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How the Comics Industry Misunderstands Comics

Tim Heiderich writes for Bleeding Cool: 

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was a landmark introduction to the language of sequential art, and with Kickstarter money from some good-natured rubes, my artist and I published a parody of it — the creatively-titled Misunderstanding Comics.

So why are we poking fun at a book published over 20 years ago?  As timeless as the ideas in Understanding Comics are, pointing out the cliches plaguing comics is more relevant now than ever.

Let's take a quick look back at the much-maligned dark age of comics: the '90s. Remember the bald-faced gimmicks like die-cut hologram foil variant covers?  Well, tell me if any of these look familiar:

Those are all from this decade.  Last week, Eric Stephenson, publisher of Image Comics, proclaimed at ComicsPRO that these fan-exploiting cash grabs are what's killing the comic book industry from within.  No publisher ever went bankrupt selling multiple issues of the same comic to die-hard fans — okay, maybe creatively bankrupt — but this isn't something we, as comic book readers, can allow.

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While these tricks may squeeze existing fans for more money, they do nothing to expand the comic book reading audience.  And as long as this is the case, Stephenson's remark holds true, that comics will be nothing more than an also-ran compared to TV, movies, and music.  It'll never be "the real thing."

Unlike TV, movies, and music, comics allow a greater amount of creative freedom because of their low cost for both the creator and the consumer. Unlike a movie, requiring a legion of skilled craftsmen and a dump truck of money, a comic author is bound by far fewer limitations.  With less money than it takes to finance a short film or master an album, an author and artist can express their artistic ideas on a broad scale, in one of the most pervasive of pop art media.

Likewise, what do a movie ticket, a DVD, a concert ticket, or the two-drink minimum at your friend's open-mic all have in common?  They all cost more than a single issue of any comic book.  And if you can hook your readers with that one issue, odds are they'll be back for more.

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The advantage comics have over other media is they can take the most risks and reach the furthest outside the mainstream. Compared to entertainment that needs a wide audience to be profitable, small-press comics can thrive in marginalized and underserved audiences who don't see their stories anywhere else.

When a reader can spend as little as $3 to try something new, there should be a cambrian explosion of unique and diverse comics from publishers large and small.  But comics will continue to live in the shadow of other media until we, as comic readers, demand that variety means more than a different cover.

Misunderstanding Comics is available on Amazon Kindle, coming to ComiXology on March 5th, and on the author's website at http://www.misunderstandingcomics.com

Author Tim Heiderich complains about media at timtoon.com and Mike Rosen writes and illustrates guttersnipecomic.com, a hilarious strip about homeless children.


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Dan WicklineAbout Dan Wickline

Has quietly been working at Bleeding Cool for over three years. He has written comics for Image, Top Cow, Shadowline, Avatar, IDW, Dynamite, Moonstone, Humanoids and Zenescope. He is the author of the Lucius Fogg series of novels and a published photographer.
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