Here's a post I wrote in 2004 on a comics message board about what I perceived as a lack of variety in the current comics scene, compared to the old days. From 1997 to 2013, I was regularly buying new comics every month, which is no longer the case. At the end of the post I have added a 2022 update about the fate of some of the comics that I was buying in 2004.
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Since I'm the one who began this thread, perhaps it's a little obvious that I think there's less variety in comics than there used to be.
Ever since 1997, I've been getting most of my new comics by advance-ordering them through the Previews catalog. For the first two years, this meant going page by page through the Previews catalog looking for stuff to order. Nowadays, I look up the listings online at Diamond's and Westfield's websites.
For most of the 1990s, I looked down on new comics and didn't buy them. I'd loved the 1980s era and became turned off by what I viewed as the increasing commercialization and standardization of the mainstream comics by the end of the decade. To use one prominent example, the way that DC tried to emulate Marvel after "Crisis," abandoning their former light-heartedly imaginative style where, say, "Sons of Superman and Batman" stories (1970s World's Finest Comics) were possible. Or the way that DC dropped their mystery, war, and western lines to focus increasingly on the fan market (particularly superhero fans, and Marvel fans) who bought their comics at comics shops, abandoning the non-fan general audience who bought their comics at 7-11s and drugstores.
I also began buying Charlton in 1984, shortly before that company's demise. They published a slew of ghost-story comics (Ghost Manor, Ghostly Tales, Beyond the Grave, etc.) and war comics (Attack, Battlefield Action, Fightin' Marines, Fightin' Army, Fightin' Navy, etc) and a western comic called Gunfighters. In the early 1980s, Charlton attempted a romance-comic revival with their Soap Opera comics. By 1984-85, Charlton also began publishing humor comics again like Atomic Mouse. (This was during the time in the 1980s when funny animals became popular again, with DC publishing Captain Carrot and Archie (and later WaRP) publishing Thunder Bunny, who incidentally had a story in Pep in 1984, too.)
The early 1980s saw the demise of the Whitman and Harvey lines of comics, but the Harvey comics returned later in the 1980s before disappearing (forever?) in the mid-1990s. Warren ended their horror magazine line in the early 1980s, and Marvel also cut back, to the point that it's unimaginable that the company today would attempt something like Epic Illustrated, a format which at one time appeared to be the future of comics.
At the same time, there was exploding growth in the 1980s of the independent ("alternate" or "alternative") comics scene. This encompassed everything from Marvel-DC wannabes (albeit with usually a concession to creator-copyright of the material) like First, Eclipse, Now, and Dark Horse, to more artistic companies like Fantagraphics, Vortex, Kitchen Sink, underground style comics like Weirdo, anthologies like Art Spiegelman's RAW, and small-press and self-published titles like American Splendor, Cerebus, Elfquest, TMNT, and so on. Pacific and then Eclipse stepped into the void left by the demise of Warren, DC, and Charlton's mystery lines by coming up with new titles like Twisted Tales (later Tales of Terror) as well as 1950s horror reprints in the mini-series Seduction of the Innocent.
In the 1980s, the worst comics shop in my area, one that carried mostly mainstream titles, at least still carried Cerebus also. The only reason that I've been able to buy Cerebus there in recent years is because I specifically advance-ordered it every month. They've devoted shelf space to CrossGen today, just as they devoted some space to the more popular Eclipse and First titles in the 1980s, companies whose comics look as though they may appeal to Marvel and DC superhero fans even if technically the comic is not about superheroes (they just look that way).
During the 1980s, I learned about innovative independents like Love and Rockets and Yummy Fur by simply buying them off the shelf of one of the better comics shops in my area (a shop which had closed its doors by 1991). I first heard about Yummy Fur when I read a letter in CBG (also available at the shop) where a reader praised it and wished more people were reading it. Back then, lots of indies were flooding many comics shops (creating the B&W boom which wiped out a few publishers in the process). Stuff which looked like it had been made at Kinko's was finding its way onto the shelves, even faster if it parodied a popular comic. I remember buying a copy of the amateurish Jontar just because I was so surprised to see something so amateurish on the shelf. (The majors had also looked at developing amateur talent, with DC having a series called New Talent Showcase in the early 1980s for that purpose. Back-up stories, once prevalent in DC comics, allowing them to use many characters in the same comic, making for more variety, and also allowing newer untested talent a try-out without having a whole comic riding on the outcome.)
