Let me fist say that I have always loved the american comic book hero. Their will always be a place in my heart for them but as a media I feel that it is dead as had been since the mid 00s. Now I am only 23 so its lot like I was reading them from the start but I always though of myself as a comic historian. Reading about the adventurers of classic and forgotten heroes in books.

When I finally found a comic book shop in my area I was confused by seeing 2-3 comics for the same hero. As time passed and I browsed the comics I stared to louse faith in DC and Marvel. I saw things like "World war hulk","Marvel Zombies", and the marvel civil war. Now I will say some of these were cool but at the same time they posed a problem. One I did not really thing about until the recent "Avengers vs. X-men" release. The problem is heroes are not able to just fight crime any more. It seem to me that the kids who argued about who would win in a fight are now the ones who are writing the comics. The comics that do have crime fighting try to make it look like its not the criminals fault or they just recycle a villein for something small. For the most part I see super heroes with super familys talking about super life problems and it feels like one big soap opera. Is like they are all trying to be like Peter Parker without take off the spandex.

I hate to say it, but the american comic is dead. The best example of this is that Stan Lee who worked on half the comics we read is no longer doing american comics. He has seen what has happened and joined the writers who still give hope their readers and had be working on manga in Japan.This is why the people of my generation are drawn to manga. Manga sill had room for the dreamers. Characters who have powers still need to hang up the cape now and then. Friends and loyalties don't change from writer to writer because each one is a single teams work. The way I look at it, most comics nowadays are just fan fiction.

The reason super heroes where first crated was to give hope to the younger generation. To stand up for ideals and morals. Now they spend more time having personal problems the fixing the worlds. If heroes don't have room for hope do we still have room for heroes?

What do you guys think?

I don't think american comics are dead, but I do think they're very slowly dragging that razor blade down their wrists. At least mainstream titles. A lot of the smaller independent comics are more along the lines of Manga: Self contained stories and universes set out to tell a particular story or group of stories, then over.

There's plenty of room left for dreamers, and outside of the major titles, you can still keep your creative teams together to focus on a single unified vision. I don't personally like the comic, but Atomic Robo is a good example of a group of dreamers getting together with a fairly original idea independent of any other universes to tell a specific set of stories and sticking together to do so.

It does seem to be easier to find that sort of things in Manga, I'll give you that. It's also easier to find a wider range of story types, because while mainstream american comics are pretty much pure superhero fare, you can get anything from crazy Dragonball-esque absurdity down to the story of a handful of geeks hanging out at their geek club and living their fairly normal geek lives in college (that would be Genshiken, and it's awesome), and everything in between. Some of this stuff exists stateside too, but it's so 'indy' it's hard to find, whereas that sort of spread is pretty well the standard across the drink.

Besides, what's wrong with fan fiction?

The bloated superhero comic where a character sees writer after writer and persists for decades is dying, yes. Good riddance. Small comics that don't bow to the superhero genre convention are thriving, with diverse art styles, diverse story lines, and diverse characters. The industry is better off without the titans, and if the superhero genre dies entirely that's just a side bonus.

This is a tough time for both comics and Manga. They are both in a severe decline, but in actuality manga distributers in the US are doing much worse than comic distributors. All of the recent shutdowns are an indicator of this.

DC with thier New 52 has managed a decent readership spike. The numbers have leveled off, but they did net quite a few new readers. It wasn't the digital push either because thier digital sales are still a fraction of thier total sales.

Superheroes are what keeps US comic book companies in business. If they die then comic books in the US die because other titles can't pay the bills. That doesn't mean there aren't great books out there that are not Superhero. I personally have quite a few non Superhero Genre books that I enjoy. There are a lot of small companies out there that put out wonderful books, but thriving isn't anywhere near an acurate description. Most of those companies are barely scrapeing by and thier creators are paid so little it almost qualifies as a hobby.

You also shouldn't look to Stan Lee as an indicator of anything at this point. He is a man that has had some great concepts, but he is past his prime. He hasn't written a good story in over 20 years, but for some reason I still keep giving him a chance just because of who he is. If you can get ahold of "Who Wants to be a Superhero?" you should watch it. It was a fun show, but it showed just how out of touch Stan really is these days.



Oh and as much as it pains me to agree with Az Genshiken is awesome. I learned so much about Otaku culture from that manga.

