Yeah, I wonder how the board game division at IDW is doing. Not sure what very successful games they have besides Machi Koro.
Seems like a lot of the US comics publishers are making most of their money from other things that aren’t actually comics. TV/movie licenses, games, toys, etc. This strategy only works when you own the rights because the comics are where the IP originated. You can take a loss on the comics themselves if it pays off elsewhere.
IDW does the opposite. They are a a licensor, not a licensee. They’re paying for licenses in hopes that those will boost the sales of the comics. If comics aren’t selling, then those license fees become painful.
Manga publishers can afford to pay licensing fees since their books are actually selling very very well.
The NYT graphic books + manga best selling list has been dominated by manga and kids stuff (mostly Dav PIlkey) for what seems like years now. Even Ducks by Kate Beaton didn’t crack the list, and it’s probably going to win a pile of Eisner awards this summer.
Exactly. Marvel and DC basically use their comics as idea farms for movies and TV shows. Image hopes that one of their titles gets picked up and blows up like The Walking Dead or Invincible. Because IDW is a licensor, like you wrote, that puts them in the opposite situation.
American comics have always struggled to one degree or another, especially compared to manga and children’s stuff. The industry has need to to adapt and change for a long time, but it’s been mostly resistant.
I guess we’ll see what happens, but I think we’re just going to see the continued decline of American comics, and them basically turning into content farm for other media.
There was a legitimate boom in the golden age. There was a second speculator’s boom in the '90s. And there was another boom of actual quality content in the Vertigo era.
I believe there is a future for English language, non-superhero, long-ish form graphic storytelling to make money. It’s just now now. Now is I think another one of the dark times, at least capitalism wise. If you consider all the comics being made in all forms, money or not, then it’s quite the opposite of a dark time.
Whether you knew McGinty or not (I personally had no clue who he was until his death was reported), please read the article in the above post, and also give the post a heart. It’s a truly inspiring read.
The sad reality is that there’s no answer for this other than the end of capitalism and public funding of the arts. The publishers can’t pay the artist more because there isn’t more to give them. The comics themselves don’t generate enough revenue.
Let’s say you had the worlds least evil publisher. They sell your book. They keep money to cover the cost of printing, distributing, marketing, the salaries of the staff at the publishing house, etc. after those expenses they give literally every extra penny to the artists. Those artist will still be struggling mightily unless they produce a tremendous hit book.
That’s exactly the same circumstance we have now. Artists struggle mightily unless they have a best seller.
Some blame is correctly laid at the publishers, but not much. The only hope is to get more people to pay more money to read comics. Good luck with that.
Over the past week I read Scurry, an excellent adventure story starring mice. The main character is Wix, a scavenger/scout for a colony of mice living in an abandoned house. His task was a lot easier before, but recently seemingly all the humans have gone away, food is getting very scarce, winter has lasted a lot longer than it should, and now there seems to be something even more dangerous than the alley cats and predatory birds around.
I was originally pointed the way of the comic by one of Overly Sarcastic Productions Trope Talks on Small Mammals on a Big Adventure comparing it with stories that feature much more “humanlike” animals, though Scurry falls much more on the Watership Down side of the spectrum. In particularly Red (the presenter of Trope Talks) called Scurry called the story a unique example of “dramatic irony cosmic horror”, as the circumstances I described above are very obvious to what is going on to us human being readers, but would be nigh incomprehensible to a mouse. While I can understand this description in practice the story is much less horrifying than it makes it seem, but perhaps that is also perspective at work.
In any case, this is a great little adventure story that I can highly recommend. The plot is not earthshattering aside of the setup, but it features a lot of fun and interesting characters. And the art in particular is just absolutely gorgeous, with breathtaking scenery and great action sequences.
Scurry can be read as the web comic it was originally published as, but I just bought a trade paperback and absolutely do not regret the decision.