Why aren't comics as popular any more?

Young men of your generation are too busy playing with my little pony dolls and dressing up as them to have any interest in superheroes.

Honestly comic books have never appealed to me. Mostly because there's no straight forward story line with most franchises, that and there's too many spin-offs, and crossovers. Plus most of these franchises have been going on for years, so you have to play catch-up first in order to get on the same page. It just seems so convoluted when it should be simple.xdude85

Agreed. I liked Spiderman comics when I was a kid but now I have no idea wtf is going on in any of the new comics.

Young men of your generation are too busy playing with my little pony dolls and dressing up as them to have any interest in superheroes.

sonicare

If this were Facebook I would "like" this comment.

Young men of your generation are too busy playing with my little pony dolls and dressing up as them to have any interest in superheroes.

sonicare

:lol: I'm still not totally sure what that is. Some kids show? All I know is the constant pictures of cutesy horses with unfunny captions are annoying.

[QUOTE="sonicare"]

Young men of your generation are too busy playing with my little pony dolls and dressing up as them to have any interest in superheroes.

Optical_Order

:lol: I'm still not totally sure what that is. Some kids show? All I know is the constant pictures of cutesy horses with unfunny captions are annoying.

It's a cartoon and toy line marketed towards pre-teen girls.

[QUOTE="Optical_Order"]

[QUOTE="sonicare"]

Young men of your generation are too busy playing with my little pony dolls and dressing up as them to have any interest in superheroes.

worlock77

:lol: I'm still not totally sure what that is. Some kids show? All I know is the constant pictures of cutesy horses with unfunny captions are annoying.

It's a cartoon and toy line marketed towards pre-teen girls.

Oy vey...

They are more popular than before... especially with all the comic movies coming out.

The older generation reads comics more than the youth because of gaming, anime, manga... you don't find lots of teens excited to read nowadays, which is why DC/MARVEL started selling comics through tablets digitally to appeal to the more techy generation.

For me it's always going to be getting my comics up front at the LCS(local comic shop).

P.S. - Graphic Novels are usually the collected stories from the comics in a hardcover book. Instead of reading the story issue by issue, you get the whole story in one sitting.

what comic book shop do you go to? the one i go to is so packed sometimes you can't go 5 feet without bumping someone

what comic book shop do you go to? the one i go to is so packed sometimes you can't go 5 feet without bumping someone

mlbslugger86

:? The ones in my area went out of business.

While comics are cheap you'd spend thousands trying to get caught up to this year from the beginning... especially since all of the characters are intertwined with each other... take a marvels spider man for instance if you want to just read nothing but spiderman you'd be confused due to the crossovers... I personally like the crossovers but I gained all of my knowledge from reading written summaries and not the actual comics... I think if they just took every comic before 1990's and had them free to read online but cost to buy then more people can get into the comics now a days...jeremiah06

Thing about comics, you don't have to read the past stories to get into the characters.

I started reading comics in '05.

I just grabbed the Batman: Gotham Knights book and started from there... had no clue who Hush was or anything. I got the Hush trade, then from there continued with the series til it was cancelled.

Then jumped on Green Lantern with the Sinestro Corps War and Nightwing with the Renegade storyline. Both series I just continued from those points. I got into Aquaman during the Infinite Crisis event which is the first time I actually went back and started getting back issues.

In the end it's all about personal preference/interest. If you really want to - you can go back and read the old stories. But comics are set up to move forward and usually are new-reader friendly. There will always be characters/storylines you don't know about but in this day and age, you can wiki just about anything and be up to speed in minutes.

Movies, Cartoons, and the Internet.

/Thread.

They never caught my attention.

DC's New 52 is doing really well. I saw some #s the other day and sales were double and triple for some books.

My favorites of the bunch so far are:

Swamp Thing

Batman

Action Comics

Anmal Man

Justice League

Aquaman

I was big into Marvel for a while, then JRJR starting doing the *ahem* "art" for quite a few series. Then my interest died. Lack of consistency. The stories jump from one place to another at random, and the artists change at least twice a month on everything at times. Sometimes some kid even poops on the comics. (JRJR)RandoIph

JRJR = John Romita Jr?

