DC title to “sell out” and go into second, and third, printings. When I mentioned at my local shop that I thought the companies were manufacturing these “sell outs” in order to create another news blip, they looked at me like I was crazy.

But back on the topic at hand. I am and always have been a very vivacious reader. I leapt from Hardy Boys to Stephen King (Firestarter) when I was 7. My ex-wife also likes to read. However, our kids (ages 12 and 14) liked to read very little, if anything at all. Until now.

My son, the oldest, started reading some of my comics. He has no interest in reading the monthly pamphlets, but will read the trades. He also shows little interest in the “regular” titles like Spider-Man and Batman. The books he likes are Y- The Last Man, Runaways, Fables, Bone, Supreme Power and Preacher (he’s on the second book now).

I don’t know what that means in the way of readership or delivery or style or substance, but there it is.

I did finally get my daughter to read the first bone trade, so maybe there is hope after all.

So Steve the Spider-Man Fan doesn't read comics.

And it's your fault PAD.

Didn't you use to work for Marvel in their sales and marketing department? If you were still doing that, then you could fight to get Marvel comics into as many venues as possible.

But oh no, you HAD to be a big shot writer! ;^)

Seriously, Marvel sells direct through Diamond. Diamond primarily services the specialty retail shops. The retail shops operate on a shoestring budget. There are fewer shops every year. So readers can't get comics and lose interest in the medium.

And the solution to this is... more comics?

I never understood Marvel's thinking on that.

The number of places that sell their product gets smaller every year. So Marvel's sales should be shrinking on a proportionate basis to that. And Marvel's only ideas on stemming that tide is, to put out more books?

How about lowering the cost per book? Or making books returnable? Or breaking their exclusive agreement with Diamond and distribute through as many companies as want to carry their books?

Or, and this is a wild idea, getting their books into big name chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart? Sure, that would kill the direct market, but staking your future on the direct market isn't that hot of an idea.

And it possible that comicbook specialty stores could lose the Marvel business and make it up by supporting smaller press books (Soul Searchers And Co. anyone?)

Marvel keeps fighting for a bigger slice of an ever-shrinking pie. Instead of looking for other pies.

If I were you Peter, I'd go to Marvel and tell them the story of Steve and see what they're willing to do to fix the problems that they caused.

Matt
(I don't mean to pick on Marvel, but it was a Marvel character, DC is as just too much to blame as Marvel for doing stupid things.)

Have to admit, the only comics I buy anymore are the GI Joe ones (Rat is shortened from Swamp Rat, my favorite charcter in the Joe stories I write) but I'll still pick up an X book or Spidey on occasion.

I don't think price is the problem. I think parents are the problem, and also the solution. Brian knows that Daddy reads, Mommy reads, books aren't just for taking up space. I have a smallish comic collection, but except for my Joes and a few Treks, none of them are bagged. They're for reading, not saving. Brian would be able to read any of them, assuming he could read and they were here, not in storage until we find a house. Anyway, enough of my problems. Show a kid a book, he'll think A book. Show him you reading a book, enjoying a book, and then you've made a reader.

And no, I've never read any Fleming novels, but I can practically recite Holmes from memory, and Lost World is in the ones I need to get through.

One last thought--I've noticed kind of a disturbing trend among those who read and those who don't. Everyone seems to want to closely guard what they like and never venture into anything new.

This week I'll be giving my stepson seven comics for his seventh birthday, which is around the age I was when I got into comics over 30 years ago. But I know within days they will be lost somewhere in his room, buried with his Happy Meal toys, Yu-gi-oh cards, video games, DVDs, action figures, and various other superhero ephemera, many times the number of "things" I had when I was his age. It's not the same world... some day there will be no new comic books, and eventually not many people will miss them.

Re: books selling out. That info alone isn't really a good indicator of the state of the market. In addition, you need to know the size of the print run. Fallen Angel sold out at my LCS, but they only carried maybe 3 copies. Compare that to the 20 copies of X-Whatever, 16 of which get sold, and while Fallen Angel has indeed "sold-out," all of here know the value of that phrase.

So while books do indeed sell out, when they only have print runs of 20,000, compared to the 100,000+ (or whatever the numbers from the 90s were), you can truly see how the market has shrunk.

