Lew Stringer wrote:MikeC wrote:
And the first response that starts with "but surely there's a market for a proper comic..." wins the award for muppet of the week.
There's a lesson there. Children's comics are designed to appeal to children, not 40 something adults.
Lew
Problem is, Lew, in so many cases, they just don't.
Changes are made based on market research, dictated by the lowest common denominators, and the circulations perk up for two minutes then go back into free-fall. Is may be futile and blinkered to look back at how comics were in their heyday, but it is perfectly understandable.
What really needs to be changed is the perception of comics as yesterday's thing. It's absolutely pointless promoting any individual comic over its rivals, where all you're getting is a pack of dogs fighting over an ever-increasingly meagre pile of scraps. Until all the publishers get together and pay the very best (and I do mean the
very best) brains in marketing to come up with a campaign to actually make comics as a whole cool again, the whole industry will scrap until there's nothing left.
There are many countries in the world where comics are still held in high regard, and not through tradition, but rather evolution. What makes their markets different to ours? I've no idea, but if our current comics publishers don't swallow their pride and stop living on their past glory, but rather take notice and learn from today's successes, time will run out on any tiny remaining advantage tradition still holds.
You'd think it was rocket science.