Thoughts on expanding the comic market
I was having this discussion at my LCBS today, and here’s some things I think can help increase the wider market —
Mainly, reduce the cost of comics by bringing back the cheaper paper, 3rd party advertising, and newsstand sales. This, as a second order affect, will increase the cost of comics later down the line, as if less of them last because reading them has a higher chance of damaging them, and thereby people are more encouraged to roll them up and put them in their back pocket.
Treat every comic like it’s someone’s first. I just read FF 381 and I, within the first few pages, knew exactly what was going on, who the relationships were with, and the wider story, without having read a book 100 issues either side of this one in a decade. Hard to get what’s going on in Iron Man #5 from this year if you didn’t read the first 4, even more so with some other titles.
Start targeting kids again. Comics were clearly targeted at kids and teens until the 2000s. Every ad was for kids toys, movies/tv shows, and story’s were less serious. The Batman Adventures comes to mind as a great kids comic with the TV show tie in. Put kid focused stories in front of kids at grocery stores so the read base grows decades from now.
I’m sure there’s a million reasons why all these can’t be done, but what do you think? Looking for other ideas for & against!