Yesterday Tom Spurgeon, the comics reporter who puts the “comics reporter” in TheComicsReporter.com, posted a list of “Ten Questions For Which I have No Answer, Or At Least Not One I like,” stating that these were issues he will be thinking of and hoping to understand better in 2009.
They are actually some pretty hard questions, and some of them are important to the future of the comics industry, so I hope Spurgeon comes up with the answers he wants in the near future, and is able to share them with us all.
In the mean time, you know what probably wouldn’t help at all? If I attempted to provide answers, since I know even less about any of the subjects than the person asking them. But I’m going to make an attempt anyway because…well because blog content, that’s why.
If you’re planning on sticking around and forcing your eyes on the grisly death march that will be necessary to reach the ending, first make sure you check out Spurgeon’s original post and then meet me back here, okay?
Back? Already? Wow, you’re a pretty fast reader. Alright, now let’s see if we can solve all the comic book industry’s problems…together!
Spurgeon’s questions in bold, my rambling, inexpert, ill-informed and poorly-communicated “answers” follow each. (Fair warning: This might just be the longest goddam article in he history of Blog@Newsarama.com. Certainly of the past two weeks.)
1. Why Don’t Alternative Comic Books Sell Better In Comics Shops?
Spurgeon notes that,
Fifteen years ago it was conventional wisdom and strongly supported in anecdotal fashion that comic books ranging in popularity from Eightball to Artbabe sold the vast majority of their issues in a tiny, tiny handful of stores. Since then we seem to have seen a significant proliferation of stores like those stores.
But, for some reason, there hasn’t been a corresponding surge in alternative comics sales, he states. So, I paraphrase, what’s up with that?
That’s a good question, and I’d add that the Q-rating for comic books in general is way, way up from where it was 15 years ago (or even five years ago). Now it’s even cool to like, read or at least be conversant in comics.
And now Daniel Clowes is, if still not exactly a household name, at least post-Ghost World at least much more popular than he was in the early ‘90s.
I don’t have any kind of answer for this, or even an educated guess (See, I told you this wouldn’t be terribly helpful), but, if drawing on my own experience is any indication, then I’d guess that the ascendancy of the trade paperback/graphic novel format has made some people a lot more resistant to buying single issues of comic books, perhaps especially if they are something that seems to be of more lasting value than Round 907 of Superman’s never-ending battle with Lex Luthor.
I know I’ll often pick up the latest issue of Angry Youth Comix or Tales Designed to Thrizzle or a Dame Darcy or Richard Sala book and then have a little argument with myself in which the side telling me to wait for the trade usually wins out.
I wonder too if newer artists getting into comics-making decide to either publish straight to the web, or straight to a graphic novel, or first to the web and then to a graphic novel, without bothering with the single issue format anymore, as it can be so labor intensive to produce and perhaps not worth it, given that that format seems to be on the wane while trades are on the rise.
2.) Why On Earth Does Marvel Think $3.99 Comic Books Is A Good Idea?
Because Marvel is, collectively, completely insane.
Or at least Marvel’s slouching toward a $3.99 price point across their line sure seems insane from where I sit, which, obviously, is on my ass in my pajamas in front of a computer screen, not in a board room with a bunch of pie charts and sales data and forecasts about the price of paper and the average freelance wages.
But as a consumer, there are two questions within this question that I can’t figure out.
First, why has Marvel chosen $3.99 as the price point to jump to next. I mean, despite the fact that other companies sell 22-page books for $3.99 and that Marvel has been selling their 22-page Max titles at that price point for so long, it’s such a steep increase from $2.99. That’s a whole one-third of the current cost of their books; a 33.3% price increase. Readers would surely complain about $3.25 or $3.50 comics, but I imagine we’d all still keep on buying just about as many, were the price increase gradual and postage stamp-like.
And, secondly, why now, when the cost of everything that isn’t comics is rising?
Spurgeon, whom I suspect doesn’t go to a shop every single Wednesday and read books to keep up with the super-soap opera of the Marvel Universe, explains:
The severity of this leap might be compounded to terms of mainstream comics because few mainstream comic book readers buy one comic book; they buy several at a time. If someone is a $40 a week shopper, and is lucky to remain so in tough economic times, they’ve just gone from being able to buy 13 comics to being able to buy ten.
