In Which Our Hero Discusses Comics and Milkshakes
In a Facebook comics discussion group, someone posted a picture of a Marvel publishing employee and her friends with milkshakes and said, “This is the problem with comics” as if we all immediately understood what he meant. Others joined in and said yes, and I asked what he meant…and was met with snotty responses and name calling.
I replied by saying, and I will admit I was being snotty, “I was just trying to determine if you were ageist or sexist.”
Which, of course, upset this snowflake, who felt he should be able to hate on women without anyone calling him on it. They then went on and on about these KIDS are ruining Marvel, these WOMEN don’t know anything about comics and the like.
Never mind that Marvel was pretty much run by people in their 20’s through the 70s and into the 80’s. Never mind that Marvel has expanded into libraries and schools over the last decade. Never mind that ALL of publishing has fallen apart, with even major publishers like Gold Eagle and Harlequin having to shutter due to poor sales.
Nope, it’s women. Young women. They’ve ruined everything.
I don’t know how to break it to people, but physical media has fallen on hard time. Borders used to be a multi billion dollar company before people quit buying books. Blockbuster, Media Play, Musicland, Tower Records, Hastings, your local mall and on and on and on, all of them have been killed by the “new economy.”
The comics industry is trying to diversify, not just its content, but its revenue streams. Tell me all you want about those icky girls are killing comics and I will gently point at Saga, which has a primarily female audience is making money hand over fist. Tell me about how kids don’t read comics and I will point you toward the Scholastic book sales and how Marvel makes a LOT of money from them. As well as library sales.
I’m betting these He Man Woman Haters read a few comics edited by Karen Berger over the years, who expanded comics in the 80’s and 90’s in a way that grew the audience and made everyone in comics a lot of money.
Blockbuster had a chance to buy into Netflix early on, and passed as it didn’t fit their business model. For all of the belly aching about Marvel, DC, who has kept a lot of the “old school” way of creating comics, has seen its sales drop as well. Comic shops are part of a last ditch distribution network, and in many ways, if THEY don’t diversify their product lines and customers, they tend to go under as well. We talk on the podcast I do all the time that if you shop JUST sells comics, you probably are doomed, since that market is shrinking as digital, Amazon and people abandoning physical media continues to grow.
I guess those milkshake drinking young women are destroying them as well, which shows just how powerful they are, I guess.
