The Fate of the Comic Book Industry: The Rise and Fall of Comic Book Stores

The past two years have been hugely consequential for the comic book industry. As it emerges from the pandemic, we analyze the current state of the industry and how it has become a shadow of its former self while at the same time a story of unbridled success. We present the first of a two-part series about the fate of the comic book industry and examine how comic book stores came to be and the market speculation that almost killed them.

Joe Field was on deadline and didn’t know what to write. The owner of Flying Colors Comics and Other Cool Stuff in Concord, California, and part-time industry columnist, needed to submit an article to Comics & Games Retailer magazine for their August 2001 issue. As Field feverishly tried to surmount his writer’s block, he noticed some commotion outside his comic book store. A line of customers formed, but they weren’t waiting in line to enter his store; it was for free scoop night at Baskin-Robbins next door. “Free scoop night?” thought Field. “The only thing cooler than ice cream is comics. We can do that.” Not only did Field have something to write about, but he also formulated the blueprint for what would become the event known as Free Comic Book Day.

After being canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and following a challenging year of disruption to industry norms and numerous comic book store closures, Free Comic Book Day returned in 2021 and provided a much-needed reprieve for comic book stores emerging from the ruins of the pandemic. What resulted was an urgent call to action to comic book fans, many of whom wanted to preserve and protect the endearing legacy of their local comic book stores and prevent them from becoming a relic of a bygone era.

So what exactly is the state of the comic book industry? Just like how the motion picture and music industries evolved over the past two decades to keep pace with and stay ahead of changing generational preferences and shifting business models, the comic book industry finds itself in a similar predicament. As new generations of fans become ambivalent towards traditional comic books and comic book stores, many in the industry can’t help but feel a little melancholy reminiscing about what the industry once used to be.

There was a time when you could get a comic book almost anywhere. All you had to do was go to your local newsstand, grocery store, drug store, or convenience store and look for the aluminum-wired spinner rack. But retailers were unsure about carrying comics due mainly to their slight profit margins and flimsy and easily damaged format.

The comic book industry changed forever in the late 1980s when the once ubiquitous spinner racks stuffed with the latest monthly titles were forced into antiquity with the emergence of direct market distribution. Direct sales – whereby distributors bought wholesale comics from publishers and sold them directly to retailers – became the norm for comic book distribution in North America. But the direct market presented a catch: all sales were final.

Whereas retailers would typically return comics that didn’t sell to the publisher, direct market distribution prohibited retailers and their distributors from returning comics that went unsold. What resulted was surplus inventory that created a back issue market and a subsequent comic book store boom across the nation for comic book fans, new and old alike.

Before the advent of the internet and social media, local comic book stores served as bastions for fandom and geek culture. Whereas DC Comics and Marvel Comics dominated the mainstream spinner racks, the direct market allowed comic book stores to provide more diversity in the types of comics available to readers. Through the direct market, an eclectic cultural kaleidoscope of comics from around the world finally gave foreign comic books, particularly Japanese manga, a viable venue for distribution in America.

The direct market also gave rise to dozens of independent comic book publishers who eschewed the restraints on creativity imposed by The Comics Code Authority – the independent body responsible for comic book censorship in North America – and offered an alternative to readers accustomed to the exploits of costumed heroes that had dominated American comics for the better part of a century.

Experimental, grungier, darker, ranging from lowbrow to highbrow material, and punctuated by low print runs and high prices, these independent titles gave rise to unique creations like Cerebus The Aardvark, Omaha the Cat Dancer, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the process, the scarcity of these issues led to the growth of a veritable collector’s market for comic books and sent back issue prices soaring. Comic book store owners couldn’t have been happier.

The 1990s saw record sales of comics such as Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man #1 (2.5 million copies) in 1990, X-Men #1 (7.1 million copies) in 1991, and X-Force #1 (5 million copies) in 1992, which furthered the comic book collecting fever. Comic book publishers knew what they were doing by tapping into the flourishing collector’s market. These momentous issues came emblazoned with big, bold print declaring the importance and supposed value of the issue. Spider-Man #1 declared across the top of its cover, “1ST ALL-NEW COLLECTOR’S ITEM ISSUE!” That phrase, or some iteration of it, became the norm for the first issues of newly launched comic book titles of the early 1990s.

Image Comics, founded in 1992 by dissatisfied Marvel Comics defectors and industry rockstars like Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, and Todd McFarlane – whose Spawn #1 sold 1.7 million copies – sought to change the comic book industry forever. Entirely creator-owned and selling out several titles a month, Image Comics finally presented a legitimate rival to DC and Marvel’s market domination.

