It Started with the Hawkeye Initiative & Ended with Safespace & Snowflake: GAME OVER

This is how the comic book industry dies.



Or is it a dawn of self-publishing?



If it wasn’t for years of horrific ad sales, it was definitely insulting the vast majority of it’s consumer base. Or more specifically for Marvel’s case, CATERING AN ENTIRE MARKET THAT DOESN’T BUY COMICS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Regardless of intentions, YOU CANNOT MAINTAIN A BUSINESS OF CONSTANTLY FLIPPING OFF YOUR FANS AND EXPECT THEM TO PAY YOU FOR YOUR VIRTUE SIGNALING.



There’s a difference between being progressive with fiction and being a radical activist for the sake of retweets and likes, followed by a selfie for more self-esteem boosts. In a society where there’s no turning back from capitalism, money is your God, whether it’s right or wrong. You could suddenly be hit with a car and you better damn respect that the more money you have, the more likely everything will be fine afterwards. It pays the bills, it puts food on the table, and you better understand, it’s not going to change, outside of an act of God or Aliens simply invading our planet and enslaving humanity. Your pick.



It’s no secret that working in comics sucks, regardless of country. The pay is bad, the deadlines are killer and it has always been the least practical way of storytelling for a mass market, especially in America. Case in point, you don’t really need a colorist, a letterer or anything else, outside of a distributor (RIP DIAMOND). Anyone with a graphic design degree knows, you can easily be a one-man publisher without the need of an entire crew of mouths to feed. Not saying it wouldn’t be helpful, but given the future economy, it will be the norm.

See, the old buzz word of digital publishing really is a big deal, especially when it comes to the incoming job market change. No longer can you simply “specialize” in just one area of expertise, but you will be expected to fill in multiple roles to be successful. Even if time is against you in certain projects, it is entirely possible to save more money by just doing everything yourself. Here are the major hurdles and solutions to creating a new comic in the new landscape of comics next year:





1. STORY - This is where EVERYONE gets it wrong. Do not follow the trend of IDW publishing by planning out an ENTIRE world building graphic novel that will span DECADES.



Stick to what exactly you’re good at telling. Tell a short story. Polish every line of dialog. Make it shorter. Polish every line of dialog, make it shorter.



Third and most important advice is leave politics out of your story, unless it is about politics. Most older women buy trashy romance novels to escape their shitty sex life. Most middle-aged men by comics for the tits and ass and possibly the articles? Again, all ways of escape reality, yet you have Marvel comics for years that kept interjecting real world politics and views in their titles. Trust me when I say this, less than 10% of the United States is on Twitter. That means most people could give two fucks and a shit about Trump, Biden or Bearnie, BELIEVE OR NOT. So when most of America retreats after a long day of work and not TWITTER, they are spending money on things to make their lives tolerable. Being told Orange Man Bad is not one of those things, nor is bringing up Obama, again and again. Don’t make market assessments based on social media, leave politics out of your comic.



Additionally, learn about basic story telling and especially learn from other mediums outside of comics. Films and actual books will teach you a lot about pacing. You can learn basic writing skills by taking a community college course or higher. The goal and mindset should be to be humbled and not a place to be bitter when you get criticism.

2. ART - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. If you’re catering towards a WOKE AS FUCK CROWD OF TRUMP HATING LIBERALS, make sure you book will actually sell and not retweeted… Simply collecting a check and going unemployed for months on end is not an actual goal in life, much less beg your followers for coffee money. Example, see the animation industry.



Art is your mode of presentation, the book cover (not literally), the point of sale. If you want to cater towards a crowd of people of color, who happen to be gay, trans, and dealing with PTSD, etc, then make fucking sure your art matches with the story. You cannot have “tumblr” artists doing action intensive comics, where they spend more time creating people of color of diverse identity politics, than learning to draw a simple choreographed action sequence. You can’t have an action comic with ONLY 2 small panels of action to sell your comic.



Again, no shame or secret to point out that the VAST majority of comic sales are made off of issue #1s and tits and ass. Disposable income of middle-aged men cannot be underestimated, regardless of what cherry pick data you want to argue with. The older you get, the less progressive and liberal most Americans become as well. That’s called “reality” of real politics. So my advice, if you’re into action comics, learn to draw action, learn about the demography that buys those titles and don’t interject your politics in it, especially if you want to put food on the table. I’m not telling anyone to suddenly put Trump as the “good guy” president, but I am telling you that you shouldn’t include real world politics in your comic. You’re not offending either side of the political spectrum, IE, you’re not insulting your customers.



If you want to make a rom-com comic like Archie, sure those years of learning tutorials off of tumblr might pay off, but again, know your audience. Archie continues to sell steadily with a profit from the boomer generation, white women (vast majority), Christians, etc. Don’t expect your rom-com comic of a gender-less trans-protagonist that may or may not want to be dependent relationship with another person of color. You see where I’m getting with that? You’re welcomed to write and draw a book like that, but don’t expect anyone to buy it. Getting your book retweeted by your favorite SJW, doesn’t mean sales, it just spells virtue signaling for them.

My advice in the art category is DIVERSIFY your portfolio. Don’t just learn off tumblr. That boat has sailed and failed, as seen with every sale of tumblr picked artists at Marvel. Go out there (when the virus gets under controlled) and learn to draw from life. Don’t worry about gender, people of color, none of that stuff. Draw stuff that you actually care about and not for political points with your peers. If you wanna draw short men struggling to open a can of coke, then draw. If you wanna draw hot women, draw hot women. You wanna draw a cute tennis player with short shorts and looks like Swedish male model, then pack some sun screen. You’re not looking to be judged, you’re not looking for internet points of how woke you are. You are simply expanding on things that interest you and how it will indirectly help you grow.

Think Mr. Miyagi, but do it 80,000 times. You’ll master drawing short men struggling to open cans of soda!

When creating the art, DO NOT THINK ABOUT COLORING. It is way more profitable to create BW comics than color. Not only do you save money printing, but the amount of time you free up helps you to micromanage yourself better.



3. DIGITAL PUBLISHING - You don’t need anyone else if you have a computer and some basic digital programs. Once you understand how to write a short story, present marketable characters, then you’re set. The only enemy is time.

Learn Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for art. Learn Adobe Indesign for lettering, page layouts, etc. A few talks with a local printer and you can independently self-publish any book.







So to sum things up, learn to self-publish, respect your readers and the politics/baggage that industry houses and understand that things revolve around money. If you want to be a stereotypical far-left wing tumblr artist that wants to create a superhero of a trans-black girl/binary that may or may not want to be involved in a relationship with another binary/trans person, which could be their sister/brother/internet gas, then by all means make that comic. It won’t be profitable nor will it sell compared to other titles, but I guess you can’t claim victim-hood without a self-afflicting handicap and an arrow to the kneecap.



After all, Marvel’s done it for years without profitability and look where the industry is headed towards… This was all pre-Covid-19 mind you. The virus, if anything, is just the nail on the coffin after Diamond distributors quit. The comic industry might be dead, but books as a medium will never die.

