Showing posts with label
Variety is the spice of comics.
Show all posts
Showing posts with label
Variety is the spice of comics.
Show all posts
Or a look at this years reviewed comics and their genre distribution
It is New Years time, which means the time has come to take stock of what I've read and reviewed in 2014. I feel like I do a pretty good job listing favourite comics during the regular business of Atoll Comics, so with these year end posts what I like to do is take a look genre distribution in the Mainstream (Marvel/DC) comics and how it compares to the genre diversity of all the other comics publishers. This is because I think one of the most interesting and important differences between Marvel/DC and other comics publishers is the spectrum of stories that they publish. So just like last year, I am going to assign genres to all of this year's Top-ten mainstream comics and reviewed Creator-Ownederish comics.
The genres:
Comics don't automatically get assigned genres, and are infrequently sorted by genre in stores. Instead, they tend to get sorted by format (monthlies, tradepaperbacks, original graphic novels etc). So I'm going to assign my own genres to all these comics. For convenience (and ease of graphing) I'm also going to lump a bunch of genres together. To keep us all on the same page these are the genres I'll be using and a short definition of what I mean by them.
Adventure: An action packed story with elements of travel, journey, and discovery. Usually a bit light hearted. Think Indiana Jones.
Autobiography: A truthful, or semi-truthful account of the authors life. Think... well any autobiography.
Comedy: A sizeable percentage of the story is devoted to making the audience laugh or subverting the premise for comedic/absurd reasons. I'm using this in both the humour and satirical sense. Think: Superbad or Dr. Strangelove.
Crime: A story about criminals and those that live outside the law. Usually has heist and/or thriller elements. Think Drive or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or even Ocean's 11 (the original please).
Cultural: I'm using this as a catch all for a story that integrally features a commentary on some sort of cultural construction. Think District 9 and apartheid or The West Wing and presidential politics.
Drama: A story whose action is built around emotional tension and consequences. Think Sophie's Choice.
Espionage: About spies. Think James Bond
Fantasy: A story involving a supernatural element like magic. I'm going to use it in the context of historic, epic, or mythic elements. Think Lord of The Rings
Historic: Set in the past: actual or alternate. Think Gladiator or Band of Brothers.
Horror: Stories that endeavour to scare, frighten, or creep out its audience. Think The Shining, or if you're me ET.
Mystery: A story that is constructed around solving a mystery or crime. I'm also going to lump police and law procedurals into this category. Think Law and Order.
Other: Something that defies easy classification. Like, well that's kind of the issue isn't it.
Science Fantasy: A story with fantastical technologies or a story set in the future with fantastical elements without regard for Scientific plausibility. Think Star Wars or Firefly.
Science Fiction: A story that features some sort of societal or technological thought experiment. Think 1984 or I Robot
Slice-of-Life: About the lives of characters in a texture of their everyday life kind of way. That's a terribly nebulous definition... but it works? Think Forest Gump.
Superhero: People with super natural abilities have adventures of some sort. Think Avengers.
Thriller: Excitement! Suspense! Action! Danger! Think Die Hard.
Travelogue: A story that revolves around travelling to a new place and trying to convey the reality of living or visiting that place. Think Lonely Planet.
Urban Fantasy: A story set in the present with modest supernatural elements. Think Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Ground Hog Day or American Gods.
War: A story set during a war and about people involved in the event. Think Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket.
Western: A story about the Wild West, cowboys, etc. These stories have their own kinds of genre tropes and narrative feel which goes beyond the subject matter which I think justifies them as having their own genre. Think True Grit or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Mainstream (Marvel & DC) comics I've read in 2014:
So here are all the comics that have been in my Top Ten at some point during the last year. How this is going to work is each title is worth 1 point towards further analysis. Since many titles don't clearly sit in one genre, their 1 point can be broken up and assigned to multiple genres. So for a book with two genres, each genre will get 1/2 a point. Pretty straight forward, right?
