“Maybe at some point I can open my doors again,” said Ryan Liebowitz, who runs Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles. “But if they’ve been sitting at home without buying new comic books for two, three months, they might go, ‘Eh, it was fun for a while but I don’t really need them anymore.’ Maybe they’ve re-evaluated what’s important to them.”

Brian Michael Bendis, the writer of several DC titles, including its flagship Superman and Action Comics series, said that although “things are very up in the air on almost every conceivable level,” the industry would eventually right itself as it has after past catastrophes.

Recalling the period after 9/11, when he wrote for Marvel, Bendis said, “I very specifically remember feeling and being told that we might be done, totally. And then three weeks later it all bounced back. I think something similar will happen here. We’re going to figure out how to fix this and get back to work.”

Now, as his social media fills with memes and cartoons depicting doctors and nurses in Superman costumes or showing the Man of Steel paying homage to medical personnel, Bendis said, “It’s a constant reminder of what the iconography means and what the character means.”

Moments like that, he said, were also illustrations of why comic books and the characters they chronicle were bound to survive. “It’s a very simple, literary equation,” Bendis said. “That’s someone who is trying to be their best self. That’s what he’s about. Let’s all try to be that, too.”