13. The Current State of the Comic Book Industry

In this week’s episode, we talk about the current state of the comic book industry. We cover topics that include: the price of comics, trade paperbacks and omnibuses, telling a good story, artists deserve to get paid, and more.

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:24 James introduces our topic: the current state of the comic book industry. He then throws it over to Joe to talk about Joe’s history working for bookstores, selling books, and owning Mint Condition.

5:28 Chris thanks Joe for keeping Mint going and talks about how comic book stores continued to thrive during the pandemic.

8:12 James launches deeper into the shows topic by asking the following question: “what’s the least amount of money we paid for comics?” and then we discuss how much the price has gone up.

16:07 James promotes the app Hoopla as a way to read comics, and then starts a discussion about how trade paperbacks are no longer contained stories.

19:20 Chris talks about how comic companies have learned the wrong lessons about long form story telling. These lessons are translated into graphic novels from movies and TV.

28:21 James asks why they are rebooting comic book universes if it’s just an older collector who’s reading the “floppies” anyway. Which leads to a discussion as to who is reading and collecting comics today.

36:16 Chris brings up the notion that some modern “fans” of comics are not actually fans, but rather people who don’t like change in their characters, even if it’s a good story and promotes a more inclusive character landscape. This leads to a larger discussion about telling a good story, and how the best stories are never the ones that get dragged out.

51:12 James brings up the topic, “are the creators happy?” We also discuss the different paths that many of the creators are taking now because of the pay and credit given for creating a character. This leads into the larger discussion of the need for art and that artists should be paid.

1:00:00 Artists should get credit for characters they create while working for a company in addition to receiving residuals if their character makes money in other mediums.