So with this scoring system in place these are the books I've read this year and the genres I think they most belong to:
Avengers: Superhero (Analysis)
Avengers Assemble: Superhero (Analysis)
Batgirl: Superhero (Analysis)
Batman: Superhero
Black Widow: Espionage
Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier: Espionage, Science Fiction (Analysis)
Captain Marvel V2: Superhero, Science Fantasy (Analysis)
Daredevil: Superhero (Analysis)
FF (2): Superhero, Adventure (Analysis)
Hawkeye: Superhero, Thriller (Analysis)
Moon Knight: Superhero, Thriller (Analysis)
Ms. Marvel: Superhero (Analysis)
Rocket Racoon: Science Fantasy
Secret Avengers: Espionage, Comedy (Analysis)
She-Hulk: Mystery (Analysis)
The Movement: Superhero, Cultural (Analysis)
The Young Avengers: Superhero (Analysis)
Wonder Woman: Superhero, Fantasy (Analysis)
Which gives me the following genre breakdown for Mainstream comics:
Creator-ownederish comics I've read in 2014:
In the same period of time I read all or some of the following creator-ownederish comics. Again, each title is worth 1 point, and this point can be chopped into parts for titles that span multiple genres. Oh, and I've included links to all the reviews that have been published. Here's the list:
Air: Urban Fantasy, Cultural (Review)
Atomic Robo: Adventure, Comedy (Review)
Bad Houses: Slice-of-Life (Review)
Bandetta: Adventure (Review)
Big Questions: Other (Review)
Blacksad: Mystery (Review)
Blankets: Autobiography (Review)
Burma Chronicles: Autobiography, Travelogue (Review)
By Chance or Providence: Historic, Horror (Review)
Chew: Mystery, Comedy (Review)
Demo: Superhero, Drama (Review)
East of West: Science Fantasy, Western (Review)
Exit Wounds: Slice-of-Life (Review)
Fatale: Crime, Horror (Review)
Finder: Science Fiction, Other (Review)
Ghost: Superhero, Horror (Review)
God Is Dead: Fantasy, Horror (Review)
Goliath: Historic (Review)
Incognito: Crime, Superhero (Review)
Lazarus: Science Fiction (Review)
Leaving Megalopolis: Superhero, Horror (Review)
Mara: Science Fiction (Review)
Multiple Warheads: Science Fantasy, Travelogue (Review)
Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.: Superhero (Review)
Pretty Deadly: Western, Fantasy (Review)
Pride of Baghdad: Historic, War (Review)
Prophet: Science Fiction (Review)
Pyongyang: Autobiography, Travelogue (Review)
RASL: Science Fiction, Thriller (Review)
Rat Queens: Fantasy (Review)
Saga: Science Fantasy (Review)
Satellite Sam: Historic, Mystery (Review)
Scenes From An Impending Marriage: Autobiography (Review)
Secret: Espionage (Review)
Sex Criminals: Comedy, Cultural (Review)
Shenzhen: Autobiography, Travelogue (Review)
Snowpiercer: Science Fiction (Review)
Stumptown: Mystery, Thriller (Review)
The Manhattan Projects: Historic, Science Fiction (Review)
The Massive: Thriller, Cultural (Review)
The Property: Slice-of-Life (Review)
The Sixth Gun: Western, Fantasy (Review)
The Unwritten: Urban Fantasy, Cultural (Review)
Three: Historic (Review)
Transmetropolitan: Science Fiction, Cultural (Review)
Uber: Historic, Superhero, War (Review)
Umbral: Fantasy, Horror (Review)
Unknown Soldier: Historic, Cultural (Review)
Zero: Espionage, Science Fiction (Review)
Which gives us the following genre breakdown:
And if we compare the genre distribuitions between Mainstream (DC/Marvel) and Creator-Ownederish (basically everything else), we get the following:
This is the third year I've done one of these roundup/genre analysis posts. Go here for 2013, and 2012 can be read here. What this means is that I can pool my genre distributions (correcting for any repeat titles and redundancies) to increase the sample size of the analysis and maybe cut down on sampling bias a little.
