Weekly Thoughts 2/17/24

I saw a video today where a person with ADHD was taught how to visualize information to retain it better than trying to remember each word individually. That’s something I do a lot myself, in some form; there are a lot of visual components to my thinking, and I often think back to images or quotes as a way to pull up the surrounding context. And I learned that from reading comics. Yet another reason comics should be taught in schools. There are academic skills to be had, because reading a comic is a unique skill unto itself, they’re often a source of unusual vocabulary, the stories often connect disparate information from various subjects, and you learn a lot of skills for assessing and understanding visual art from them. On top of that, they can teach neurodivergent people how to pair different kinds of information – visual, auditory, emotional, etc. – into a single memory for multiple points of quick access, in a way that neurotypicals either do easier or have an easier time learning.

On that note, I’m going to talk this week about the Big Two comics publishers, Marvel and DC. Specifically, I’m going to talk about why it would be preferable for them to cease to exist as we currently know them. It’s a bold stance to take, but I think it’s a solid proposition. The comics industry today is dominated by those two companies, which continue their rule using access to the IP created by many artists over the past century and that the companies own. Though they weren’t the ones who pursued these cases, they have greatly benefitted from multiple legal and legislative battles to extend the life of copyright, from the initial twenty or so years to more than a lifetime. They’ve come to define the medium in the eyes of the public, and their never-ending model of storytelling has come to define the superhero genre with unrelated tropes. Today, the comics market is changing in many respects, quite possibly away from their dominant model, but they still retain influence on every aspect of the medium and business, resisting any further evolution.

It’s common today to think of all the characters that appear in the books published by Marvel as being “Marvel characters.” It’s accurate in some respects, of course, but as is commonly known, the majority of the major characters of the Marvel Universe were created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Chris Claremont (a few years later, but we can’t ignore what he did for the X-Men). Not only did those creatives make the characters and basic ideas that would become the majority of the current Marvel Universe, but they all worked on their respective books for years, decades at a time. Because they worked for (and in some cases, helped found and run) Marvel, all of their work, as well as the work of many others, was owned by Marvel, and that company had the right to continue publishing stories with those characters for as long as copyright was in effect. A similar thing happened at DC, though they had a larger group of creators working on their original roster and the company spent a few decades buying out rival companies and taking control of the IP those companies owned; Marvel only exists as a rival because it avoided an early buyout.

All of which is to say, superhero comics and the larger comics industry was founded by long-standing runs in a situation that’s as close to creator-owned as Marvel or DC ever got (in that these were the original runs), and today, that’s not how either company operates. It’s a common and tragic story that a new series is announced as an ongoing, only to be cancelled after a few issues because they didn’t like the single issue sales numbers; if the book isn’t cancelled, the creative team is replaced; or maybe they didn’t bother calling it an ongoing at all, and instead announced a “totally important, groundbreaking story” as a miniseries, which is by definition less important in the world of cape comics. It’s increasingly rare for a creative team to get a truly substantial run on any series. This results in increasing feelings that “nothing matters” in superhero comics these days. Why would anyone start reading a book that will be cancelled after four issues (a self-fulfilling prophecy)? It seems an obvious statement that superhero comics needs a new defining era, a time when the companies committed to certain creative teams and directions on flagship books for a minimum of five years, to create the sort of history, identity, and reputation that their success is built on. Yet it seems unlikely that either would commit to such an approach.

The way the industry currently works, that’s kind of a necessity for artists. Working on a book at Marvel or DC is how creators get name recognition and steady work, so that they can then go on to make their own books at smaller publishers. If the “big leagues” never drafts you, then you could continue to make great, original stories for as long as you like and never get a wider audience than your first book built. Or, to rephrase that, the medium of comics is so completely defined by two publishers who exclusively sell superhero comics (because owning that superhero IP is their main selling point), creatives are highly incentivized to do work for them despite their interests or tastes to get the attention of customers who only pay attention to superheroes; and further, that creators who work in genres that have cross appeal with superheroes are the most successful, and other genres are stifled.

One would imagine that, like in any other sector of book publishing, there would be a desire for diversity in genre, themes, and other aspects, and that the publishing companies would do everything they can to expand their audience and sell to as many people as possible. Not so with comics. The basic unit of comics is still the single issue, and those are only sold in comics shops. If a series can’t sell enough single issues, it doesn’t matter if it does well in collection, nor does it matter if it has a loyal fan base and a longer arc that could later, if developed, draw in many more fans. Longevity is not the name of the game; it only matters if you can make it work month to month, and that exclusively happens in specialty stores. Stores that, though often not deservedly, have a reputation that makes it difficult for new customers to enter. You’re not getting many casual readers or first time buyers in comics shops, and in too many shops, you’re not getting many women, queer, disabled, or nonwhite fans. There has been movement there in the past decade or so, but not fast enough, and certainly not due to the efforts of the publishers. A majority of the time, creators are left on their own to promote their work and draw in an audience. Some publishers are taking some “risks” in picking up books by and about minorities, but the majority of books published are still those geared towards the stereotypical white man comics reader; you get more superficial diversity than actual representation. All of which greatly limits who reads comics and thus how big the industry can be.

This all comes back to Marvel and DC. Their business practices set the norm for the whole industry. They can rest on their laurels without worrying how much they should promote a book; people are actively looking for new Spider-Man and Batman titles, and they’re courted for interviews. They have a lot of institutional inertia driving single issues, and sticking with them gives them an edge over most indie publishers in the month-to-month battle. They can keep publishing the same characters and stories indefinitely and know they have a guaranteed audience, with every new addition to their mythos just adding to their IP hoard, so they have no incentive to publish any other kind of book.

