Is the comic book industry in trouble right now? It depends largely on whom you ask. New comic shops are springing up all over, but other shops seem to be shutting down almost as rapidly. And while there are more comics being published than ever, that's not necessarily a good thing. Forget Peak TV; we've reached the era of Peak Comics. And no publisher is doing more to flood the market than Marvel.
You can see this disparity in Diamond Comics' sales figures for January 2017. As Comichron reports, January saw more comics shipped to stores than any month in the past 20 years. It even managed to top January 2015, the month where Marvel sold nearly a million copies of Star Wars #1. But while more comics were sold in January, publishers weren't necessarily making more money. Total dollar sales for comics in January were still down 7.5% compared to the previous month.
Lately, Marvel has adopted a policy of "overshipping," where they send more copies of a given comic to stores than were actually ordered. That practice helps drive up the unit sales and help Marvel regain some of the market share they've lost to DC over the past year, but obviously those freebies don't count in terms of dollar sales. You can see the impact of this strategy by looking at the growing gulf between Marvel's dollar share and unit share figures. Normally those two figures tend to be pretty close for most publishers. But in January, Marvel controlled 42.62% of the market in terms of unit share and only 37.09% in terms of dollar share. They're shipping more comics than ever, but they aren't necessarily making more money off those comics. And it's hard to say whether those extra comics are even winding up in the hands of more readers. That's always been the biggest flaw with Diamond's sales figures - they only indicate what's been shipped to stores, not what's actually been sold to consumers.
Marvel's publishing strategy of late boils down to "more, more, more." They're continuously expanding the number of titles they publish, and they're employing every trick in the book to ensure they ship as many copies of those books as humanly possible. But while that helps inflate Marvel's market share, it's hard to see how this aggressive approach is actually benefiting readers.
Too much entertainment sounds like a great problem to have. But the whole reason FX's John Landgraf coined the phrase "Peak TV" in the first place was to point out a very real danger TV networks now face. Viewers are slammed with so many options that it becomes almost impossible to choose what to watch. Good shows die on the vine because there's simply too much competition to attract a viable audience and too few advertising dollars to fight for. That sounds very much like the predicament the comics industry is in right now. Keeping up to date with Marvel and DC alone is a huge undertaking, to say nothing of the many excellent small publishers out there. Good, worthwhile books are constantly being drowned out by all the noise.
This is about the closest thing to a non-superhero comic Marvel publishes right now. Art by Tyler Crook. (Marvel Comics)
Honestly, I can't for the life of me figure out why Marvel churns out as much content as it does. They published a total of 104 comics in February, which is more than twice that of any other publisher besides DC. And where DC makes an effort to cater to readers of varying tastes with imprints like Vertigo, Young Animal and the Hanna Barbera line, Marvel's focus is almost exclusively on traditional superhero comics. Is there really a demand for 100 different books featuring Marvel's heroes every month? Based on the sales numbers for some of the lower-selling titles, not really.
At some point the quality of these books becomes irrelevant. There's simply too much content to wade through, and too much of it feels redundant or repetitive. I very much enjoy Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther, but do the numbers on that book justify Marvel's decision to publish not one, but two different spinoffs in Black Panther: World of Wakanda and Black Panther: The Crew? Yes, Black Panther #1 sold over 250,000 copies back in April 2016, but Black Panther #11 barely cracked 35,000 last month. If the main series has experienced that steep a drop-off in less than a year, what chance do these ancillary books really have?
In the same vein, was it truly wise of Marvel to debut three different Daredevil spinoffs - Kingpin, Bullseye and Elektra - all in the same month? How many Daredevil fans will be forced to make difficult choices because they can't afford to follow all three at once? Does Marvel need a different solo series for nearly every single member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, especially with the main series about to switch to a twice-monthly schedule in April? The same for the upcoming Defenders relaunch - is there truly enough of an audience to support solo books for Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist as well as a team book featuring all four characters?
No recent announcement has frustrated me more than Spectacular Spider-Man. Sure, the idea of Chip Zdarsky and Adam Kubert jamming together on a Spidey book sounds enticing. But why did Marvel greenlight a new comic that attempts to deliver a more traditional, "down on his luck" take on Peter Parker when Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows already has that ground covered? Renew Your Vows is one of Marvel's best books, but I fear for its future in a market where it has two flagship Spider-Man comics to compete with.
One of the reasons DC's Rebirth relaunch has been such a breath of fresh air is that DC made an effort to consolidate their output. The days of 52 ongoing superhero titles are gone. With the switch to a twice-monthly schedule on most of their core books, DC's strategy is now to focus fewer comics and deliver them more often. Sure, there are still a heck of a lot of Batman comics, but in general DC's output is streamlined to the point where it doesn't feel like their books are cannibalizing each other in a bloody battle for attention.
It's pretty clear that Marvel is drawing at least some inspiration from DC as they chart a course through 2017. Several books are switching to a twice-monthly format, and the ResurrXion relaunch seems motivated by a similar sense of nostalgia and desire to recapture a lost era. I'd like to think ResurrXion can accomplish on a smaller scale what Rebirth did for DC. But already ResurrXion seems a little too big for its britches. X-Men Gold and X-Men Blue haven't even debuted yet, yet Marvel is throwing a new volume of Astonishing X-Men into the mix. Old Man Logan will be a member of three separate X-Men teams in addition to starring in his own solo comic. While Marvel is embracing the opportunity to sell more X-Men comics, they're not making the necessary sacrifices by pruning their overall output or reducing the cover price on their twice-monthly comics.
The comics industry is certainly in better shape now than it was during the crash of the mid-'90s. But that crash was the direct result of marketing gimmicks running amok and publishers bombarding readers with too much material. Marvel would do well to take a deep breath and slow down before history winds up repeating itself. They aren't the only ones responsible for the Peak Comics problem, but they are the biggest culprit.
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