Over the past 3 years of mainstream comics I get the following genre distribution:
Over the same period this is the distribution for all the Creator-ownederish titles I've reviewed:
As always there are a ton of caveats with this kind of analysis. I read what I read, what I like and what I'm curious about, which means that the data isn't exactly an objective sample of what is being published. For instance, I am sure that the Superhero genre is under-represented in this year's Mainstream comics data since I just seem to be drawn to the more off-beat comics offerings from the Mainstream publishers. That said, I feel like this little analysis does a reasonable job of capturing a few interesting trends worth unpacking.
In past years the trend I've seen is that Mainstream comics have been overwhelmingly Superhero comics while non-Mainstream comics have a much wider genre distribution. You can see this trend reflected in the cumulative graphs. I still think this is a really interesting effect, in that it seems that Mainstream publishers are really focused on delivering Superhero comics to the exception of pursuing other genres. Creator-ownderish comics publishers seem to be interested in publishing all kinds of comics. Whether this is a result of them pursuing an underserved market, avoiding the Mainstream Superheroic stranglehold, or just creator interest is an open question. The trend is definitely there.
I've always felt this was important because Superhero comics are not for everyone. Pretty much all of the people know Superheroes are a thing and that they can read about them in comics. What is less appreciated by the non-comics reading public, in my experience, is that comics can also be serious Crime or Sci-fi, Autobiography or Literary Fiction stories too. Comics could probably reach a wider audience by catering to wider interests. Non-Mainstream comics appear to being doing that, and I think it's a really good, really healthy thing for comics.
What is interesting in the 2014 data is that the share of non-Superhero comics in the Mainstream category has grown significantly. Nearly half of the Mainstream comics I read this year were at least partially non-superheroic. Or put another way, the genre distribution of the Mainstream comics I read in 2014 is far more diverse. Now, due to sampling bias this might not be representative, but I'm really enjoying the genre variety in my Mainstream comics. I wonder if this is a sign that Mainstream comics, mainly Marvel, is trying to attract more new readers through genre diversification or if they are trying to attack the growing marketshare of non-Mainstream comics. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues in 2015.
Post by Michael Bround
Previously:
Comics in review 2013
Comics in review 2012
Or a look at this years reviewed comics and their genre distribution
It is almost 2014, and so the time has come for lists. But since this website is partially a top-ten list of my favourite mainstream comics, it's a bit silly to write a thing that just reiterates that list. The other half of the website is me talking reviewing and talking about creator-ownederish comics that I really like. These are diverse books that I think are hard to compare and, well, I think most of these books could be the best book in the world to some particular person. And so, I am not particularly interested in ranking them.
What I am interested in doing, however, is to look at the differences in genre diversity in Mainstream (Marvel/DC) and Creator-Ownderish comics. I think one of the most interesting and important differences between Marvel/DC and other comics publishers is the spectrum of stories that they publish. So just like last year, I am going to assign genres to all of this year's Top-ten mainstream comics and reviewed Creator-Ownederish comics.
The genres:
Comics don't automatically get assigned genres, and are infrequently sorted by genre in stores. Instead, they tend to get sorted by format (monthlies, tradepaperbacks, original graphic novels etc). So I'm going to assign my own genres to all these comics. For convenience (and ease of graphing) I'm also going to lump a bunch of genres together. To keep us all on the same page these are the genres I'll be using and a short definition of what I mean by them.
Adventure: An action packed story with elements of travel, journey, and discovery. Usually a bit light hearted. Think Indiana Jones.
Autobiography: A truthful, or semi-truthful account of the authors life. Think... well any autobiography.
Comedy: A sizeable percentage of the story is devoted to making the audience laugh or subverting the premise for comedic/absurd reasons. I'm using this in both the humour and satirical sense. Think: Superbad or Dr. Strangelove.