Strange as it may seem to those who were there, an alternative comic like Love and Rockets was more prominent in 1989 than it is today in 2004. At the time, L&R was published more regularly (and at magazine-size) and could sometimes be found in ordinary bookstores. I remember at the time buying a copy of L&R #29 in the bookstore of my small hometown. (Circa 1996, I also bought a copy of DC's Weird magazine there.) Ads for L&R #5 had appeared on newsstands in 1985 when Fantagraphics placed an ad in all of Charlton's comicbooks for a month. The new volume of L&R, which is comics-sized (although more expensive than the mag was) has not had such mainstream exposure (unless you want to count the cover of the new Indigo Girls CD) and who knows how people are discovering it outside of comics shops.
The first comic that I advance-ordered through Previews in 1997 was Totally Horses Magazine, a new color comics magazine devoted to the subject of horses. Not only were their gag strips about horses, but serious dramatic ones as well. Each issue reprinted a Black Fury story from the 1950s, a Charlton series about a heroic horse. Such "animal comics" would seem to be a natural for a young audience, and indeed older eras produced their share of such comics, as in the case of DC's Rex the Wonder Dog. Today, however, DC seems embarassed to even feature Krypto cameos, let alone solo Krypto back-up stories (something which could be found in Superboy comics as late as 1982). Even Marvel had comics stories about animals in the old days -- for example Kid Colt Outlaw #10, published in 1950, which has a short non-Kid Colt tale about animals in the wild, with not a human in sight. In the 1980s, Fantagraphics published 50 issues of Critters, from which Dark Horse's Usagi Yojimbo is still running today.
One of the next titles in 1997 that I decided to follow was The Kents. This seemed to illustrate practically the only way that a non-superhero genre like the Western (once a staple of the medium) could be published by a major company like DC, by tying it into one of the company's superhero properties. Thus, we can get a police comic again, but unlike Police Action or Lady Cop (1970s), only if the comic is about Gotham City's police department. And teen girls can only be aimed at by Marvel if it has to do with Spider-Man (e.g., Trouble and the Mary Jane book).
One company that was soliciting product in the Previews catalog in 1997 looked so interesting to me that I think I advance-ordered every single title they offered. This was Pyramid Comics, who promised an inexpensively-priced line of comics such as True Romance, Triple Threat, and The Space Giants. They also soon offered a line of reprint titles under the Hyper-X Classics imprint, including Great Western, Alarming Tales, Boys Ranch, Western Tales, Thrills of Tomorrow and Race for the Moon among others. Cover images were shown for many of these comics in the catalog, and one waited in vain for the solicited titles. Four issues of True Romance had been solicited, but none ever appeared in shops, the entire company's output having been cancelled prior to publication.
Ah well, there was still ACG/Avalon reprinting old Charlton and ACG comics from the 1960s-70s, and A List Comics reprinting Golden-Age titles like Jungle Comics, and Gemstone reprinting EC. (Even DC was reprinting EC at this point, the entire 1950s run of the comicbook-size MAD.) By 2000, all of these efforts were pretty much over. AC Comics is still reprinting old comics in semi-affordable format, although concentrating more on superhero reprints these days, and less than ever on western reprints (unlike the situation at AC, say, fifteen years ago when they were devoting entire comics to Roy Rogers and other cowboy stars).
While Dark Horse is still publishing some worthwhile titles, to my mind they've gone more into the licensed properties business (Star Wars comics, etc.) than what seemed their original intent. Can anyone say that they honestly prefer Dark Horse's current offerings to what the company offered in the 1990s?
So, what does this grumpy old fan buy today?
I buy most of Archie's "pamphlet" comics (not the reprints). I love anthologies for the multi-story format (i.e., for the variety) and Archie is still providing that, one of the few to still aim at general readers. Of course, they no longer have a Red Circle line, nor even That Wilkin Boy or Lil' Jinx, but it's enough like the old-time comics to keep me happily buying them.
I've also begun buying the "pamphlet" Gemstone Disney titles since they started up again, although not the more expensive books. Again, I like the multi-story anthology format that they have every issue. Reminds me of the comics of old.
And I buy a few mainstream titles by favorite creators, or starring favorite characters. And I buy some indie comics like Love & Rockets, although I try to avoid what appears to me to be the more amateurish kind that I see around (for example, numerous pages in the annual Small Press Expo sampler books). And I also buy a lot of the modern magazines about comics such as CBM, CBA, JKC, A/E, and so on.
But what do I do if I want to read a comic about cars? The logical solution seems to me to be to delve in the back issue bins, looking for Charlton comics like Drag N' Wheels, Grand Prix, and World of Wheels, or the long-running humor mag CARtoons. (If one can find any in back issue boxes, that is!)
