I will always say that the decline before more recent times was not inevitable. There have been choices made over the years that have piled up, by the heads of the industry and the creators themselves, that have lead the books to the state that they are in today. Add in the inexorable changes that happen as time marches on in cultures and you are left with the situation as it is today. NOW it indeed might be too late, but if they had done one or two things different then who knows what shape the comic book world would be in?
What hit me a while back, and I mean like 10-12 years or so, was I was in a book store (yeah... again talk about going the way of the Dodo) and I had gone in just to kill time waiting for a movie to start in downtown Brooklyn. Maybe I'd find a book for later, maybe catch up on something with a graphic novel. I got to the Marvel/DC graphic novel/collection section. The usual suspects abounded. DC section was Batman (TDKReturns, Knightfall, Arkham Asylum), GL (this was around the Johns revival) Sandman, Swamp Thing, Morrison's JLA, Death Of Superman and some other Supes collection. Marvel was represented by Age of Apocalypse collections, Avengers Disassembled collection, Spidey, Spidey, Spidey, Wolverine, a couple of Punishers. All in all the section was small with little variety, just the most obvious choices from the most high profile names. Yet, why so small if these were the biggest names?
Then I saw this place also sold manga... JESUS CHRIST the manga section just went on and on, row after row, shelve after shelve. Now... I will be the first to admit, I think manga/anime fans think they have a bigger impact on the pop culture than they actually do. They have an illusion of ubiquity because they go to a shop and meet like minded fans or they interact online. But it's not as wide or as deep a fandom in the greater pop universe as they would like to think... All that said though let's understand... Manga franchises prove that a print medium for young and all ages material is viable. I mean breaking it down to brass tacks, we are talking about stories mostly printed in black and white and printed to be read left to right often. You actually have to relearn the process of reading graphic material to enjoy this stuff, and as a consumer of my fair share of SHONEN JUMP, Naruto, Hikaru No Go ect. I know of the genre's appeals and pleasures. But think about that for a second, beyond stories or tone or content or even execution, you have American young people of different stripes reading something that mostly has no color, printed on cheap paper and as a bonus degree of difficulty they have to relearn how to read in the process.... And it sells like gangbusters!
So... When people say that young people are leaving comic books just because it's old hat compared to video games or other media I call BS. No... The problem is a problem of consistency of quality, and price. Price is really important. Look, I know that the creators need to be taken care of. I know that for years they were treated horrible and now there are considerations like health care ect. to take into account. Still... $5, even $3 for 22 to 32 pages is not a bargain by any measure. Compare that to what a kid is going to get in terms of volume of product with manga, and it's no contest what a savvy young person is going to do. I can read 32 pages of Batman (2 of which are dedicated to telling me his origin AGAIN) or I could buy a SHONEN JUMP for the same price and get a mini-phone book of stories and characters. We were all 12-15 once... What would you choose with limited funds? I think that the companies need to look at maybe going to a less glossy style. Go back to a product that doesn't require the sophistication of production that magazine paper modern comics require. Maybe adapt something similar to manga, only with color. Yeah, the artists will have to adapt and go back to a simpler style and not have access to the coloring/shading we have now. Save that for special projects ect. if people could afford to buy comics they would buy more. As it stands, they won't take a chance on newer titles for the reason of cost, and young people can't get into them for the same reason. It's not a question of "continuity" or character history being a problem. It's not stopped manga, and manga/anime has the added hurdle of cultural translation. But that doesn't matter in a world with the Internet. One wiki search and anybody can get caught up on continuity. Add in, manga doesn't have a merry go round of creators. Back in the day comic book writers and artists had LONG runs on books. Chris Claremont steered the mutants for almost two decades practically. There's going to be a consistent vision for the consumer with that. Manga is usually a long story told by the property's creator. Now I'm not saying American comics should do that, but keeping a creative team around to see things through would be nice. And not having continuity blown up every three years would also be nice, and not having to pay insane prices for a wide selection of characters would also be nice. Comics tackles these issues head on and it's in a way better place than it is right now... But it may be too late. This is something they should have taken steps about a decade or more ago.
I fear that the America comic book is going to die sooner than later and that these characters, handled so well in their home media not that long ago historically, will only thrive financially in the world of film and television and games. Something uniquely American, like Jazz and Rock and Roll will have been lost.
