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Are Comics a Mass Medium?
Posted by Kevin

Via TCJ, I came across this rumination by Chris Puzak about the lack of Sci-Fi comics and fans in the comics world. Every since I worked in the industry - and met some extremely nice people - I have followed the business side of the industry, and Chris’ piece got me thinking: I am not sure that comics are actually a mass market medium anymore.

Chris thinks that the primary reason for the lack of sci-fi comics is the poor job the industry does attracting anything but superhero fans:

Harris wonders why more science fiction fans haven’t gotten into comics. The industry seems to make half-hearted attempts to attract them, but never for a very long time. For example there have been various attempts by comic companies to do adaptations of science fiction stories. Marvel published a short-lived series in the 70s entitled Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, which relied pretty heavily on adaptations. DC got into the action in the 80s with a series of science fiction graphic novels, adapting stories like George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings”, Ray Bradbury’s “Frost and Fire”, and Harlan Ellison’s Outer Limits episode “Demon with a Glass Hand”. Neither company seemed to have much luck with these series, but I thought they fairly good.

DC had a great idea in hiring actual science fiction writers like Christopher Hinz and Michael Moorcock to write stories for its Helix line of comics, but there really wasn’t much of an effort to alert science fiction fans to the comics’ existence. If the comics had been printed as cheap graphic novels and put in the science fiction sections of bookstores, then they might have been better sellers. There are many science fiction manga series, so hopefully the American companies will someday find a way to capitalize on that

I don’t think that will happen. There are two basic areas of science fiction devotees: literate and video. Now, I know that is a simplification, and I realize that there is a great deal of overlap in the two groups (myself included), but I think the basic point holds. There are two means by which the vast majority of science fiction or speculative fiction fans experience sf: through the written word and through dynamic visual presentations, i.e. television and movies. I think that comics fails to satisfy either group.

People who prefer to get their sf through the written word are going to be disappointed by comics, especially American comics, because comics are an economically poor means of reading a story. Because they are illustrated, it can take more pages to get across an idea. Contrary to popular opinion, a picture isn’t always worth a thousand words. You can generally get more story per page in prose as opposed to comic form. Even very minimalistic stories would be difficult to do effectively in just one comic. Doing a novel length treatment would require several comics. Even if one could, the fact remains that comics cost about two to three dollars a copy. I can buy a copy of Asimov’s for just a little bit more than that, and get several complete stories, as well as reviews and essays.

Comics also do not work for visual fans, because comic illustrations are not not dynamic, they are static. A page in a comic book does not have the same visual impact as good movie special effects. Peter Jackson could not have made the Battle of Helms Deep come alive on the pages of a comic book in the same manner as he did on the big screen.

I do not see how the comics industry can get past this dilemma. Some may argue that graphic novels or manga-like collections would solve these problems, but I am not so sure. Graphic Novels do not really solve either the static image or cost to story problem. I purchased Endless Nights for my wife for about 25 dollars for Christmas. I enjoyed it, but the stories in it where in no way as complex or engaging as those in the last David Brin collection I purchased, nor were the images as striking or exciting as those in the LOTR:TT.

The problem for comics is that I don’t see why those concerns do not translate from sf to any other genre. Perhaps romance and mystery comics, for example, do not suffer as much in the art department because they rely less on a sense of wonder for their power. However, the fact remains that we are a video watching society, and static images of a gun fight or a love scene don’t carry the same emotional punch as dynamic scenes do. The story/cost problem is the same for every other genre as for sf. The more I thin about this, the more I am convinced that comics can never be anything other than a niche market. Technology has created visual options that are much more exciting than comic art, and the economics of publishing have changed in such a way as to make comics prohibitively expensive in terms of story to cost ratios. The heyday appears to be long gone, and I don’t see how comics can ever regain a mass following given the current configuration of American society.

The obvious counter argument is, of course, Manga comics. They have sold in the tens and hundreds of thousands, small in terms of Television and movies, but good in terms of genre book publishing. However, I have to wonder if the success of Manga comics is a reflection of the fact that it is almost impossible to find that particular sensibility in entertainment. Anime is very much a niche market, still, and I seriously wonder what would happen to Manga sales if Anime were to become widely and easily available in the United States, the way sci-fi or mystery or romance movies and television series are. No, it seems that right now Manga comics represent the one outlet for the dissemination of Japanese flavored entertainment, and not a representative of how well comics can do in a competitive market.

There just doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that comics will anytime grow out of what they are now: a market largely dedicated to the superhero genre and little else.

December 29th, 2003 Culture | 3 comments