The Rise and Fall of the Comic Industry's Direct Market and Other Stories

Alvy Ampersand — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:03:52 -0800

"Since their birth early in the century, comic books had been regarded as a kind of junior magazine and allowed to occupy space on the shelves or spinner racks of newsstands, grocery stores, drugstores, dime stores, and sometimes even bookstores. They caught on quickly and, initially, more than earned their place in those venues, but after the 1940s, the comics industry experienced more downs than ups. The Marvel-led resurgence of the 1960s had foundered by the 1970s to the point where extinction seemed like a real possibility. Comics retailer (and former distributor) Steve Schanes put it succinctly: 'Comics were on their last breath. They couldn’t have lasted another four years.'"

Part One: Fine Young Cannibals: How Phil Seuling and a Generation of Teenage Entrepreneurs Created the Direct Market and Changed the Face of Comics Part Two: Black and White and Dead All Over: Gary Groth On the Mid-Eighties B&W Glut Part Three: Suicide Club: How Greed and Stupidity Disemboweled the American Comic Book Industry in the 1990s Part Four: Old Superheroes Never Die, They Join the Real World: Marvel Bullpenner Herb Trimpe's Journal of Marvel's Mid-Nineties Implosion and His Firing From The House of Ideas. Part Five: Jeet Heer on The Comics Journal and What It Does Right. The Fall and Fall of TheComicsJournal.com. Publisher/Editor Gary Groth responds. Part Six: Groth at 17; Or, Portrait of the Publisher as a Young Fan.

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