The Problems With Comics

Lots of modern talk and critique around comics is focused around the stories therein, the people drawing and writing them, and for many years now, talking about representation in comics - where it succeeds, where it fails, where it could do with trying a hell of a lot harder, and a whole glut of other things about not just the stories in comics, but the decisions that are made in publishing them.

One factor in particular, however, tends to get passed over in talking about the way comics are now, and how they might change, and what we think of them or perhaps want out of them: the economics and the market of comics themselves, and how business decisions affect creative decisions affect representation and so much more.

By detailing a history of the relentless, seemingly never ending fuck ups in comics' economics history, it is shown where business and art connect, and how and why the business, the market, and how god awful it is run, directly impacts our creative and representational desires out of print comics. And, hopefully, how we might be able to be find solutions out of it.

-A 20k word history/essay in the format of twine on print comics markets and economics, starting the Comics Code Authority, moving into the 70s crash, the shift into the direct market, the speculator bubble, and how the hell we got to the point where X-Men comics sell less than they ever used to, despite never being more popular characters, among others.