Craig's point about the hours of play you can get from a video game is a well-made one. We did some of that math, comparing our favorite X-Box games against a movie night out. Even at a matinee, my wife and I spend over $20 for around a 2 hour event (she has to have popcorn). That's about $10 an hour for the pair of us.

Compare that to Jade Empire for Xbox. We both played, it took over 20 hours total, each, for us to complete it, for around $50. For the 40 hours we played and enjoyed that game, it cost us $1.25 an hour. And that's only if we each play it through once, as many games like that have a high-replayability, bringing the per-hour cost down even more. Was it as mentally stimulating or engrossing as a well-written comic? Probably not, but then again, the story from a well-made game like Jade Empire is in most ways better than the average comic, and on a par with some of the best.

And I'm someone that loves to read a good story. For today's kids, raised on twitch games and instant access to information and entertainment, comics really have to do a better job of bringing them into the hobby, and keeping them there, if they are to survive.

"One last thought--I've noticed kind of a disturbing trend among those who read and those who don't. Everyone seems to want to closely guard what they like and never venture into anything new."

Well yeah, except that extends to readers as well. As much as they talk the talk of wanting stuff that's new and different, the walk they walk is directly toward that which is old and steadfast. Not only will they not put down money on someting new, but the existence of new and different oftentimes doesn't even register on their consciousness.

I've mentioned it before, but I'll bring it up again: I was at San Diego last year, and there were so many people coming up to me expressing excitement about my return to Hulk and about Madrox. "We read everything you write," they said. And I'd ask every single person who said this the same thing: "Do you read Fallen Angel?" Of every ten people, nine returned blank looks. (I suspect if I'd brought up Soulsearchers, the number would have gone up to ten for ten). They'd never heard of the series even though it had been coming out for over a year, had gotten rave critical notices, and I'd been pushing it endlessly everywhere I could.

That's my target audience, and even THEY weren't trying it.

PAD

I've read all of the John Gardner and Raymond Benson Bond novels, and have only now back-tracked to read the Fleming novels, and they're still enjoyable despite being somewhat "dated". I've never seen any of the Holmes films, but have read all the stories.

Sometimes, it’s a sad thing to realize that, and understand that I am making a generalization here, kids are more likely to know their way around a computer or gaming console before they read a book, and thus may be unaware to the power of their own imagination (after all, no matter who EON ultimately decide to cast, in my mind whenever I read a Bond novel, the representation will always be Pierce Brosnan). No matter how much money ILM puts into special effects, it can never equate to the unlimited FX budget of the human mind.

While games and movies are entertaining, with the plethora of visual medium available, literally, at one's fingertips, I fear that reading is starting to take a downward spiral. Why see an artist's rendering of "Spider-Man" when you can make him do all sorts of things on your TV sets. Just another way of making the source material obsolete.

I can't really tell if comics are going downhill or not. I myself am losing interest in the BIG EVENTS and concentrating more on the "smaller" mainstream titles like She-Hulk and Defenders. (And all of PAD's books, of course, but I wouldn't call those "smaller.") Six months of tie-in books is a little much for me. I really want Superman and Wonder Woman to get back to their own storylines.

"Well yeah, except that extends to readers as well"

He said "among readers". Good point though.

Also, just saw the nice X-Factor interview on Newsarama. Looking forward to it.

Give an 8 year old a Spider Man comic and watch his head come off his shoulders. Every story line is 6 issues so it can be packaged as a TPB. ALL Marvel characters are so lost in in convoluted, screwed up, re-writen, re-imagined, lost in concept continuity that you need one of those charts like the Russell Crow had in his garage in Beautiful Mind to follow it. How many sons and daughters from alternate universes do the X-Men have? Then a kid reads a couple issues of say Amazing and then the next month he buys Ultimate Spiderman and it's a whole different universe. Never mind if a kid bought Captain America and then bought Ultimates and got an eye full of prick bastard Captain America.

Then the EIC of Marvel says he thinks the 8 year old reader is a myth and doesn't exist and then they want to get Marvel Comics into 7-11 to reach the 8 years old reader.

This company has been rudderless since Jim Shooter left.

I’m fine with the “if there’s no body, he’s not dead” school of thought. That brings a writer a way to bring back a character if he or she proves overwhelmingly popular, without it being an obvious cheat.