The subsequent launch and re-launch of several comic book titles from mainstream and independent publishers only encouraged the collector-driven frenzy for comic books. Collectors bought first issues en masse and scavenged back issue catalogs of comic book stores looking for rarities in hopes to one day capitalize on their perceived investment value.

No longer seen as cheaply produced newsstand pulp geared towards children, comic books became more mature in subject matter and boasted highly wrought production quality. Mindful tactics like die-cut, foil-embossed, holographic, and lenticular covers to pre-bagged comics with special inserts like trading cards and posters became the norm and exploited the expectations of the collector’s market. These gimmicks worked, and comic book sales soared through the stratosphere, often resulting in numerous printings of a best-selling issue. However, true comic book aficionados saw these industry approaches as doing more harm than good.

The collector’s market for comic books became an expanding bubble that was about to burst.  

In 1993 DC Comics did something no one thought they would ever do – kill Superman, their main moneymaker and brand icon. Starting in November 1992’s issue of Superman: The Man of Steel #17, the lead up towards “The Death of Superman” spanned several titles and culminated in January 1993’s Superman #75, where the monstrous Doomsday killed the Man of Steel in a marathon battle depicted in chaotic splash page after chaotic splash page.

Dark, somber, and violent, the issue became synonymous with what comics had become in the 90s. The media and public attention the storyline garnered was intense, and it helped to sell over 3 million issues of Superman #75.

But there was no way DC comics would let Superman stay dead, now, would they? After a ten-month-long saga spanning several DC Comics titles, Superman made his anti-climactic return from the dead in October 1993’s The Adventures of Superman #505. Fans of the Man of Steel were relieved. But those entrenched in the business of comic books, particularly comic book store owners, were dismissive and felt the story had done irreversible damage to the comic book industry, especially their independently-owned stores.

“For a little while, the wonderful earnings [comic book stores] generated from this huge new flow of customers seemed to make all my arguments against the ‘death’ of Superman seem like a big mistake,” opined Chuck Rozanski, founder of Denver, Colorado’s iconic Mile High Comics megastore. Writing in his industry column “Tales From the Database” in 2004, Rozanski pulled no punches when reflecting on the “Death of Superman” storyline and its impact on the comic book industry and comic book stores.

“DC never had any intention of actually killing off Superman. His entire ‘death’ was an event solely contrived to sell lots and lots of comic books. Under many other circumstances, I believe that this promotion would not have had nearly as negative an effect,” argued Rozanski. “[T]he comics market going into the early 1990s had already been severely inflated by the addition of thousands of undercapitalized and unknowledgeable new retailers. It seemed at the time that there was now a comics shop on every corner, and the prevailing illusion was that the owners of these comics shops were all making a great deal of money. As a result, it became a common delusion for a while that you could make a fortune investing in comics.” 

The collector’s market that defined the late 80s and early 90s had finally burst and with it the lofty expectations of investors and many new ignorant comic book store owners who opened shop simply to get a piece of the pie. “Greed, more than any other factor, is what inspired so many consumers from outside of the traditional comics world to chase after SUPERMAN #75,” said Rozanski. “Heck, at least in the first printing, they couldn’t even read the book without reducing [its] ‘value,’ as DC polybagged the issue… [S]ince that ill-advised promotion was first conceptualized, I believe that all of us in the world of comics are still paying the price for the ‘death’ of Superman.”

The heyday of multi-million print runs of comic books was over. By decade’s end, of all comic book titles sold, only two titles – Marvel’s X-Men and Uncanny X-Men – consistently sold in the six-figures, usually selling over 100,000 units per month. The highest-selling single issue of 1999 was Image Comics’ Tomb Raider #1, which sold only 189,455 units in its first month.  The comic book industry had become a shadow of what it was just a few years prior.

It didn’t help that comic book media at the time was non-existent, and what did exist were cinematic calamities like 1997’s Batman & Robin – a movie so bad that it effectively killed the once-promising Batman movie franchise that was launched in 1989 with Tim Burton’s Batman.

With the public’s love affair with comic books diminished and diehard fans decrying the overt commercialization of the industry, frustrated comic book store owners were left shaking their heads, wondering if customers would ever return to their once thriving stores and what it would take to undo the damage caused to the industry and their beloved stores.

Read the final part of our two-part series about the fate of the comic book industry and how comic book stores endured the COVID-19 pandemic, rebounded from it, and helped the comic book industry achieve record sales in “The Fate of the Comic Book Industry: The Comic Book Store Conundrum”!