Heidi MacDonald follows up on the 7-11 story she broke at The Beat, kicking so much ass that I’m surprised she didn’t lose her shoes in the process. I’m particularly taken with her thoughts on the mad scheme to produce comics kids might actually enjoy reading:
“Every day we read about someone launching a line of educational comics for kids. Everyday we hear about librarians unable to keep comics on the shelves in kids sections. Every day we read that manga paperbacks aimed at kids sell 10-60k copies. This has been going on for years. People aren’t doing it because of some insane gamble that has only a prayer of paying off. It’s solid business sense. It isn’t rocket science. KIDS LIKE COMICS. That’s a fact.”
And if that wasn’t good sense enough, she follows it up with this:
“Marvel knows they have to escape from Skull Island. They’ve got to get back to the mainland, because everyone is running out of coconuts.”
Amen.
I’m apparently not the only person who gets nostalgic at the thought of comics in convenience stores (or drugs stores or grocery stores or wherever). And I’m interested to watch the same pattern emerge in many people’s experience: 1) pick up comics casually someplace where comics aren’t the only attraction; 2) become more dedicated to the hobby as your disposable income increases; 3) find specialty shop so you don’t have to rely on spinner racks in the carry-out.
It seems weird to me that this wasn’t just happening with me as a comics reader, or with a bunch of other comics readers, but that it seemed to be happening to an entire industry. Comics moved out of the places where everyone could buy them, further and further into an isolated, ever-more costly niche industry. It’s nice to see a concentrated effort to reverse that, and I hope Marvel and DC can commit the resources needed to put some quality, all-ages material in places where all ages are already shopping.
And sure, it’s old hat to compare the current state of affairs to the apparent comics utopia that is Japan, but sometimes it merits repeating. By all accounts, comics have always been widely available and inexpensive in Japan. And there are stories for all ages, which allows readers to keep reading, not out of a sense of nostalgia, but because there’s material that speaks to them, whether their in elementary school or riding the train to the office. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?