On the other hand, if there _is_ a body, then, as the good doctor said, “he’s _dead_, Jim.” Yes, I know the various comicbook companies want to maintain the trademark rights to their characters. Fine. Do so, but you can always have a new person in the costume. Worked fine with Wally West taking over for Barry Allen as the Flash. In fact, I like the idea of characters aging in semi-real time, like in the comic strips _Gasoline Alley_ and _For Better or For Worse_ and in Byrne’s _Generations_ Elseworlds series.

Consider, if you will, Superman’s “death” in 1992. Imagine that Supes had stayed dead, and that the Superboy clone had stepped into his shoes as the new Superman. Everyone knows he’s not the original, so he has to prove himself- to himself and to the world. Granted, DC would probably have had to sacrifice Clark Kent, but they could have kept a character called Supes; and if they’d had the guts to keep the original Kal-El/Clark Supes dead, that would have been a _major_ step forward.

Nothing against Supes, but I refer you again to the prognosis by the good Dr. McCoy. Not only was Supes dead, but they _buried_ him.

More about my thoughts about death in comicbooks (and related issues) can be found in CBG #1599, Pg. 97 (in case my mom is lurking on this board, and is eager to read everything I've written).

Rick

Andi (I think =)
We do act locally every Halloween. We give out comic books rather than candy to the children. It makes our house very popular and we have people coming from a couple of towns over because we give away reading material.
Kath

IN CONCORD with Andy, Jonathon Linder, and Garbonzo, and anyone else who's handed a book or a comic to a kid:

The problem that PAD found was all too familiar to me. I teach in a small rural district, and so work with students from 4th grade to HS seniors. I try to have comics available at all levels (with the ususal censorship headaches from people who don't read anyway).

If Marvel and DC can't seem to market their products in the grocery stores and make them as readily available as chewing gum, we're going to have to get more teachers and librarians to have them available.

Think globally, act locally: our neighbors are political refugees from Liberia with three boys ages 8-15. On impulse I offered them some Spidey comics that I'd bought for my classroom and the youngest started banging on the door to see if I'd remembered to pick up some more. They were shooting hoops Saturday and I walked towards them with the latest Ultimate Spidey, FF, Black Panther & Hulk etc. and they literally dropped everything and came running. It would have done your heart good to see them call back "thank you" over their shoulder because they immediately started flipping through the stack and arguing over who got to read which one first, even the oldest.
Caveat: these are kids that come from a literate background already, At work, the kids who pester me every day to see if I brought the latest issue were the kids who already read other books. (Sadly, the girls loved "Namor", "Thor Son of Asgard" and "Emma Frost" collections but both are defunct. "Runaways" a new favorite for adolescent females here. Any hot tips for popular titles?)

Rich makes Marvel sound exactly like the pre-Crisis DC. I missed most of those books, but I like the Elseworlds idea better: keep one single continuity going in the main books, but allow your artists the ability to still do "What If" books. Marvel sounds like it's got a few universes going, and if it hasn't already happened, then it soon will when some writer will want to mix them in some way. Which can be fun in its own right, but does present a significant barrier to new entrants into the market.

But back on the topic at hand. I am and always have been a very vivacious reader

Thank you thank you thank you for that malapropism. Now I know exactly what I will put in my next personal ad. That's exactly what I am seeking.

To each his or her own, of course, but I never understood this separation between "boy" and "girl" comics. I am female but even when I was a child, I hated the "girl" comics. To me, they were boring and just silly. I have always been interested in "boy" ones. As a German, my first comics I collected were "Silberpfeil" (Silver Arrow), which is a western aimed at children. Then I discovered German translations of Marvel comics. I was around 12 when I started to get the originals, which are freely available in Germany when you know where to look.

Mangas - UGH! :( My husband likes Mangas but they just put me off. I find them extremely sexist. I often leave when he puts them on, I just can`t bear to watch them. They are also often extremely violent, unnecessarily so. Not to mention that I find the extreme style of huge eyes and piggy bank lips extremely ugly.

Quite a few people were mentioning how they think comics (and other stories) could become more attractive so that more people buy them. Speaking for myself, if Spider-Man and his wife become separated again for whatever reason, I will most probably drop the comic. I came back to Spider-Man because I enjoy that pairing immensely and because I like what JMS is doing with the character. Without that, I wouldn`t have ventured further and also subscribed "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man".

