The Industry Today: Why Is The British Comic Book Industry Going Down In Sales?
Now there is a lot to say when it comes to the British comic book industry, but today I only want to ask one question, why is the British comic industry going down in sales? At this point many people would think that Britain would be on the same footing as America in terms of popularity in the comic book industry as we have produced Zines, Comic Sketches and Graphic Novels with some of the best writers in the industry such as Grant Morrison, John Wagner (who was born in Pennsylvania, but works in England) Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, Ian Edinton, Pat Mills, Alan Grant and Alan Moore who have gone onto be some of the driving forces of the industry with their works.
There could be many factors to contribute to why the industry is dropping seeing is how comic sales for Beano and 2000 AD dropped by 5.5% per cent last year alone. I think one the most important parts of the British comic book industry and why it is not so successful is the fact that British comics (other than the ones that are marketed to kids and even then it’s a small ad that’s barely on) is the fact that not many British comics are easy to market to a large audience like kids such as 2000 AD they make comics filled with graphic violence and there regular demographic are teens and up which is very small from a sales perspective as teens will be more likely to buy video games, DVD/Blu-ray discs and clothes then they would a comic.
I mean let’s look at the American industries offerings in place of marketing, Spiderman, X-Men, Superman, Batman Flash and many more American ideas are more marketable because they apply to all demographics mainly due to the fact of their longevity and the fact that they have that international appeal.
Superheroes in America are icons given an international appeal that are basically designed to appeal to all with characters like the x-men which is an international team of heroes or in emotional ways such as Fantastic Four that represent the family dynamic or spider-man who can basically be for any kid who’s into comic books and it’s not just comics toys, TV series and films.
To say that films have not aided in Americas comic book industry would be leaving out a lot of information as it has gotten the word out to the world and whereas America has an entire film empire built along comic book characters there have only ever been two Judge Dredd films, a Dennis the menace TV series on CBBC and a few comics based on Dr Who which don’t get me wrong has been popular in American pop culture it’s more of a cult following.
Let’s do a comparison between comics, Marvels Civil War II event sold 380,000 copies on its first week as it was designed to capitalise on the film and 2000AD around that time was selling fewer than 12,000 copies on their flagship book.
I mean let’s face it the comic book industry in the USA did experience some significant changes such as a rise in sales and popularity in characters with all demographics with the release of MCU and couple that with Disney’s corporate backing they have a lot in terms of marketing whereas the UK based comic book industry has a few independent conventions/events and a lot of creative minds in the industry.
