Week 14: The Future of Comics

This last week we discussed what is to be the future of comics.  The age gap between people who buy printed comic books the old-school way, and the people reading comics on the web, is ever growing.  The average comic book buyer’s age is up in the 50’s and 60’s.  So it’s no wonder that their sales have dropped and so has their popularity.  But just like in a superhero story where it seems that doom has taken over…there’s still hope for the industry!  There has been a recent rise in numbers of comic book fans due to several blockbuster hits at the movie theatres this past decade.  The comic book industry has gained a lot of new followers.  So in return, their has been a spark of survival to the sales in printed comics, collectible toys, and also (something that interests me personally as an aspiring artist) special edition items like sculptures and illustrations.

Another reason there is some light at the end of the comics tunnel is the rise of web comics.  Independent artists that decide to post their sequential art on the internet now are just a scan and a click away.  It’s free to publish on the web.  It’s one of the best ways to showcase your art.  So if I’m an aspiring comic book artist and can’t get a major company to employ me yet, I can still publish work where there will be a potential audience.  And if eventually this audience grows to large enough numbers, big publishers will get interested and are more willing to publish these web sensations.

But with the free space of the web also comes a lot of crappy web comics.  Literally anybody can publish a comic on the web nowadays.  Hopefully they’ll stay in the shadows of unknown websites and blogs.  I looked through chapters of the web comic Rice Boy by Evan Dahm.  Even though I wasn’t too crazy about the drawings, I really liked his color usage and it really carries a lot of weight.  I checked into some other works of his and his blog, and some of his more finished works have a real nice digital quality to them, especially his Vattu: The Name and the Mark illustrations.