Yes, exactly. That’s where I am, or at least where I was. I used to buy $40 worth of comics at the shop every Wednesday; if there was a light week where there were fewer of the titles or new work from the creators I followed, I’d make up the difference by trying new books, stocking up on a trade I’ve been meaning to read or giving a new manga series a try. That is, I’d spend $40 on comics no matter what.
As time went on, that shrunk to $35 a week, then to $30, and now $30 is still my upper limit, but I pocket the difference instead of looking for comics to blow it on. (That is, if only $17 worth of new singles I really want to read come out in a week, then I just hang onto the other $13, instead of picking up a manga digest and an extra single).
If Marvel makes the leap to $3.99 across their whole line, then that will be the end of Marvel singles for me and, I suspect, quite a few of their current customer base (I don’t mean that in a melodramatic, “Oh no, they’ve ruined MJ and Pete’s marriage! I’ll never buy another comic book form them again!” kind of way; just that the increase would be the final kick in the pants I’d need to read Marvel series in trade).
Of course, the signals we as consumers are sending may be driving Marvel to the decision to charge $3.99 more and more often. While Max sales have always been super-low (judging from the little sales data available to us), the imprint seems designed to make the bulk of its money on trade collections in and out of the direct market, Marvel had no problems selling $3.99, 22-page issues of Secret Invasion.
Their data clearly tells them that Marvel fans will pay $3.99 for 22-page comics, although I hope they realize most of those who did so weren’t responding to creators Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu (as popular as the pair are) or even the presence of all the Marvel characters in one book at one time, but because of the alleged importance of the events.
And common sense says Marvel can’t keep the endless event model going indefinitely (Of course, that’s assuming Marvel Comics readers have common sense and, well, that’s clearly not the case, and I have the longboxes to prove it).
Part of me wonders if Marvel isn’t perfectly aware of all this, and that driving readers away from the singles might not actually be part of the plan—a plan so crazy, it just might work!
That is, maybe this is the start of their retreat away from single issues in favor of either a straight-to-trade model or a singles-on-the-Internet, then trade model, with the speed in which a transition is undertaken dependent on the willingness of direct market consumers to keep paying more and more for the same amount of product.
3. Why Has DC’s Final Crisis Been So Cocked Up?
No one not actually involved in the process can do anything but offer guesses, but something is clearly broken somewhere behind the scenes.
A lot of it seems to have to do with communication at DC, communication that readers aren’t privy to, except that they see the results of miscommunication, or lack of communication, particularly when the people making and publishing the comics fail to live up to the agreed-upon conceit that the DCU is a real-ish place, and the DC superheroes are all real people operating under rules we all agree to pretend are real.
Clearly something went badly wrong around the time Countdown launched, but, as a 52-part weekly series tying into premised on leading into Final Crisis, there was so much momentum thrown behind that wrongness that there was little DC could do to change course until…well, at least until Final Crisis was over.
I don’t want to get too deep into this because, honestly, I’m as sick as talking about DC’s mistakes during this period as anyone, but the problems connecting Countdown and its spin-offs (particularly the Death of The New Gods series) to Final Crisis itself made sure the project got off on the wrong foot, and that DC’s most loyal fans were good and annoyed by the time the first issue even came out.
As for the scheduling problems, which Spurgeon seems to be referring to, assuming there aren’t significant rewrites going on, I think the decision to hire J. G. Jones was probably a big, obvious mistake.
Regardless of the man’s skills, having a single person provide all of the art—pencils, inks, and covers for—seven over-sized books all set to be released in an eight month period was a tremendous work load that any one artist would have been hard-pressed to pull off, let alone one with as labor-intensive a style as Jones. Unless, of course, Jones had a good, long head-start, but with these sorts of stories that the whole line of books feeds into and out of, it’s surely difficult to set the entire story in stone a year or two before it starts shipping.