And yet, they have also been acting out part of the change we’ve been seeing in the industry the past couple decades. Part of the reason they can keep driving interest by launching another series that may not last more than a few issues is because of the name recognition of creators. While that recognition often comes in-house, there’s more of it coming from the indie world first. Readers are as likely to follow the work of their favorite creators as much as they are to follow any book that has their favorite superhero in it. Put another way, the comics industry was long ago captured by a few influential companies who put all the emphasis on their characters as products and have been able to maintain undue dominance using those products, and the industry is finally starting to correct and more closely resemble other creative industries, where influential artists have sway. With any luck, that trend will continue. It’s not the publishers that make the comics, it’s the creators, the writers and artists. To be clear, Marvel and DC are more reacting to and profiting from this change, not helping to make it happen.

Marvel and DC could help facilitate more change if they were willing to use their power for good. If they published literally any other kind of comic, especially in underserved genres like romance, it would create room for other books in those genres from other publishers. The Big Two diversifying would do a lot to expand the comics audience beyond the loyal white adult men they’re primarily selling to. I mean, how many other industries latched onto one audience through one kind of product and then decided they didn’t need to grow? It’s crazy. The reason that “comics aren’t for girls” and “comics aren’t for black people” is because Marvel and DC only want to sell to their one stable audience, instead of selling books that appeal to as many people as possible. They could also revise their business models to deemphasize singles and focus on trades. It seems an obvious statement that a single issue is a temporary unit meant to keep things afloat before the actual book comes out, and they’re the two companies who could make that intuitive proposition a reality. That, and/or they’re the ones best positioned to sell single issues outside of comics shops. There’s no reason comics have to be sold in one place, and in fact that’s a recent phenomenon. Comics would get way more exposure and readers if they appeared in grocery stores, bookstores, and other places where a wider, more diverse crowd can find them.

Above all else, the biggest change we need to see with Marvel and DC is the end to their copyright fiefdoms. Stories are meant to have beginnings, middles, and ends, and superhero stories can’t as long as their two main publishers are intent on beating dead horses. What they’ve built is enticing and has many strengths; a relatively cohesive world where different characters can interact and have continued life is only possible under a regime like they’ve made. However, it’s caused more harm than good. The genre of superheroes is now defined by tropes, like no one really being dead, superheroes being largely ineffectual in creating change in the world, and an overemphasis on origin stories, which are a result of the publishing practices of the Big Two. They work to keep stories going without ending forever, always publish stories happening “in the world outside your window,” and force creators to reference, retell, and retcon origins often as the only solid and defining aspect of a character. Superheroes don’t have to be like that. It’s also created all the incentives to resist change and rake in money off of the work of legends without taking real risks, as discussed before. While most other publishers don’t participate in the same level of IP control, Marvel and DC are still a gold standard that has encouraged many publishers to farm the movie, TV, and merchandising rights of their IP, often with much less benefit to the creators than they deserve, while still only supporting books for a few issues at a time.

To top it all off, Marvel and DC have no incentive to invest in the visions of artists and look for new ideas and stories because they already have a bunch exclusively signed to them. If their IP fiefdoms came to an end, that would change. Ideally, this change would look like both a return to previous models of copyright that were much shorter as well as creators being the owners of their works, so that the Big Two don’t own all the IP they publish. If Superman were public domain (as he rightfully should be by now) and his story came to an end, then DC would have to find a new character to publish. They’d have to be sure that new story can be a success, do what they can to ensure that it is, and continue working with that one creative team for as long as they want to make that book. They could continue publishing Superman stories, but they’d have to compete with many others, which would hopefully encourage them to focus on quality and longevity over leveraging exclusive ownership as the only game in town. Even then, the new landscape could encourage a totally new model for them, that deemphasizes indefinite runs in a single shared world. Any Superman stories they publish while he’s in the public domain would more likely be self-contained “Elseworld” stories, with a lot more creative freedom for artists to tell bold, meaningful stories without worrying about how it affects anything else; after all, they’d have to publish the end of Superman (and mean it this time), and if they’re smart, they wouldn’t want to stomp all over that. This new emphasis on the visions of artists would raise creative profiles higher than ever, and encourage the Big Two to reach out into new territory like never before. If they didn’t own the IP of the stories they published, and their shared universes shrank to a concentrated group of current books, then they’d have a reason to sell other kinds of books.

All of this is, of course, based on changes to the current copyright system. If we keep copyright in place, then it should be for a much shorter period of time. It was originally only twenty or so years because that’s enough time for an artist or scientist to make a living off their work before it’s acknowledged to be part of the public mind, for the benefit of all. It’s also plenty of time to make more art, more discoveries, and get other copyrights. The ideal there is that it’s a balance between the need and desire for artists and scientists to make a living off their work and the public good that comes from shared stories and knowledge. I can see an argument for such a system, so long as we make it so that copyrights can’t be passed on to or own by corporations or officers of such; copyright should benefit the creators of art, technology, and knowledge, not massive businesses which act as middlemen. I’ve also come across people who want to end copyright altogether, and I know a lot less about how that would work. It sounds interesting, and may well be a better solution; after all, emphasizing individual rights is often a way for the powerful few to exploit the fractured many, so replacing said rights with new collective rights could greatly improve the lives of many. But like I said, I don’t have a perspective to articulate on that front.

Before I go, I want to say that I’m not arguing here that the Big Two don’t care about quality or that they aren’t publishing anything good. I’m not saying those in charge don’t love comics and are actively trying to exploit everyone contracted with them. I’m not saying the writers and artists working for them aren’t trying to tell good stories, that they’re phoning it in to get their name out there. If anything, like with any creative field, there’s an abundance of passion in comics, especially at the Big Two. My argument is about what would be best for the industry as a whole, for creators, and the medium. The Big Two have a stranglehold on everyone with their massive IP farms, and we won’t be able to breathe freely until they let go of our necks.