When fans think DC or Marvel, they would always have that stereotype about the
DC Universe (not Vertigo or not Wildstorm)
or the Marvel Universe (not non MU titles).

Most people who do read comics know that
Marvel and DC just revamp their titles
every decade and that the last storylines
from the last decade is just updated
for the next decade and no real respect
for that particular storyline.

Let’s not forget that most people who read comic books in the West are mostly the older generation, not youngsters. If
youngsters do read comics, it would be something like from a kids show, like Lego’s
Bionicles series.

Future of comics in the wets is bleak, thanks to video games and in the internet and so comics
will continue to decline in sales but even those
older generation who still read comics will get less interested nin Marvel and DC (since they are just forever being updated for every decade) and so, the balance will eventually shift to Dark Horse.

I think another issue for new comic dwellers is obscurity. If you don’t live next to a comic book store or hae comic book friends, the chances of you picking up a super specialized edition of Superman is pretty slim.

Online web comics are much easier to find than traditional comics. Web comic rankings and online advertising make it relatively cheap for a content creator to “get noticed” vs. if they took their chances selling their product in a small obscure comic book stores.

The recent online anime blogging community has done some work to spotlight good, quality anime series. Busy anime watchers can simply log onto the Internet to find what series the author finds appealing and focus their efforts that way.

It’s a nice thing to have and it gives me time to enjoy the things that I love.

Yes, DC Imprint Vertigo has its “adult” comic hits, but it’s had many misses as well. For every Preacher, there’s at least two or three Outlaw Nations sitting in the “lasted a year” pile. Also, many of these non-superhero books that are “hot” are finite - they’re bookstore-bound, trade-format material. Readers can get a beginning, a middle, and an end. They may not necessarily want to see that sort of change happen, considering that monthly sales of Spider-Man and Superman to the fanboys still make up a large percentage of their business.

I think Pride Of Baghdad and Can’t Get No shows that Vertigo is trying to match the bookstore model and hopefully they’ll succeed. (I’m sure Pride Of Baghdad is going to do well with the media push it’s getting.) I doubt if Marvel, under its current administration, can contemplate doing a creator-owned graphic novel with high production values.

I do anticipate a rise in houses similar to Darkhorse, Boom Studios, etc that publish Comics that have great character development, action, clever storytelling which will balance out the industry. We do see evidence of the big houses starting to branch out at times, “Rush City” from DC is a new joint that doesn’t deal heavily in the superhero line (although Black Canary makes an appearance in issue #2, but, I’m good with that) and will continue to do so. Marvel is coming out with Brubakers new, “Criminal” story which I think will be on point and also shows they consider plots outside their bread-n-butter genre to be viable.

Continued success from the houses like Vertigo and Darkhorse especially will legitimize the efforts of others wanting to get down in the industry and put their Comics up for solicitation that have nothing to do with the superhero genre, and it will work.

Keep up the good work. I’m digging the thought that goes into a lot of the posts on here.