[QUOTE="RandoIph"]I was big into Marvel for a while, then JRJR starting doing the *ahem* "art" for quite a few series. Then my interest died. Lack of consistency. The stories jump from one place to another at random, and the artists change at least twice a month on everything at times. Sometimes some kid even poops on the comics. (JRJR)worlock77

JRJR = John Romita Jr?

DC's New 52 is doing really well. I saw some #s the other day and sales were double and triple for some books.cmpepper23

[QUOTE="cmpepper23"]

DC's New 52 is doing really well. I saw some #s the other day and sales were double and triple for some books.RandoIph

Agree. He doesn't look like a WWE wrestler anymore. That's the vibe his suit always gave me before. It flows now if that makes sense.

I'd say they have gone down in popularity because writing and therefor the charecters have become decidely worse over the last 15 years. 15 to 20 years ago (lets use Wolverine as an example) wolverine was in just a few books a month and he was pretty much always written in charecter because writers and artist stayed on books far far longer than they do now (think clarmont and byrne on xmen). Fast forward to today He's in 10 comics a month written and drawn by different writers and artist in different storylines. Also now one month you get the canadian bar room brawler who's always drunk from one writer and three months later you get the australian samuri who lives for honor, but wait he's also the americanized leader of the xmen who have been in space for the last 6 months.... It's very hard to become attached to people who change in both attitude, story and charecter so often.

Also throw in that they are just way to expensive now, as a child I remember buying them for 60 cents to 75 cents, now they often hit the $5.00 mark because "this issue is a special in some way". That said at the height of my collecting I was getting well over 100 titles a month (around 130 I think). I've since dropped down to around the 10 issues a month mark and from here I may someday drop to about 5, but not below that ever.

As far as some people mentioning digital, I'll not go digital unless I absolutely have to for one huge reason. Years and years ago it was all over the industry that comics were getting so expensive because of the paper, ink, shipping blah blah blah... Well we are at the point were you don't have any of those expenses for todays digital comics.... yet the price didn't drop at all... not one penny. Odd. I can on one hand see the reason not to have it lower, but then on the other hand I can see 10 reasons it should be lower. The point is, it was always said that the physical product was the problem why they got so expensive in the first place, now after doing away with that problem they should have the balls to lower the price.

[QUOTE="mrmusicman247"][QUOTE="Ilovegames1992"]

My god i hate manga and anime.

Emerald_Warrior

I feel the same way, and I can easily point out my problems with it vs. Western comics:

-It's often too cutesy looking

-It often has goofy moments that I just roll my eyes at.

-I want color, not B&W, this is 2012, not 1951.

-Western comics generally have better looking, more detailed artwork. Manga is often very plain and cartoony looking.

They're more popular than ever. It's just people call them graphic novels now instead.

Pirate700

I don't think there's any american comics coming out right now that aren't horribly generic. They just rehash the same thing over and over -- the same super hero fights the same villain. Most comics just feel cheap, and they outlived their stay long ago. I'd like to see comics without a super hero for a change, that might get me into buying them. Not sure if those are produced.Lethalhazard

I don't think there's any american comics coming out right now that aren't horribly generic. They just rehash the same thing over and over -- the same super hero fights the same villain. Most comics just feel cheap, and they outlived their stay long ago. I'd like to see comics without a super hero for a change, that might get me into buying them. Not sure if those are produced.Lethalhazard

The last comic book I collected was Sgt Rock a long long time ago....and only those illustrated by Russ Heath.

Edit: There's not many like Russ Heath anymore.

i would read comics s they werent so expensive and hard to find issue #1 so i can start at the begining, and im too lazy to download them so instead i just read a book or two every year

I don't think there's any american comics coming out right now that aren't horribly generic. They just rehash the same thing over and over -- the same super hero fights the same villain. Most comics just feel cheap, and they outlived their stay long ago. I'd like to see comics without a super hero for a change, that might get me into buying them. Not sure if those are produced.Lethalhazard

You don't read comics because there are TONS and I mean TONS of non-superhero comics.

DC and Marvel have books not centered around their stable characters.

If you want GRITTY and HARDCORE books, not superhero related check out Vertigo Comics, IDW, and Image.