Crime: A story about criminals and those that live outside the law. Usually has heist and/or thriller elements. Think Drive or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or even Ocean's 11 (the original please).
Cultural: I'm using this as a catch all for a story that integrally features a commentary on some sort of cultural construction. Think District 9 and apartheid or The West Wing and presidential politics.
Drama: A story whose action is built around emotional tension and consequences. Think Sophie's Choice.
Espionage: About spies. Think James Bond
Fantasy: A story involving a supernatural element like magic. I'm going to use it in the context of historic, epic, or mythic elements. Think Lord of The Rings
Historic: Set in the past: actual or alternate. Think Gladiator or Band of Brothers.
Horror: Stories that endeavour to scare, frighten, or creep out its audience. Think The Shining, or if you're me ET.
Mystery: A story that is constructed around solving a mystery or crime. I'm also going to lump police procedurals into this category. Think Law and Order.
Other: Something that defies easy classification. Like, well that's kind of the issue isn't it.
Science Fantasy: A story with fantastical technologies or a story set in the future with fantastical elements without regard for Scientific plausibility. Think Star Wars or Firefly.
Science Fiction: A story that features some sort of societal or technological thought experiment. Think 1984 or I Robot
Slice-of-Life: About the lives of characters in a texture of their everyday life kind of way. That's a terribly nebulous definition... but it works? Think Forest Gump.
Superhero: People with super natural abilities have adventures of some sort. Think Avengers.
Thriller: Excitement! Suspense! Action! Danger! Think Die Hard.
Travelogue: *NEW* A story that revolves around travelling to a new place and trying to convey the reality of living or visiting that place. Think Lonely Planet.
Urban Fantasy: A story set in the present with modest supernatural elements. Think Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Ground Hog Day or American Gods.
War: *NEW* A story set during a war and about people involved in the event. Think Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket.
Western: A story about the Wild West, cowboys, etc. These stories have their own kinds of genre tropes and narrative feel which goes beyond the subject matter which I think justifies them as having their own genre. Think True Grit or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Mainstream (Marvel & DC) comics I've read since starting the blog:
So here are all the comics that have been in my Top Ten at some point during the last year. How this is going to work is each title is worth 1 point towards further analysis. Since many titles don't clearly sit in one genre, their 1 point can be broken up and assigned to multiple genres. So for a book with two genres, each genre will get 1/2 a point. Pretty straight forward, right?
So with this scoring system in place these are the books I've read this year and the genres I think they most belong to:
Avengers: Superhero (Analysis)
Avengers Assemble: Superhero (Analysis)
Batman: Superhero
Captain Marvel: Superhero (Analysis)
Daredevil: Superhero (Analysis)
FF (2): Superhero, Adventure (Analysis)
Hawkeye: Superhero, Thriller (Analysis)
The Indestructible Hulk: Superhero (Analysis)
The Movement: Superhero, Cultural (Analysis)
The Young Avengers: Superhero (Analysis)
Uncanny Avengers: Superhero
Winter Soldier: Superhero, Espionage
Wonder Woman: Superhero, Fantasy (Analysis)
Which gives me the following genre breakdown for Mainstream comics:
Adventure: 0.5
Cultural: 0.5
Espionage: 0.5
Fantasy: 0.5
Superhero: 10.5
Thriller: 0.5
Which when graphed looks like this:
Creator-ownederish comics I've read since starting this blog:
In the same period of time I read all or some of the following creator-ownederish comics. Again, each title is worth 1 point, and this point can be chopped into parts for titles that span multiple genres. Oh, and I've included links to all the reviews that have been published. Here's the list:
