Looks like we found us a nerve, boys
Over at Fanboy Rampage, you'll find the state of the art in discussion of kid's comics in the industry. This sparked off by the Michael Chabon keynote speech at this year's Eisner awards.
I've seen a lot of threads over at Fanboy Rampage. But I've never seen one grow so large so fast. Well, beats the hell out of discussing Avengers Disassembled or whatever.
For my own part, an industry (any industry) that isn't recruting a new audience to replace natural audience attrition is staring extinction in the face. Comics (and by this I really mean the direct-marked driven western comics format, but that's a mouthful) can't depend on readers getting hooked in college and continuing on afterwards. And comics sure as hell can't hope for crossover audiences from even successful movie franchises (I'd have thought that this point would have been driven home spectacularly by now, but some people keep on hoping.) Were it not for a hundred thousand comics outlets in the form of gorcery stores, drugstores, convenience stores and spinner racks, there would never have been an audience to support a direct market in the first place.
Years after the introduction of the direct market, there's been a coevolution between the marketplace itself and the fans. The big problem is that only one side of the equation has been allowed to increase. Now, it's turned resources inwards and not outwards. It's been servicing the market that can shell out and purchase ever more expensive floppies and trades, and I can't really blame that, but unless you find a way to keep adding to the audience (and I've not seen any evidence of that), then eventually your burn rate will outstrip any kind of natural market increases.
Is it all the direct market's fault? No. Is it all the comics publisher's fault for writing to their perceived audience? No. Is it the fault of the medium for being painted broadly as juvenalia and not worthy of adult attention? Is it because we, as a society, don't read as much as we used to? No. There's a million reasons why things are the way they are. It can't be nailed down to any one single reason. But if you name a single reason, it's pretty easy to attribute *some* blame to it.
The big question is, what's to be done about it? Convince authors to write more all-ages material? I guess. Though some of them are going to be a hard-sell in that department. Let's face it, some authors and artists just plain *don't* want to write to kids (or even smart books that can be read by both kids and adults: evidence Harry Potter and just about all of Pixar's output on the movie side.) Many creators want to write stuff that was like the comics that they read, only with more blood, sex and politics. I'm not even going to talk about the difficulties involved in getting corporate comics behemoths to change course and do things like market research and consider investing in the future of their medium rather than going after the short-term market-share (because having the #1 book in any given month makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE.)