What would be worse is if PAD would really kill off Calhoun and/or Shelby in NF for good. To me, they ARE NF and irreplaceable. I am nearly 100 % sure, I would stop buying the books - and I am saying that although they are my favourite books nowadays.

What I am saying is, killing off regular and/or otherwise very popular characters is a very dangerous thing to do and therefore it should only be done if there is a VERY good reason for it. There are numerous other opportunities and ways to create drama. Me personally, I find it much more satisfying and interesting to see how a person survives, deals with what happened and how if affects others. It is much better to allow a good character to grow and evolve instead of sacrificing him or her in a death story that leaves maybe a touching funeral and speeches, some aftermath - and then life goes on. Me as a reader, I don`t find this appealing at all and it also offers much less new or thought provoking. As I keep saying, there is a lot of room between everything is well and being dead. Let the hero suffer and struggle but killing him off is something that should really be the big exception of the rule if it is done at all.

It is better than the vast majority of resurrection stories, too.

I read comics religiously from Junior High through college. X-Men, Avengers, Thor - the usual suspects (Walt Simonson's Thor has to be my all-time favorite run of ANY series - sorry PAD).

Anyway, I gave them up in the early-mid 90s. Part of it was the industry: after the twice-a-month, 4-different-cover X-men, kill Superman marketing ploy, etc. I got turned off. Also, the reasons PAD mentions above: finances. I started a family, had lots of school debt to pay off, etc. I realized I didn't have money to go and burn each and every month indefinitely. Since I quit the monthly reading of the titles, I think I've picked up maybe a dozen individual issues. I doubt I'll ever go back to regular reading.

My daughter is 11. She's not much of a reader, which we'd like to change. She's a good reader and she enjoys it when she does it, but she doesn't pick up books on her own most of the time. She'd rather play with dolls or watch DVDs. Even the Harry Potter books don't make much of a dent - she'd rather wait for the movies.

Peter,
The continuity problem is what ended my obsession with comics. I first started collecting when I was 10 years old,and would read every detail in the comic from the editor's notes to the letters page. If the stories were interesting it made me want to find out what else I has missed, so I would go and buy the issues mentioned in either the notes or by other readers on the letters page. I loved marvel because the continuity seemed so tight. Characters had to have at least some attempt of a logical explanation between events. It was addicting. The marvel universe seemed like one big on-going story. Not anymore. No more footnotes, no more need to check to see if the story jibes with has gone on before. Now Bruce Banner did go to medical school, wolverine after being called "Logan" for years is now "James", Nick Fury is re-created and is now black, why notjust create a whole new character?
Even your recent Hulk/Abomination story left me saying, "huh?". No foot notes to refer to what issue that Dr. Samson & Emil meet or even between what issues. Is this totally new information or is it a recon of a previous story? Emil & Doc Samson exchanged e-mail? I didn't think they had e-mail when these charcaters first appeared. The story would have been more interesting if it could have been placed into the context of existing Hulk history.
Well, that's my gripe. Thanks for reading.

I agree strongly with the segment of the gallery -- Robert Rhodes, Thomas E. Reed, etc. -- who hhave suggested that the barrier to expanding comics readership is primarily in distribution. [And a wave to garbonzo, as I'm also based in Portland....]

Interestingly, back in my college days (early 1980s), you could in fact find comics in your local 7-11 or similar convenience store on a reasonably reliable basis. Which was actually where I started reading comics consistently, though I'd been watching comics-related TV shows for a long while before that.

But that stopped being true some years back -- due largely, I suspect, to the collapse of the "Independent Distributor" network that supplied not just comics, but magazines and mass market paperback books to 7-11s, supermarkets, and other retailers outside the main bookselling/publishing channels. [This is a discussion of long standing in the SF/F writing and publishing community.]

Now, it's not 100% true that you can't find comics in supermarkets these days. The large distributors that have swallowed up the ID channel still handle a very small volume of comics -- so that in, say, Fred Meyer (a large regional grocery/department store chain here in the Northwest), there will be one endcap of comics in a cluster of eight or ten rows of mass market paperbacks. But the selection of those comics is highly erratic, tilted strongly toward media tie-in and young kids' material, and there's no way for a reader to pick up the same title every month on a regular basis. Interestingly, the mix I've seen has included Dark Horse titles -- virtually all Buffy or Star Wars -- a selection of Marvel material, and an increasingly small handful of DC material (emphasis on Cartoon Network kids' titles and a few DC-animated universe books).