100 Bullets: Thriller, Crime (Review)
Atomic Robo: Adventure, Comedy (Review)
Beast: Fantasy, Horror (Review)
Black Hole: Horror, Cultral (Review)
Chew: Mystery, Comedy (Review)
Criminal: Crime (Review)
Daybreak: Horror (Review)
Demo: Superhero, Drama (Review)
DMZ: Thriller, Cultural (Review)
Drinking At The Movies: Autobiographical, Comedy (Review)
Fatale: Crime, Horror (Review)
Four Eyes: Fantasy, Historic (Review)
Gingerbread Girl: Slice-of-Life (Review)
Global Frequency: Thriller, Science Fiction (Review)
Glory: Superhero (Review)
Godzilla: The Half-Century War: Science Fantasy, Horror (Review)
I Kill Giants: Fantasy, Drama
Jan's Atomic Heart: Science Fiction (Review)
Jerusalem: Travelogue, Autobiographical (Review)
Love and Rockets: Slice-of-Life, Other (Review)
Mystery Society: Science Fantasy (Review)
Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong: Slice-of-Life, Comedy (Review)
Orc Stain: Fantasy (Review)
Planetary: Superhero, Cultural (Review)
Pretty Deadly: Western, Fantasy (Review)
Prophet: Science Fiction (Review)
Saga: Science Fantasy (Review)
Saucer Country: Science Fiction, Cultural (Review)
Scalped: Crime, Thriller (Review)
Spaceman: Science Fiction, Crime (Review)
Stumptown: Mystery, Thriller (Review)
Sweet Tooth: Science Fantasy, Horror (Review)
The Five Fists of Science: Science Fantasy, Historic (Review)
The Infinite Wait and Other Stories: Autobiographical, Comedy (Review)
The Massive: Thriller, Cultural (Review)
The Other Side: War, Historic (Review)
The Underwater Welder: Drama (Review)
The Unwritten: Urban Fantasy, Cultural (Review)
Umbrella Academy: Superhero (Review)
Underground: Thriller (Review)
Whiteout: Thriller (Review)
Y The Last Man: Science Fiction, Horror (Review)
Zombies Calling: Horror, Comedy (Review)
Which gives us the following genre breakdown:
Adventure: 0.5
Autobiography: 1.5
Comedy: 3.5
Crime: 3
Cultural: 3
Drama: 2
Espionage: 0
Fantasy: 3
Historic: 2
Horror: 4.5
Mystery: 1
Other: 0.5
Science Fantasy: 5
Science Fiction: 3
Slice-of-Life: 1
Superhero: 3
Thriller: 5
Travelogue: 0.5
Urban Fantasy: 0.5
War: 0.5
Western: 0.5
Which gives us a genre distribution that looks like this:
And if we compare the genre distribuitions between Mainstream (DC/Marvel) and Creator-Ownederish (basically everything else), we get the following:
This is the second year I've done one of these roundup/genre analysis posts. 2012 can be read here. What this means is that I can pool my genre distributions (correcting for any repeat titles and redundancies) to increase the sample size of the analysis and maybe cut down on sampling bias a little.
Between the two posts I have looked at 22 Mainstream titles with the following genre distribution:
I have also looked at 64 Creator-Ownederish titles the encompass this genre distribution:
And if compare all of the analyzed Mainstream and Creator-Ownederish comics reviewed in 2012 and 2013 I get the following comparison plot (which is normalized for percent due to different sample sizes):
The trend that immediately pops out of both data sets is that the mainstream comics I read are overwhelmingly Superhero comics while the alternative comics press, the Creator-Ownderish books encompass a much wider spectrum of genres. And I think this is pretty interesting.
Now there is obviously some sampling bias going on here. Like, I am pretty keen on the geekier corridors of genre fiction so Science Fiction and Fantasy genres are probably over represented in both sample groups. Similarly, I feel like my Superhero genre interests are being satisfied by my Mainstream reading habits the many Creator-Ownderish Superhero comics that are available aren't reflected in the data. I am also just starting to get into the more literary strains of comics, so the more dramatic/literary fiction aspects of comics are greatly underrepresented in these plots too. Basically, my point is that this is in no way a Scientific poll, and should be taken with a grain of salt.