Given DC’s problems meeting the schedule with their last comparable story, it’s somewhat mystifying that they didn’t overcorrect and either hire a super-fast artist, or gather a team of artists whose work is so compatible that it looks like that of a single artist.
4. Why Have Sales Gone Up On The Lower Part Of The Top 300?
I can’t makes sense of this at all either, and all I can guess is that the folks who were buying in the mid-list have started buying further down-list, or that the same numbers of readers are just reading from different levels for the list. Maybe?
There, that was a nice short answer, wasn’t it?
5. Why Is It That People Still Don’t Seem To Get The CBLDF?
People are deeply, deeply stupid. Spurgeon wonders if it’s because
comics fans fundamentally conservative? Are they conditioned to think in terms of good guys and bad guys? Does the Fund rely too much on emphasizing the sympathetic victim and the personal appeal of its most ardent supporters in a way that gives rise to a gag reflex?
But I honestly think it’s just that too many of us are pretty damn dumb, or at least not terribly good at filtering out our personal opinions from our beliefs when it comes to supporting those beliefs.
6. Why Is No One Alarmed That DC/Marvel Dominate Market Share?
Spurgeon notes that there’s little surprise about this fact now, but even still it’s kind of scary, as “it also seems slightly unhealthy, and there seems to be a risk in that the bigger companies haven’t always paid attention to anything outside of their specific, short-term self-interest.”
I would think more people would be more concerned given questions #2 and #3. If the Big Two are really locked on a strategy of wringing more and more out of the same audience without growing that audience, and then are engaging in strategies that seem dangerous to their own self-interests in the long run, then what’s bad for Marvel and DC should be bad for everyone, right?
Like, is there a comic book direct market equivalent of Peak Oil Theory? A Peak Fanboy Theory? What happens to the industry when every available direct market customer has exhausted themselves?
Okay, I’m going to stop talking about this now, because I’m starting to alarm myself.
7. Whatever Happened to Traditional Self-Publishing?
Says Spurgeon:
The last I looked, the only person still following the traditional self-publishing model and having any success at it is Jeff Smith, with RASL. I’m probably forgetting one or two people, but the general notion remains the same… Are the market barriers just too difficult now? Does the Image option satisfy this role for most creators?
Finally, an easy one!
Simple: Jeff Smith is magic.
8. Why Is The Fact That A Few People Are Making That Kind Of Money On Webcomics Not A Bigger Story?
As for what he means by “that kind of money”:
A handful of those involved in this aspect of comics reportedly see middle class revenues roll in by creating enough attention through their free offerings to drive business to merchandising, licensing and even publishing. I’m not suggesting that this needs to be copied, as I don’t know that it’s a model that can be replicated. I just wonder why it isn’t discussed in more matter-of-fact fashion. People either seem bored by this notion as if it were inevitable or stunned by it as if it’s totally not believable.
I think the fact that people can not only make a living off of offering their comics for free online, but make a damn good living off them isn’t a bigger story because, as Spurgeon suggests, it’s hard to believe.
That, and Chris Onstad is also magic.
9. How Many Staffed Editorial Cartoonist Positions Will There Be Ten Years From Now?
You know what’s weird about all these political cartoonists getting the axe of late? Magazines and newspapers over the last five years or so have been stuck in this trend of tidbit-ifying themselves. More charts, more lists, more pictures, more visuals, more content that can be easily digested. A good editorial cartoon fits right into this general philosophy of publishing; a single image and, at most, a sentence or two containing all the information of an editorial or opinion column for a busy reader on the go.
So why are political cartoonists being laid off then? Certainly they’re a part of a newspaper that can be cut, and newspapers seem to be cutting everything they can, but, if there’s a glimmer of hope for future cartoonists somewhere, I’d think it’s newspapers will put 2 + 2 together and realize that editorial cartoons fit in with their general trend of less words in their content.
On the other hand, newspapers are dying, and, for the most party, they totally deserve to die. See you in hell, newspapers!