What I think comics publishers need is a way around the existing ID channel into mainstream retail outlets -- 7-11 again, yes, but maybe also the video chains (Hollywood, Blockbuster) and game/software outlets (the Babbages/EBX combine).

@Kathleen:

Great idea! I hope many comic book fans are picking up your strategy. Well, we don't celebrate Halloween in Germany, but I work spare time as an English tutor for kids who struggle with their English classes in school and since a few months I'm using American comicbooks (Ultimate Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Sentinel) to make my students read English material. And it's an overall success. They even read more than I expect them to do every week.

But back on the topic at hand. I am and always have been a very vivacious reader

Thank you thank you thank you for that malapropism. Now I know exactly what I will put in my next personal ad. That's exactly what I am seeking.

Hmmm. And what word did I misuse?

One last thought--I've noticed kind of a disturbing trend among those who read and those who don't. Everyone seems to want to closely guard what they like and never venture into anything new.

I'm not sure what "closely guard" means in this case apart from resisting change, but I can certainly speak to the "never venture into anything new" part.

One of the things that is almost guaranteed to get me to try out a new-to-me author (or musician, for that matter) is a personal connection. I picked up a couple of Harry Turtledove novels after seeing him speak at a Loscon. I happened to teach mystery writer Robert Crais' daughter (not having a clue who he was) about a decade ago, and wound up not only buying everything he's ever written, but giving copies as gifts to various people as well. I've lost track of the number of singers we've started following who we saw as opening acts for Dar Williams. (If you've never heard Dar's stuff, go forth and change that. Now.)

At least in my case, I think the main thing keeping me from always looking for something new is just inertia. Some people have a pile of unread books by their bed; I have two bookshelves' full.

Peter's right that there's some basic conservatism (of the non-political variety) at work in most fans, myself no doubt included, but I'd like to think it's not JUST that.

Mark:

I read comics religiously from Junior High through college. X-Men, Avengers, Thor - the usual suspects (Walt Simonson's Thor has to be my all-time favorite run of ANY series - sorry PAD).

Given our clash last time we met on a thread here, I'm happy to agree with that last sentiment wholeheartedly. Walt's Thor was lightning in a bottle. That early-to-mid-'80s period was a really solid time for Marvel, though: you had Byrne on FF, Walt on Thor, Peter on Spectacular, Roger Stern on Spider-Man and Avengers ... hell, even DeFalco succeeding Stern on Amazing Spider-Man, which is about the only sustained run DeFalco's had that I ever liked.

I never quit buying monthlies the way you did, but the early-to-mid '90s saw me pruning a lot. I think there was a brief period when I was down to only two Marvels a month -- Peter's Hulk and Kurt Busiek's Untold Tales of Spider-Man. (Lots of other books, though, many of them Vertigo.)

With a 1-year-old and a new house, it's possible that finances are going to force us to cut comics way back or out, but I'm hopeful we can avoid that. I'm looking forward to being able to let Katherine read things like Bone or Leave It to Chance (or Owly, of more recent stuff), just for starters.

On PAD's Fallen Angel "whuzzat?" story -- believe me, I sympathize, but I really don't know that the problem there can be laid primarily at the readers' door. I think DC did a lousy job marketing it from the get-go. I knew about it because I hang out here (and because the people running my then-LCS are good comics geeks and knew your stuff well), but I'm not surprised it didn't make its way into fan consciousness.

If the Spike one-shot for IDW does well (and the publicity you got for it in TV Guide bodes well), with luck that'll draw a lot of people over to the relaunch.

TWL

But back on the topic at hand. I am and always have been a very vivacious reader

Thank you thank you thank you for that malapropism. Now I know exactly what I will put in my next personal ad. That's exactly what I am seeking.

Hmmm. And what word did I misuse?

You meant "voracious", as in "eagerly consuming". "Vivacious" means "spirited" or "lively", which makes for an interesting mental image, but from context isn't what you were after...

Nope. I stand by what I said. Voracious may have been a more appropriate word to use, but vivacious is perfectly acceptable. Google “vivacious reader” and you will find many people describing themselves and others as such, including Ken Follet:

“Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.”

