We live in a time where it is good to be a comic book fan. Previously associated with the nerd culture, the comic book industry has become the source material for making box office money. And in return, these movies made loving comics cool, however, despite all the new fans that movies bring in, why is there a steady decline in the readership of these books?

According to an article published on nerd.com in 2021 Japanese Demon Slayer manga series (150 million units) itself outsold the entire US Comics Industry (15 million units). An argument can be brought up that this is only the success of a single series, but as a big comic book nerd myself, the cracks start to show up as we look a little closer. Although there are certainly more, I have listed below the 4 main reasons that I believe cause the comic book industry to decline.

1-Too Much Material To Read Through

 

This is probably one of the biggest complaints I hear from people who want to get into the comics. I am a big Spider-man fan so let me give my example from Spiderman. Imagine someone who went to the latest Spider-Man movie and really enjoyed it. They loved the character, what he represented, and all the lore surrounding him. Now they want to read the actual source material, but where do you begin? Spider-Man has been around 60 years. Wherever they jump in, they will feel lost and confused. For this reason, most people get outright intimidated and just do online summaries every once in a while.

 

2-Inconsistent Characters And Writing

Since characters like Spider-Man have been around for 60 years, there is a constant rotation of writers and artists in the comics. Because of this, even though the aim is to keep the characters coherent (in this case, Spider-Man), every writer and artist displays their own interpretation of the character. As a result, not everyone is going to enjoy the occasional change in writing and/or writing.

 

Compared to popular long-running manga series such as Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (although the art style changes over time, the artist is the same) and One Piece, the writers and artists do not change. In these series, the writer even illustrates their own stories, which is fairly common in the manga industry.

3-Inconsequential Stories and Concepts

Due to the long-running nature of comics such as Marvel and DC, from time to time, they like to make big turning points for the characters or stories to draw in more readers and keep the existing ones hooked. Sadly, most of these events and changes can be inconsequential. The most apparent example of this is the concept of ‘death’ in comics. The amount of times characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, or characters in their series have died and came back is almost laughable.

When done right, the hard-hitting concepts such as death can really deliver an emotional punch and shake things up. However, if they are done too often, it loses that punch and becomes predictable, which can draw the readers away. With no end in sight, it becomes harder each day to keep these books fresh and interesting.

4-Too many Tie-In Books

This last one is also one of my biggest pet peeves about comics. Do you remember how I told you in comics they like to do big events from time to time to increase interest? Almost every year, to maximize this tactic big comic book companies like DC and Marvel like to do big events with high stakes involving various characters from their series since they all share the same universe.

The problem is if the series you read has nothing to do with those big events, they still try to tie in almost every character. So, as you are reading your favorite series, a totally unrelated event enters the fray. Now you have read another series, just understand the connection (most of which is poorly constructed) with the series that you are currently following. From my experience, there were even instances where certain stories or plot points were dropped just to follow the big event of the year.

Final Thoughts

Even though I criticized the comics culture, it is a culture that I deeply care about. It changed me and my life for the better on so many levels. That is also why I believe it is important to talk about its issues and flaws so that they can be addressed to make them even more popular and enjoyable than they already are.