What if I want to read a sports comic? DC used to publish Champion Sports in the 1970s, and there were other old comics on the subject in the dim past, but today perhaps the only comics about so popular a topic are sports manga (if they are even translated yet). (However, a recent Gemstone Disney comic did feature a fun soccer story.)
I wish there was more variety in comics today. I'd have more comics to buy and read.
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2022 POST-SCRIPT:
Between 1997 and 2013, I had a "pull list" at a local comics shop, buying and pre-ordering new comic books every single month. When I wrote the above post in 2004, I was buying Gemstone's Donald Duck & Friends and Mickey Mouse & Friends every month, as well as Archie's Jughead, Betty & Veronica, Betty & Veronica Spectacular, Sabrina (during its manga phase) and Archie & Friends. Unfortunately Gemstone cancelled both Disney titles in 2006, and I dropped the Archie titles from my pull list in either 2005 or 2006. The CrossGen titles that I praised in my post above were all cancelled in 2004 when the company went out of business. I think the last Archie comic that I bought new was Betty & Veronica #258 (April 2012) which I bought at a Barnes & Noble bookstore because I noticed that the issue guest-starred Lady Gaga.
I was even buying the occasional X-Men comic, when it was drawn by an artist I liked such as Alan Davis. I had taken a break from buying Captain America during the "Marvel Knights" era at this time, but would soon return the title to my pull list when Ed Brubaker took over as writer at the end of the year. I also added Daredevil in 2006, which Brubaker also wrote, to my monthly pull at that time. And I had been buying Avengers every month since 1997, finally dropping it for good in 2007 during writer Brian Michael Bendis' run. I eventually dropped both DD and Cap from my pull lists in 2013. The last DC series I had on my pull list was Booster Gold, which I dropped in 2010 after Dan Jurgens left the series.
I still bought the occasional new comic book after 2013, but not regularly. I had bought and enjoyed John Byrne's various series for IDW around this time, but new Byrne comics appeared to have disappeared after 2014. IDW's Popeye series in 2012 and 2013 was one of my favorite new comics, but it ended after only 12 issues. I also bought a few issues of IDW's reprint series Haunted Horror in 2012 and 2013, but didn't keep up with it and don't recall seeing it on the shelves after that, although it ran until 2018.
Another factor in my dwindling interest in new comics was the changing creative teams and constant renumbering. While a new #1 could cause me to try out a series I wasn't buying before, it also created a jumping-off point for a series that I had been buying but was no longer enjoying as much as I had in the past. There was no need to keep buying the series for the sake of "keeping the collection going" when "my" run had ended and been renumbered. There were fewer familiar names among many of the artists and writers working on the books, too, and even some of my former favorites were no longer doing material that I felt was as appealing as they had done before. And once one gets out of the habit of going to the comics shop every week or two to buy new comics, and finds some other way to spend one's money, then it's a little harder to get excited about starting up the habit again.
There's also a sense that the glory days of many of today's comics are firmly in the past, and that any new installments are not worth one's time, let alone one's money. Will a new Spider-Man comic really be better than all of the classic Spider-Man comics of previous decades? Of course, when I was buying Ed Brubaker's Daredevil every month, I knew that it was unlikely to be regarded as highly as Frank Miller's groundbreaking work on the series. I enjoyed Brubaker's DD anyway, but admittedly I'm less inclined to reread them. I enjoyed them in the moment, in the way that one follows a favorite new TV series, without pausing to consider its place in the pantheon of broadcasting.
Nonetheless, I am glad that comics are still being published today, although I am sad to see that there appears to be even less variety today than there was in 2004. Archie digests are still available in supermarkets, but Archie no longer publishes the regular teen-humor comic books for which they were famous for decades. (In more recent years, Archie's standard comics switched to a more "realistic" style.) Marvel and DC have published some comics that dabble in traditional non-superhero genres, but always insert their superhero characters and their baffling universes into them, undermining the chance to reach a non-fan general reader in the way that, say, Charlton did. There may be some new comics that I would like just as much as those of old, but it may be that their price-point keeps me from discovering them, or my disinterest in pre-ordering new comics sight-unseen makes me unaware of them. And yet, somehow, in the past I was able to hear about new comics that I might enjoy without too much trouble. If it's difficult to find the good new stuff today (even for a knowledgeable fan like myself), that in itself ought to be a cause for concern about the medium's survival in the years ahead.
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