"I think we should give the 7 year old a pass. Kids that young don't really read anything."

My five-year-old and his collection of Captain Underpants books (hey, it's superheroes, that's close enough) would disagree.
;-)

Anyway, I haven't read all the messages in this discussion yet, but one of the things that annoys me about the comic book industry today is the lack of new-reader-friendly titles. Aside from the Justice League comic based on the animated show, I can't think of a mainstream superhero title that I can easily find and toss at a budding reader to hook 'em. DC's animated Superman and Batman titles were a great idea, IMO, and Marvel had their Star Comics line from the '80s, but these days? Pfffle.

I'll gladly buy comics for my kid as soon as the big two start making comics I can buy for my kid.

--R.J.

Google “vivacious reader” and you will find many people describing themselves and others as such, including Ken Follet:

I'm with OtherJonathan here -- first of all, a hair over 100 results for "vivacious reader" on Google strikes me as very low considering the size of the Internet (I get more hits than that Googling my name!), and second, it's clear from a look at the context in which the phrase is used that a sizeable percentage of the users are in fact confusing "vivacious" with "voracious".

As a malapropism, "vivacious reader" is clever; as straight description, I think it severely stretches credibility.

"Aside from the Justice League comic based on the animated show, I can't think of a mainstream superhero title that I can easily find and toss at a budding reader to hook 'em. DC's animated Superman and Batman titles were a great idea, IMO, and Marvel had their Star Comics line from the '80s, but these days? Pfffle."

Well, for what it's worth, that was the mandate for "Young Justice." To write a team book that would skew young, pull in younger readers and serve as a feeder book to "Teen Titans."

That's what I wrote. That's what DC wanted. And then they canceled it, apparently deciding that they preferred the idea of "Teen Titans Go!" being the feeder book into "Teen Titans." Actually, the editor of TTG wanted me to write for it...but then she was fired, as was the case with just about every other DC editor I've ever worked with, so that never happened.

PAD

Vivacious reader sounds like something Mike Tyson would say. And that's not really a compliment.

And the definition of “gay” was “happy” until a sizeable percentage of users decided otherwise. You say potato…

But, hey, if you want to nitpick, go for it.

People have to remember, kids don't read comics, teens do. That should be the target audience for "jump on point" books. You can't expect a 7-year-old to read the comics because
1)he probably has no money
2)he probably hates reading
3)most comics have overly complex storylines and subplots from 50 issues before and that is too much for most kids to handle.
4)he is probably under the ideas that elementary school kids have that now that they're in school they're grown up and have to give up their kiddie things (with the exception of comic book movies which seem to be mature, unlike the comics they're based on.)

Trying to get a teenager into comics is always easier. Trust me, being one and having gotten many of my friends into comics i know. This is so because by the time one's a teenager they've developed their own voice and personality which can be used to get them into comics. If they're goth give them vertigo titles, if the prefer fantasy then give them Top Cow and Aspen, if they're religious give them PAD's Supergirl run. Not saying that you shouldn't try getting kids into comics, but its a lot easier to hook the teens (especially since they actually have their own money.)

-Lawrence

Wolfman, last I checked (30 seconds ago) "gay" still could mean happy. The fact that it can also be used to mean homosexual doesn't change the fact that vivacious only has one definition, that being "lively in temper, conduct, or spirit : SPRIGHTLY"

Explain to me what it means to be a vivacious reader? If you mean you read in a sprightly manner, then explain to me what that means. That you read happily?

Because the sense that I get is that people are meaning to say they are voracious readers, but don't realize they are using the wrong word. Which is something Tyson does a lot of. And gets a lot of ridocule aimed at him for it, as it shows a gleeful lack of vocabulary.

It's not me saying poTAYto, and you saying poTAHto...it's me saying potato, and you saying limestone, with you trying to tell me that limestone = potato just because some other people are using it that way.