I watched that show for 2 seasons (if it lasted past that) and always though it was more of a producers idea then Stan's. He has co-written two good manga and one got an anime. The name "Heroman" might seem silly but it douse a good job of using classic american stereotypes, and like everything else he works on he has a cameo.

From where I sit, the problem isn't comics. The problem is what DC and Marvel continuities have become.

Death is irrelevant. Consequences are irrelevant. You have Shroedinger's continuity where it's both irrelevant and relevant at the same time. The story never ends. That doesn't mean the plots need to amount to "Green Lantern stopped Sinestro; the end, no more green lantern". By all means, use the character(s) for more stories! But it drives me nuts to see "Green Lantern stopped Sinestro, but not Sinestro's sinister overlord, who will leave 3 million loose ends that need to be run down when he's stopped, and will then cause a world to explode, and...". No, e-freaking-nough.

I loved Watchmen. I loved Transmetropolitan. I enjoyed Planetary. I'm liking Fear Agent. Blackest Night was awesome. I enjoyed a collection of side stories from Fables. But this whole "Everyone is related to everything and our heroes live in a perpetual 'To Be Continued' world!" thing has to go, or at least change.

I don't believe that "bloated" super hero book are dying at all. There are a lot of amazing books out there right now. I now know more people than ever that read them. On another point, I do not know of any small comic books that are thriving. Unless we have different definitions of thriving. it's sounds like you have some personal baggage when it comes to men in tights If you don't enjoy the superhero genre, that is fine. But understand that if the "Titans" disappear so will every comic book store & a lot of game stores. Super hero comics are their bread & butter. & I like them. You have invoked my nerd rage

This is highly romanticizing what super heroes are and were. They were originally pulp heroes who became, bit by bit, more powerful. It was strictly adventure stories, not for hope, ideals, or morals. When the Hayes Code was introduced, the real popular comics, often horror, were made nearly impossible to produce. The Superhero comics we have today and their moral structure comes mostly from this stupid code.

That said, people need to stop following characters and instead start following creators if they want anything of worth to happen in American comics. We have an industry where people buy because of habit, often regardless of the quality of the actual comic. Mainstream superhero comics have an invested interest in creating an illusion of change without the substance of it. They're running on a treadmill they've been running on since the beginning.

Personally I never got into comics for some of the reasons listed above. They tend not to be in a clear chronological order] because of the three different comics involving the same character, no clear indication as to which series is canon or not, and a lot are just retelling the same time constantly like Batman. Manga however is chronological, usually very easy to tell when a series stops, canon is normally not a issue ( stares at Clamp menacingly), and manga typically doesn't retell the same story of one character constantly. Now there are cliches in manga that are overabundant that can make the reader feel like a character is just a rehash of cliche hero five but in comics cliche hero five would be batman being retold again.

Marvel and DC are devouring their own base. Marvel's actions over the past 5 years show that they have thrown in the towel. They recognized that their readership spiked with Civil War, and to capitalize on it, they switched to editorial mandated stories. When the Civil War crowd went away (hype died down and the economy skidded to a stop) the bean counters recognized that the slowly attritioning comic book audience was still there, and that they would ALWAYS still be there, and increased cover prices by a dollar to compensate for the loss of readers.

Despite an influx of new readers to replenish its audience, Marvel has recycled stories, cannibalizing its own audience as it treads water moving from event to event. So what has happened to sales over the last year? Wayne is correct; with the relaunch of the universe (something that should've happened after Final Crisis) DC brought in some new customers and converted some existing readers, and has revitalized their core books. DC's marketshare has increased but the overall impact to the total market was slight. Marvel has jettisoned its low selling books and started double-shipping all over their main books. Again, the core audience will continue to buy these books. Why not produce another $4 issue for a book that has an audience instead of a $3 book for a book that struggles?

So without new readers, this is what the industry has decided to do. And speculation of new readers coming in from the Avengers movie? Ask yourself why you didn't receive a Free Comic Book Day Avengers comic when you left the theater? Because the comic book industry has reconciled itself that successful movies do not translate to increased readership in comics.

If you want new readers, you have to sell popular licensed properties along with the mainstay superhero books. Where is the Harry Potter comic? Where is the Hunger Games comic? Where is the Lord of the Rings comic? They need more bait.