With the Internet, Cellphones, and other technologies in the last decade and a half, I wonder if comic book collecting is going to become a thing of the past? At least in terms of how we know it.
I’ll qualify that statement in these factors:
A. Comic book costs per issue vs trade paperbacks
B. Digital comics, and information gathering
C. Collectors aging and a new generation of readers
Let’s start with A. At what is going to be a standard before we know it of $3.99 a comic issue. I wonder how many readers will drop books and just stop collecting? I for one have dropped more and more books as prices went up. I’ve come to a point of being a very selective buyer.
I’m an old school reader in that I could never picture, or would ever want to charge a comic book purchase on a credit card. Yet in the store I regularly see guys, mostly in suits charge their per issue stack for the week comics on a credit card.
Comic Books are a luxury expense, and as readers get older they have more responsibilities in terms of what they spend money on. And I think comics per issue are now pushing that boundary of making collectors realize: Are they just spending out of habit? Is what they are buying giving them a satisfying experience for the cost they paid?
With paperbacks / hardcovers and other collected editions becoming popular. It really takes the punch out of buying comics per issue. Also these collections can easily be displayed on a book shelf, and not the traditional comic box.
B. Digital Comics and Information gathering. This is really changing the comic book scene. Publishers are dabbling in the digital comics media. But they are way behind the times because fans have already been publishing their books in an underground free market. Think of the original Napster and music of over a decade ago, before music got regulated online with a system of pay per download. Comic publishers now are still in the same place the music industry was back then. And even as we speak, they have not really adapted a viable digital option that really works well.
Also financially their are way more benefits in publishing printed comic books, then in publishing digital comics. If they offer both to a buyer, chances are the buyer will stick with the cheaper online versions.
This will then only cause the publishers to lose more readers of their printed books. Sure they will make some profit with the online sales. But not enough, and not nearly as good as the published book sales.
Also publishing web comics is changing the market because it gives a chance for self motivated people to publish their own website only comic books. With the Internet, an individual creator can make a name for themselves and their work. Plus your audience is potentially worldwide. Not restricted by any country. And it’s also practically free. It only costs you buying a URL name and website hosting. None of the expensive costs that printing would cost you.
In this way, online comics and digital downloads are more beneficial to individual creators and small publishers. Then they are to big comic book publishers.
Also comic book news hits the Internet so fast, it has made published comic book magazines such as Wizard Magazine extinct. Their is nothing, for example in a Wizard Magazine that is hot news that we didn’t know about months ago online.
Plus comic book fans have become online communities. Before the Internet fans met and talked who met in the stores. Or through traditional mail. With the Internet, communication lines have changed the comic book culture as we know it.
My last point of C. Collectors aging and a new generation of readers. I know people have complained that we are one of the last breeds of buyers and their are no new generations coming in to replace us.
I just don’t buy that argument and it is not going to happen. Their will always be a new generation of buyers, so long as their are still comic book publishers making books.
What will happen is that comic book publishing might become even more niche and the market place may shrink down and become small.
But their is a big difference between that and the whole industry as we know it gone.
Also with the ability to create digital comic books, even if the industry did collapse and become extinct. That does not mean that the art form we call comic books would then become extinct.
Fans and creators would just publish their issues in online books and digital downloads. And they would create their own printed comic books. Sure the quality might be cheaper and not as good as a top publisher in quality, but it would still be a comic book.
The title of my post was wondering if comic book collecting is becoming extinct? I think the traditional style of it has already. Getting comic book news almost instantly as it happens because of the Internet. Comic book communities online. And comics moving more into the digital front, and trade formats, and the rising costs per issue are changing the traditional comic book collecting style.
In a future post I’ll talk about my collection of comic book boxes and wondering at what point is it time to sell your collection and make way for other things?
What killed comic book collecting in my view is the whole “slabbing” trend. Aside from the fact doing so permanently makes the comics inaccessible (you might as well just be buying the cover), it also completely disenfranchised casual and beginning collectors who could afford boards and mylar bags but can’t afford – nor do they want to pay – the fee to slab. It wrecked it for me. If I came across the real Action #1 (not the faker that’s going to replace it this fall according to DC), OK I’d slab that. But I’m seeing people slabbing comics right off the rack from today. They won’t have any collector value. When modern comics go all-digital, which I sadly foresee, collecting of real, permanent comics might spike for a bit. But they need to do something about the whole slabbing thing.