Even Superheroes Need Saving!

I was having dinner with a colleague and his girlfriend the other night when the conversation turned to our favourite television shows of the past season and I mentioned how much I enjoyed AMC’s The Walking Dead. My colleague’s girlfriend agreed with me. I said how excited I was for the next season, saying that if they stay as close to the comic book as they had for the first season, it should be fantastic.

She paused for a moment, confused, and said to me, “It’s a comic book?”

“Yes”, I said.

“Oh”, she responded, disappointed.

It seems like a strange thing to say “Save the comic book industry” as we’re watching trailers for Captain America or Thor or Green Lantern or Woodgod or whichever obscure character gets his own two hundred million dollar franchise film next, but it’s true. The comic books themselves are facing an increasingly ironic demise. It seems that as larger portions of the general public get their superhero stories via the growing pile of film and television products, the origins of those stories, the paper comic books, are becoming less relevant.

With publishing houses like Wizard Magazine closing their doors, and the industry itself shrinking by an estimated 20% in the last few years as well as the major publishers moving to digitize more and more of their collections, it seems feasible that we could be witnessing the death of an entire industry and art form.

The paper comic book industry has been on the bubble of collapse before, but never has there been such a disconnect between the characters and their origins. With every Dark Knight or Spider-Man that rank amongst the highest grossing films of all time, and with every video game that sells out in its first night, the characters become more of a marketable property and move farther away from the medium that birthed them. I want my daughter to know Bob Kane's Batman as well as Chris Nolan's.

But it’s not just the successful films that are hurting the industry, either. Less successful films like Watchmen or Wolverine give a general audience just enough super-heroics to entertain them, but disappoint them enough to have them never consider visiting a comic shop and picking up some original issues.

The team over at Superherostuff.com have come up with a way to combat this, to try and fend off this attack on sequential art. They’re proposing a project called “Buy A Comic Day”, a grass-roots event meant to take place the third weekend of every month wherein fans of paper comic books are encouraged to purchase an extra issue or two on their regular visits and encourage (or guilt) friends and family who may be inclined to join them to do just that.

While “Buy A Comic Day” is an ambitious project, it is no less noble. Nowhere else can you find stories as exciting, interesting and uniquely creative as a comic book. And it's not just super heroics, either. For every Superman, there's a Scott Pilgrim. For every Stan Lee, a Seth. It's a huge world that can be open to anyone if you're willing to start looking.

If you've always been interested in paper comics, but don't know where to start (with the same character appearing in four regular series' and issue numbers nearing the quadruple digits, it can seem a little daunting) do some research. Google search characters you're interested in, ask the guy behind the counter. Hell, email me.

Reading comics can be an extremely rewarding creative and literary experience if you're willing to try. There is something out there that will blow your mind. I promise you. Whether it’s the brain-bending story telling of Grant Morrison, or the soft and poetic pencils of Alex Maleev, there are brilliant artist at the top of craft available to you for $2.99 an issue. I encourage you to take part in “Buy A Comic Day” on whatever day you’d like and keep this vibrant art form from becoming the walking dead.