The story no one is really talking about.

So, we keep seeing comic books movies and shows and it’s AMAZING! GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE SELLING! WOW! TERRIFIC! THE COMIC INDUSTRY HAD A RECORD YEAR!

But wait...

Here’s what they’re not saying. First, revenue wise... ummm... the price of comics has and continues to go up so when they talk about the comic industry having a record year they aren’t taking those figures an accounting for inflation. Yeah... the comics industry problem did take in a bigger dollar figure than it did when comics were 15¢ an issue but did the industry do better when accounting for inflation?

Also... I don’t know about you but as far as new comic shops opening? Not happening. As a matter of fact the last few years the number of comic book shops continues to decline but no one in the industry is really talking about it all that much.

You know, I really don’t know what’s happening in comics anymore.

As a matter of fact, since I stopped making the weekly pilgrimage to the comics store, outside of what I can get in graphic novel format from the library I just don’t read all that much.

What surprises me about this is that it’s been over 15 years since I stopped jonesing for them. The price was just getting to be a little bit too much and once a single issue for a normal book climbed to over three dollars, I did the math to what it was costing me on a weekly basis and then on a yearly basis and there was no way I could see justifying the expense anymore.

I fell out of love with them which to me is very sad.

When I do pick up a comic or go to a website to read about what is happening in a comic I grow even more disappointed because the last 20 years appear as if the industry has simply been regurgitating things over and over again. They also slapped on the ‘woke’ trappings whether they made sense to story or not in the process destroying things.

Most recently I’ve been trying to get through this dreck that is Spider Man which starts with Sin Eater and Kindred and the thing is just a godawful mess. The writing is so incredibly bad, the dialog trite and the artwork is some of the muddiest overworked shit I’ve ever seen.

Oh, and because we can’t really ‘create’ we keep looking for ways to piss on some of the better ideas meaning that what was good about the JMS run on Spider Man years back has now morphed into this cumbersome juggernaut of garbage where there are nine different ‘spider people’ and all this other crap. It’s painful to read, I mean that quite literally.

If you do a look around… you get conflicting stories from people that sales are good or bad but either way, I’m not missing the medium but I am glad it’s still popular.