However, it gets worse for DC Comics, as he writes, “DC had a pretty bad year, with their lowest sales since 2004 – down 25% from 2022 in the bookstore market – even with their highest ever number of titles in the total list. In 2023 they had only 14 titles in the Top 750; in 2013, ten years ago, they had 130. That is a huge and troubling drop – but maybe laying off nearly your entire sales and marketing team is not a great strategy for growth? If someone had been been making a concerted effort to dismantle DC Comics, they couldn’t have been more surgical – luckily, DC still has talented execs like Marie Javins, Jim Lee, Annie de Pies and the rest of the staff who have thwarted those plans. And from what we’re hearing, 2024 will see some more moves to reverse this concerning trend.”
I wouldn't hold my breath.
I get the comic industry has had declining sales going back a long time but giving the middle finger to actual fans, hiring women who hate comics to write, and believing there were waves of female fans just waiting to read comics.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When I go to the comic store the manga section has all the women since Manga markets to a variety of audiences. Super hero comics have always and will always appeal to men generally speaking and the back issue section is the most popular for super hero comics. Eric July once said that marvel and dc execs need to go to a comic book store and see who actually buys them.
I used to have almost 20 comic subs through Midtown that were mailed to me monthly. Now I have zero subs and just buy older comics
Every other comic industry (like Manga or French BD) have been growing. Manga is growing something like 20% per year!
So it's not "the industry". People want to buy and read comics.
But they don't want to buy and read a bunch of runny diarrhea shat out by a bunch of conceited fart-sniffing activist morons who couldn't write a story if it hit them in their stupid smug self-satisfied face.
I love how they see Manga outselling them and don’t think to examine why. Also I really need to dive into French comics. I got the TPB for the one that was adapted into a movie that flopped but that is it
the comic book subreddit is full of people twisting themselves into absolute pretzels to avoid acknowledging that manga is absolutely skull-fucking the western comics industry into irrelevance. They're all too wrapped up in analyzing the next inscrutable cross-over or wanking themselves off over which author is going to get to scribble all over their favorite character's continuity next, completely missing any of the glaringly obvious reasons why manga might be casually destroying the entire western landscape entirely by accident.
Got my first Manga (Oh My Goddess, and now I have 7 volumes) in 22 and when I go to comic store I try to buy at least one. Just wish there was a manga dollar bin as well