Sorry to say it, but the solution is collapse at this point.

Diversity & Comics is a great channel- someone pointed me over there a few weeks back, and it's fascinating getting the inside scoop on what's happening in some of the big comic companies, and the industry overall.

I haven't the faintest idea how to solve Marvel's internal issues- I'm personally not a superhero reader, so my bias is that the entire genre has been oversaturated and needs some time to cool off.

But I'm hopeful that injecting more competition, more choices, and more titles into the marketplace can at least give store owners an opportunity to tap into new customer bases. I think- for retailers, at least- the way to fix Marvel is to stop relying entirely on Marvel for their survival, and struggle to add something else to their sales foundation before it's too late.

Comics will likely move towards more of an art-book format I think, when the north american market for their current format collapses. There will still be "comic" style comics but they will be relegated to simpler story lines. Even online comics have far and above trumped print style ones long ago in ability to deliver narative and depth.. let alone they dont seem to retcon/multiverse themselves to death ;)

Really just have to look at Japan/china/korea/russia to see where the print market is most likely to end up.

trying to make everything have to be about money has not made the world a better place.
poverty can be damnably inconvenient, but imagination is what makes us human, and what i live for.

That was a pretty good article. It looks like you guys have quite the insight regarding the us comic market. I hope to see even more creative comic projects once the monopol breaks up.

I like comics, I really do, I collected a lot of comics as a kid. But those were ether had no covers and sold for a dime or a large bundle, the only full price comics I bought was Sonic The Hedgehog from Archie, later on I switched to anime inspired comics like Dangerous Minds and Echoes because the comic store stopped carrying Sonic but only once in a while as they were expensive.

The big 2 really had nothing to interest me, I love action and cartoons, something they were really poor at in their comics. Sure their cartoons were great, but they never could get that feeling of motion in the comics, maybe it's because they were static, no secondary touches like animation such as hair carrying momentum, no clothes seeming to shift or cape catching up. When somebody was punched there was no impact, not even a bruise, making the fights feel flat and just a bunch of dynamic posing with a lot of soliloquies.

Like a lot of people I talk to we all switched to reading manga, it still can be found at places like walmart of a book store and much of them have various genres to choose from, even subgenres like fantasy slice of life and action food cooking while most of comic books in the shop is just superheroes being used as a soap box or depressing trudge of humanity in some post apocalypse, there is very few good comics like the Goon or fun comics like Mickey Mouse.

I really don't think there is a way to fix this, the damage had been done too much for years and it's too late to go back.