It seems like a comic book store is closing every other week. The comic book industry has been in turmoil over the last year, as poor writing, lack of editorial vision, and identity politics have mired Marvel and DC Comics to a point where too many customers have checked out. Now, Cosmic Comics has announced that they are closing up shop in Belleville.
There’s little to be excited about in mainstream comics in 2024. After Glenn O’Leary made his famous viral video last year, the state of the comic industry was exposed for how far they’d fallen with “self-insert” versions of characters dominating and changing established lore. Comic book professionals mocked him instead of listening to their customers, save for Mark Millar, who stepped up to listen to O’Leary and other comic shop owners about the myriad of problems facing the industry.
Fans saw a change in the way professionals talked about the industry. Even though Heidi MacDonald of Comics Beat was quick to proclaim that the comic industry was fine, professionals finally started to admit there were problems with sales, including Batman writer Chip Zdarsky, who spoke on a livestream about the matter.
However, even though these comic professionals are seeing the declining sales and finally taking notice, they’re not addressing the core problems facing comic shops nor creating a fan-friendly environment by which people would want to become a part of this community. Even Rob Liefeld blasted “woke comics Twitter” last year before being pressured to delete his post.
That pressure and culture of fear have been permeating comics for a long time, too, and the latest victim of the whisper network and running afoul of certain individuals with power in the industry is Ed Piskor of Cartoonist Kayfabe. When he sadly committed suicide after gross texts appeared between him and a young girl, it was too much for him to face the insane ramblings of his peers, who were happy to cancel him as fast as they propped him up as a staple in comics to begin with.
Now, another sad event is happening with this comic bookstore closure. Cosmic Comics made a four-minute video to announce the situation, posting to Facebook to alert their customers.
“Mid August of 2024 we will be closing down our business,” the owner said. “There’s quite a few factors that went into making this decision… but the main reason is last year in 2023 we were down quite a bit at the end of the year, and unfortunately coming out of the gate in the first quarter we’re down even more than we were in 2023.”
Comic sales have been slumping. With DC Comics’ reboot all but failing and Marvel Comics having few titles to cheer for other than Jonathan Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man, there’s not much reason for fans to make it into the shop every week. One comic shop owner told Fandom Pulse that he believes as few as 30% of his customers actually read the books, and the others are buying for collecting out of habit or speculation. This is a troubling sign for modern books.
The Cosmic Comics video was a sad one, and his customers will no doubt miss another nice comic shop owner who cares about them and the medium. However, unless the Big 2 companies of Marvel and DC Comics get the memo, the comic industry isn’t long for this world.
What do you think of Cosmic Comics closing? Is It Marvel and DC Comics fault? Leave a comment and let us know.
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The decline of comics can’t be discussed without mentioning the elephant in the room. Video games. We have a generation of young folks who don’t read. They don’t read comics. They dont read books. They would rather play video games. And who can blame them? A good video game provides far more bang for your buck than the average corporate comic.
Mike,
The value prop is definitely a real problem, but I think the biggest problem is the total lack of synergy. The Big 2 aren’t creating new readers because they refuse to exploit synergies between their media projects.
Look at the Bookscan charts, why is manga dominating? Synergy. Attack On Titan was the one of the kings of the 2023 charts and that series finished publication in 2021. Why did it chart so high in 2023? Because the anime didn’t finish airing until Nov of 2023. That multimedia synergy drives reader growth.
My niece is one of those young folks you’re talking about. She reads plenty of “graphic novels”. Her xmas and birthday lists are full of them. Titles like Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Blue Period, and Bocchi The Rock. Each one of those books has a great show driving readers like her to pick up books.
I’m not one of those dudes who will act like manga and anime are always superior because most of it is schlock. Sometimes it’s fun schlock but a lot of it is just terrible. Synergy is more important than quality. Quality keeps readers, synergy drives reader growth and gets books in hands.
The Big 2 are content to durdle away in a dying ghetto because the people up at the top would rather run social clubs than businesses. They’re spiritual losers.
And it’s not like they didn’t have the opportunity to grow the industry. We had 16 years of MCU. Not a single effort to exploit those potential synergies. Not a single effort to parley DCU success into new readers, and just you watch, DC will fumble the synergies with the Suicide Squad anime too.
Video Games and Manga sell more than Comics these days. Cool Kids don’t read Crap like Gay Superman or Gay Robin.
I think Parents are a big part of it. I won’t expose my kids or grandkids to the modern day woke comics, and they killed off the ‘convenience store’ distribution decades ago. That means that kids are not exposed to the satanism long enough to get addicted anymore.
I am not a fan of Manga, but at least Manga still has some decent adventure comics that aren’t full of Wonder woman cursing Christians and Gay Iceman.
I’d rather spend my money on Arkhaven comics.