Broken Frontier

There is a crash coming, and I’m not talking about the stock market.

No, in this particular instance, I’m referring to the comic book industry… our passion, our hobby, and when the books are good, our best friend.

I don’t need to remind anybody of the great collapse of the 1990’s where our beloved comics where almost destroyed forever. Like an inopportune fire that engulfed our collection and turned it to ashes, excess and overindulgence, whether it was in the form of variant foil covers or ridiculously large paychecks for artists/creators, nearly cost us our entire childhood. Marvel went bankrupt, heroes traded in tights for bizarre futuristic (and generally metallic) digs, and stories fell flat all across the industry. Publishers stopped caring about the content and focused all of their attention on the units sold. It was an ugly time for comics… a true dark period, and although I don’t own a crystal ball, I can’t help but see history repeating itself again.

I work in the comic industry, making a living as a creator and writer, while also serving as Assistant Publisher at Viper Comics. Even more so than a year ago, it’s a good time for us… creators and publishers alike. Mass appeal in comics and graphic novels continues to rise, and for the first time in a long time, kids seem to be putting down their Wii’s and X-Boxes in order to take up reading… even if it is for a little while. What’s the explanation behind the sudden interest in what we’re doing? Hollywood.

Nowadays a publisher doesn’t make the majority of its profit off of book sales, but instead, relies on the licensing of the properties they produce to the world of film, television, video games, etc. With Hollywood productions based on comic book characters raking in the cash in both the domestic and international box offices, every producer with a million dollar bank account is swooping down to capture the next big thing, which means, everyone with an idea they deem worth for the big screen is trying produce a comic first. That brings us to the frightening prospect of over saturating.

Take a look at your favorite publisher. What was once a roster filled with famed comic book writers known only by fanboys like you and I is now a slate of Hollywood heavyweights from Nicolas Cage to Guy Ritchie to Joss Whedon. And those are just the names you’re familiar with. For every Rosario Dawson, there’s a “writer of the Family Guy” or “producer of Jake 2.0” who doesn’t have name recognition on his or her side, but who is still making a jump into the comic book industry in order to reverse engineer their ideas. What’s that mean, you ask?

Well, reverse engineering means that the writer/creators in question tried to sell their idea for film or TV and it didn’t stick, so now they’re making it a graphic novel to ensure that they can then sell it for film or TV on the backend once it’s produced in a printed format. In theory it’s a great, somewhat inexpensive idea in comparison to Hollywood standards, but at the same time, I fear it will also be our industry’s next big downfall.

As writers and creators continue to pour into our industry (taking jobs from the writers who have been doing it for years, mind you), the amount of content the publishers are producing is skyrocketing, which means two things: They’re spending more and taking more risks, AND, with more books in the marketplace, less units of each title are being sold, forcing us to rely on the licensing as opposed to making it an additional income source. With all eggs being put into the Hollywood basket, what happens when Hollywood stops calling?

Like I said, it’s a great time for us, but I also know that with every mighty rise comes a mighty fall. It may not happen next year or two years from now, but it will no doubt be at our footsteps the minute movies based on comics and graphic novels stop turning a profit. And when that happens, how will the publishers, and after trickling down the line, the creators, survive?

To be continued…