(Although, I think a similar genre distribution of the Diamond Shipping lists in any month will yield similar distributions...)
But. Despite the issues with sampling, I think these genre distributions get at an essential truth of comics: Mainstream (Marvel/DC) comics are overwhelmingly Superhero comics. Which means that almost every single title the two biggest comics publishers make belong to, at least in part, a single genre. Or, put another way, about 2/3s of the direct comics market (at least) is comprised of a single genre. Which is crazy! Comics are a medium in the same way novels or television or film are media. They are devices that can tell literally ANY KIND OF STORY. And yet, the majority of North American comics sold at any given time are Superhero comics.
That said, the data also shows that alternatives to Superhero comics clearly exist. People are very much making any kind of story using comics, and one just has to take a small step away from Marvel and DC to find them. If nothing else, this indicates that there is some sort of market for a wider variety of comics.
And this is really the crux of what I find interesting about these genre distributions. Clearly there is a huge market for Superhero comics and DC and Marvel have both geared up to satisfy these markets. It also seems that the largest Creator-Ownederish comics publishers/imprints/etc have focussed on publishing a much wider variety of genres. Which creates a bunch of questions. Do Marvel and DC essentially have control of the Superhero market to such a degree that it isn't viable for other publishers to also focus exclusively on Superhero comics? Is the Superhero market over or fully saturated? Conversely, are other genres of comics under served? Does the broader genre distribution of Creator Ownederish a reflection of them fulfilling this niche? Do non-Superhero genres comics have room to grow? And about a hundred more questions...
I think this is relevant because growing the comic reading audience would be really good for comics. There is only so much money any individual comic reader WILL or CAN spend on comics. More people reading comics means more money for comics publishers and creators. A bigger comics market means more comics and more options for readers. Basically the more readers there are the better it is for everyone. The trouble is that I think most people who are inclined to try a Superhero comic already have. This is entirely anecdotal, but the friends I've gotten to try, read, and even buy comics are never initially interested in Superhero comics. They are always way more willing to try comics that are similar to their favourite novels or shows. Which has led me to believe that one of the ways for comics to grow the market is to be more genre diverse to appeal to people outside the traditional audience. And my graphs here indicate that Creator-Ownederish comics do a much better job of this than Marvel and DC.
Which is food for thought, eh?
Previously:
Comics Year in Review 2012
Or how variety in comics is amazing and generally a good idea.
I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to get friends to try reading comics. Most of this stems from the fact that I really, really enjoy reading comics and want to share that experience with the people I care about (as any good geek should). Part of this is maybe also motivated by the fact that I don't really have any comic friends, so it would be cool to convert a friend or two. But on a far more mercenary level, I think convincing a friend to read, and to maybe even buy comics is important for comics as an industry.
Comics, as we try to avoid thinking about, are a commodity. Comics creators are a kind of artisan that produce a specialized commodity for a niche consumer. Publishing companies, some merely facets of giant multinational media empires, act as merchant/distributors and bring the commodity to a retailer (a comic shop/bookstore/web ap/whatever) who then sells the product to consumers. As much as creators, publishers, and retailers are all important cogs in the comics machine, there would not be a comics industry without consumers. (I mean, I'm sure some people would still make and share comics they made for fun... but business-driven professional comics require someone to eventually buy them.) To a certain extent, the pool of comics consumers, the market for the weird, amazing commodity that is comics, dictates how much comics can viably be made and supports the people that actually make the things we care about.
In that light, bringing in new comics readers increases the size of the comics market and, as such, increases the amount of money available to comics which thereby increases the amount of comics that can/will be produced and the amount of money that eventually reaches creators (who are great). I know that in the years since a friend of mine slipped me a disk of bootleg comics in an Integral Calculus class I have spent THOUSANDS of dollars on comics and as such I have contributed to the continuance and manufacture of more comics. The way I figure it, every friend of mine I can convince to read and purchase comics represents money that is being fed into the comic machine that would otherwise not be there.
