First, let me elaborate before the people in the peanut gallery start screaming at me for the title of the article. No, the comic book industry isn’t going to go anywhere. But the fact of the matter is the industry as we know it won’t exist anymore after the lockdown has been lifted. And no Covid-19 was not the cause but the straw that broke the camels back which I will elaborate in a detailed explanation. The first and biggest elephant in the room is putting all of your eggs into one basket by depending on a single company to handle your distribution needs:

This is and should be a wake-up call for both Marvel and DC Comics. They need to stop relying on Diamond. Having ONE company distribute all the comics wasn’t smart at all and should have been addressed years ago but wasn’t. This demonstrates why no company should have a monopoly on anything. Competition breeds better distribution solutions. Let this be a lesson folks, never put your eggs in one basket. And you know who will suffer the most? Not Marvel or DC Comics, but the actual comic book shops that depended on the timely shipments of Diamond. They will be paying the price for the horrendous business decisions made by both Marvel and DC Comics:

These stores were already living on a knifes edge before the epidemic struck with hundreds of them closing over the last couple of years due to not turning a profit:

Now you might wonder why is it that comic book stores were already living on a knives edge financially? Well, the answer is not as complicated as you would think. But it does have multiple parts to it. The first part would be the massive drop in quality when it comes to production values behind the creation of comics. Marvel and DC Comics have effectively become social/political propaganda (After Trump got elected) who now employs anyone and everyone who could string a single sentence together. Taking popular characters and franchises handing them over to these people who got the job because of their sexual orientation or color of their skin and not because of their writing skills or experience. In an industry where nepotism is the order of the day, and quality is the last thing on their minds.

This ties in with how the comic book industry as a whole has been treating its customers and fanbase. Don’t like a POC being inserted into a story as a token character, or having your favorite Marvel or DC Comic character race swapped? Well, then you are now officially a racist. Don’t like your comics being social/political propaganda? Well, then congratulations you are now officially a Nazi! Don’t like the valid criticism being leveled at you by your readers. No problem! You can tell them to go eat “Eat A Bag Of Pre-Fucked Dicks” because insulting the very fan base that supports you no matter what industry has always worked out for the best right? These people have become the friend that you helped pursue their dreams. They are now billionaires who trash your name and won’t break bread with you. But expects you to buy what they are selling.

There is a Medium article detailing the PR disaster that modern-day comics have become and how these writers have been treating their fanbase and customers of late which I highly recommend you read, you can find over here. It is a very long read but worth it. Which now brings everything nicely together with the massive over shipping problem that both DC Comics and Marvel themselves created. What is over shipping you may ask? Basically over shipping is when you ship more books to the local comic book stores than they originally asked for. They are shipping more units “for free” so it looks like their market share is bigger overall when you look at the total retail numbers (dollars and units) but in actuality, they are selling fewer books.

So now that you have books that no one wants to buy due to the above-mentioned lack of quality and treating your fan base like shit means these books have become literally unsellable. So now these comic book stores now sit with books they cannot make a profit out of or even give away for free. It got so bad that Marvel dumped 250,000 comics to various Liquidation Outlets because they could not sell these books. But while the industry burns around them neither Marvel nor DC Comics have come up with any real tangible viable solution to the current issues facing the industry. And the comic book professionals are all pretending that absolutely nothing is wrong with the industry. Like a man pretending everything is fine while sitting inside a burning house while everyone is telling him to get out:

The above issues have been both Marvel and DC Comics standard MO for years now. But clearly, they don’t understand this concept, and doing the same shit over and over again won’t give a different outcome. I am not one for dancing on the grave of the misfortune of others but this whole Coronavirus and lockdown thing is going to teach plenty of these people the meaning of humility and respect for their consumer and fan base. And in their misguided attempt to fix an industry they help break they started a charity fund to try to save comic book stores from going under. Turns out for every dollar donated shops will only realistically see around $0.20 ending up in their pockets. And it also turns out the charity that will handle the funds takes 60% of the money donated for themselves.

I would not donate to any charity to safe comic book stores, the minute local comic shops become a charitable cause, they are beholden to the money of strangers. Instead, buy their back issues go online and order books and other items from them, just don’t randomly hand them cash. It is like putting a small band-aid on a gaping wound. These comic book shops need your BUSINESS, not your charity. What these auctions are doing is trying to alleviate a situation the industry themselves created, by employing creators who write unsellable products and Marvel and DC over shipping these products. The industry is fundamentally broken, bailing out these stores won’t fix the problem. The problems need to be addressed and fixed before you can help the stores. The problems being over shipping of comics and buying back of comics that don’t sell.

The time to care about comic shops’ profits was 5-10 years ago when the fans repeatedly warned them about this, but they were more interested in actively, openly, and stupidly trying to drive off their established customer base to seem more woke. These comic book professionals did not care about the comics’ industry (See Heather Antos for a reference), so much as they care about having a company that pays them money to produce unsellable comic books, and allows them to openly criticize, berate and belittle their customers. So how do you fix the comic book industry? Firstly get multiple distributors to ship your products not just one. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Stop over shipping comics too comic book stores, it has caused untold damage to the industry. Allow stores to sell back un-bought comic books and graphic novels.

Start hiring writers based on their writing skills, not because of their race or sexual preferences. Stop dragging your Trump Derangement Syndrome into your stories, we read comic books for escapism not to be preached at. And start treating your customers like customers, did you just insult a customer publically on social media? Then you get your ass fired on the spot! Start crowdfunding popular characters or franchises. It reintroduces meritocracy, something long overdue in this industry knowing for hiring mediocrity. But the problem is all of these proposed solutions are 5-10 years too late, the comic book industry did not self-correct they just kept on using the same broken business model without a care in the world.

Which leaves me with the following question: How do you fuck up such a lucrative industry so badly? At a time when titles like Avengers and Wonder Woman (Which are now household names) movies are shoveling money in the bank by the truckloads, the comic’s industry is losing it by the truckloads. That fact alone just blows my mind completely that you could mismanage such a goldmine that in a matter of 2 weeks without any steady income your industry is now on the brink of collapse. I loved the industry. It was a big part of my youth. So seeing it die is cause for great sadness for me. But the way the industry and it’s “writers” and “editors” have been behaving, and how much they have butchered the industry, it is clear now that the death of the industry is the only way to purge them from the industry and see a new industry be built in its place.