The talk of continuity makes me wonder about the relative lengths of the various ages of comics - you know, your Silver Age, Golden Age, etc. The current age we're in, how long has it been going on? I know most of these ages were not clearly began and ended with a single event, but could it be time to move on from certain things? I've read comics off and on since I was little, and collect about 6 titles regularly, plus probably a varying but close number of miniseries and one-shots each month. One, yeah, it costs a little too much; these books should be about $2, and if that's not enough to cover production costs, maybe the publishers need to think about going to a lower, yet more affordable quality. If you want to keep collectors, then keep the glossy acetate-blah-blah-blah. If you want to get new readers, especially kids, then go back to something like the 80's or the quality of paper in say a Harry Potter book; the smart retailer will remember to recommend the bag & board to keep the comic safe from the ravages of time. Think about that: your average comic book is made with materials that will last a lot longer than your average paperback, yet which theoretically should be designed to be around for quite a while?

There are never guarantees with digital copies. It's why I'm still hesitant to use iTunes, and am thoroughly disgusted with my experiences with MLB.com.

Can't speak towards MLB.com...but I have had success burning CDs with tunes I've downloaded from ITunes...and those CDs will last awhile, even with repeated us. And I don't know what the deal with Walmart is, but I can play an ITunes song 2 seconds after it's been downloaded.

Actually, Jason, there are a handful of DC titles that are right at that $2 mark, at least after the 10% discount I get for putting a title on hold at my LCD. But unfortunately, they seem to be the exception.

Does anyone know of anywhere online one can go for brief plot summaries for issues of major comic book titles?

I'm thinking along the lines of the Soap Opera Digest columns in newspapers (if those are still done...I never read them, but remember seeing them.)

These would make it so much easier to collect just one title -- and still follow the plot line -- what with all the crossovers DC and Marvel loves.

Google “vivacious reader” and you will find many people describing themselves and others as such, including Ken Follet:

Last post on this digression -- in this case, to correct an error of fact. Noted author Ken Follett did not use the phrase "vivacious reader"; the original quote can be found on his Web site, here, and says "voracious". (Note that all instances of the misquoted version also misspell the author's last name, which is what prompted me to check further.)

Confession: At age 30, I've only really been into comics for the last few years. Before that, I'd tried a few graphic novels. That changed a few years ago, when I got hooked by FABLES, FALLEN ANGEL and ALIAS (Bendis, not Jennifer Garner).

My son, age 6, adores superheroes. He watches all the movies. I got him a few comics at Free Comic Book Day because they were definitely uber-safe, being reprints from a zillion years ago. He loved them, not understanding the stories in the slightest. He doesn't quite read yet, but he loves flipping through my "Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth" book.

The problem is, most of the comics I see are not appropriate for him. Not just violence or sexuality, but a complexity of storyline that is obviously intended for teens or adults. This is not a bad thing - it's great for us! - but it won't hook a six-year-old.

How to hook those young kids? Write for them. Make the stories kid-safe, about issues they understand. Make them relatively self-contained for kids who a) can't afford or b) don't have transportation to the local comic shop on a regular basis. Remember that kids can't drive? And all the comic shops in my area, at least, are on busy highways in major shopping/retail areas, far away from any kid's area of bicyclage.

My young niece, age 8, reads Archie comics. I'd absolutely love to get her hooked on a truly kickass heroine, someone to help counteract the Barbie and Bratz influence in her very pink life. Where is the young Buffy of comic books, minus the gore?

No, that's a real question. I hope some here will recommend young-people comics that we can buy our children. Nothing would make me happier than to hook them on the graphic world.

P.S. I've read Fleming, though any relationship between his books and the movies is at best coincidental. Hey, I even tried to read Tom Clancy, and escaped with my sanity intact.

Given our clash last time we met on a thread here, I'm happy to agree with that last sentiment wholeheartedly.

Tim - no problems here. We can disagree politically and still have the same hobbies. And if I get a little hot headed from time to time, well, I suppose I can always use the catch-all Trek phrase: I'm only human.

With a 1-year-old and a new house, it's possible that finances are going to force us to cut comics way back or out, but I'm hopeful we can avoid that.

Well, you've got one advantage: you are a lot more established in life and career when you started with the kids - we started right away on all of it - while still trying to retire debt.

I've got the money now to pick up on comics again if I wanted to, I just don't have the desire. Like one reader above mentioned, after a while, all the retcons get old. Comics are very much like soap operas: you have to commit to them nearly 100% to keep up or else you get bored very quickly.

The stuff I pick up to read/listen to these days are easy, quick novels(a Trek novel or Harry Potter, for example), or sometimes history (I've picked up a fascinating audio book on t