(And yes, my friends often liken me to a drug dealer.)
So back to convincing my friends and loved ones to try reading comics. I have found that most people are not interested in reading superhero comics. It's not that Superhero comics are stigmatized, really, it's that they are a known (or presumed to be known) quantity. Everyone thinks they know what Superhero comics are and has an opinion concerning whether or not they would like to read them. (And I would argue that everyone who is interested in reading superhero comics basically already is, and if they aren't, it isn't very hard for them to change that.) As a result, I have found that the trick to convincing people to try reading comics is to present them with the kind of smart, mature, well-written and beautifully drawn non-superhero comics that most people don't know or appreciate exist.
Almost universally, I have found that Y The Last Man is a perfect first comic to spring on the kind of people I am friends with. The comic has a very accessible and addictive script: it has a compelling central mystery and rolls out a relentless series of cliff hangers that keeps readers glued to the series. Moreover from a writing perspective, the comic manages to present extremely well realized, likeable characters, a snappy sense of humour, and a maturity and level of discourse that civilians are frequently surprised to find in comics. Paired with this is really accessible art: on the one hand it looks nice and services the story well and on the other it has a low panel count in conventional layouts and really doesn't experiment too much. Y The Last Man is also kind of the perfect length for a first comic reading experience. It's not so long that new readers burn out, but still long enough that they get to experience a fair amount of comics before reaching the end. Basically, Y The Last Man is a perfect storm of comics for new people.
That said, in my experience everyone has a different taste in media and wants slightly different things from the experience of it. Part of what makes Y The Last Man such a powerful gateway comic, beyond its execution, is that it manages to straddle a lot of genres and emotional responses simultaneously. Everyone I have ever lent it to has enjoyed it, but frequently for slightly different reasons... and from those responses come critical information about what comes next. And this is where variety (and hence the title of this blog entry) comes in.
(That didn't take a long time to get to at all...)
One of the more successful comic conversions I've had is a coworker I'll call subject A (one that has actually resulted in a comics purchase!). With this person I started with Phonogram which yielded pay dirt with The Singles Club but not Rue Britannia (which was too myopic for her). I then leant her Y The Last Man which she DEVOURED as fast as I would lend it to her. She then tried and enjoyed Scott Pilgrim, the output of Faith Erin Hicks, and Chew. She finally tried Julia Wertz's The Infinite Wait and Other Stories and was blown away and went and bought her first comic in Drinking at the Movies (well second comic, she gift-exchange-stole The Manhattan Projects: Science Bad. at our work Xmas party). She is currently slowly working her way through the Runaways and Octopus Pie (which she quite enjoys). Basically, she likes fun, humorous not super-intense comics that she can relate to.
A similar success story comes from a guy on my soccer teams... who I will call Subject 2. He too devoured Y The Last Man when I leant it to him. From there I tried giving him Chew... which he thought was too ridiculous and silly. So I leant him Criminal, which he apparently likes a lot and is slowly reading in fits and starts. While I am still figuring out what Subject 2 is really into, it seems he likes intense, realistic, page-turning comics.
Which is all proof that not everyone wants to read the same kind of comics. Moreover, it is evidence that the people who are not interested in Superhero comics immediately may be interested in other comics, and that finding what comics they like is mostly a matter of finding what genre of fiction they enjoy. And this is where variety comes in: the more KINDS of comics that are being made, the more likely a new reader will be able to find a comic that fits their media needs exactly (or the more likely I will find that perfect comic to force on my friends).
To take this idea a step further, maybe the way we can expand the audience, and therefore the market, for comics is not by making better and better and better superhero comics, but by making ALL KINDS of different comics. That way everyone can find the comic they want to read. And who knows? Maybe that will lead to them trying a comic.
And then another.
And another.
Previously:
Variety is the Spice of Comics Pt. 1: Pony Up
Variety is the Spice of Comics Pt. 2: Year in Review