10. What Is The Big Picture Future Of Translated Manga?
Damn, that’s another good question:
I haven’t seen anyone describe in even general terms a future for translated manga beyond some folks making assurances it will continue and be really, really successful and other people writing semi-snotty articles and message board posts that the opportunity for traction from bigger licenses seems to be on the wane. I’d love to see someone address the future for this kind of publishing in more direct fashion that didn’t seem like a snow job, and be allowed to do so without people proclaiming that this means they hate those kinds of comics or that they’ll eventually be shown up for betting against that field. I mean, I assume the future is at least different from the present, right?
What I’m really curious about regarding the future of translated manga is whether or not manga readers will “translate” into comics-in-general readers. I assume they will and have, as the rising Q-rating of comics I mentioned up-article came after the deluge of manga on our shores, but that doesn’t really prove causality, and maybe I’m making a connection where there isn’t really one to be made. Maybe all the kids who are growing up with manga will either just stick with manga the rest of their lives, or quit reading it entirely, the way I quit read fantasy novels when I hit the other end of puberty or quit playing video games when I had to start working for a living.
But, if the future of translated manga isn’t at all different than the present, well, that’s not the worst possible outcome, is it?
Well, that’s all I got at this point. Do you guys have any answers to any of these questions? If so, you know where to put them.
Um, I mean, of course, in the comments section below. I didn’t mean that last bit to sound as rude as it actually did. Sorry.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
The link to Spurgeon appears to be broken, Caleb.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Answers of my own…
2. Why On Earth Does Marvel Think $3.99 Comic Books Is A Good Idea?
Like you said, Caleb, Marvel’s clearly insane. But what’s worse is that they, as the industry leaders, make it just that much more acceptable for DC, for Dark Horse, for IDW, for Image, for each and every publisher out there to turn around and play follow the leader. For better or for worse, it’s becoming the new reality in the industry.
Even worse, and you pointed it out yourself, Caleb: you’re willing to start waiting until individual issues come out in TPB format. And while that sounds like a great idea, not all series are or will be collected in that format– not unless the individual issues sell well enough -or- are part of a major title. We’re lucky to get Manhunter v5 in March, because the series has been such a critical darling. But more often than not, we’re getting rehashings of the same popular stories that flew off the shelves in the first place. (DC, Marvel, this means you: We as consumers are not going to buy the same story three times– once as an issue, then as an HC TPB, then as a SC TPB. Valiant, you’re an exception to the rule– especially since you’re putting out things that have been out of print for 10-15 years, not 2-4 months.)
Also along those same lines, don’t tell me that an issue is going to be oversized, then stuff it with ads, and -then- spread the ads out in such a way as to destroy the flow of the story. It’s why I find myself gravitating more towards Antarctic Press, IDW, and the late CrossGen, for example– all the ads were and are in the back of the books. I liked when DC’s ads took up the four center pages… they were easy to pull out and discard.
As for the Endless Event Model, Caleb… what Marvel is creating is soap operas for the printed page, plain and simple. There’s no longer an ending, only a To Be Continued in our Next Event. It’s like reading the part of the Bible where for a few pages, it’s all about who begat whom: New Avengers begat Civil War, who begat The Initiative, who begat Secret Invasion, who begat Dark Reign… From a marketing standpoint, it’s brilliant. From a cost perspective, it’s a nightmare.
3. Why Has DC’s Final Crisis Been So Cocked Up?
Right Hand, meet Left Hand. Left, meet Right. Now, discuss what each other is doing. And now, while you’re at it, don’t call this a crisis– even I, as an admitted DC fanboy, don’t think this is worthy of being held to that lofty title. This is closer to “Legends II”, not “Crisis IV”. And even then, calling it “Legends II” seems fit to sully the Ostrander/Byrne/Wien/Kesel tale. Give us a story, not just teasers for a story (“Heroes die. Legends live forever.”)– it was pretty, sure, but it has -nothing- to do with the tale at hand. We’re not asking for predictable. We’re not even asking for outrageously unpredictable.
Learn, DC. Learn from 1983 through 1985… learn from the original Crisis. Read the companion book you tucked in with your Absolute edition, about how Bob Greenberger and Dick Giordano and Jeanette Kahn and the staff of that day and age pulled together the grandfather of all crossovers– and how they got it all out on time, got even Roy Thomas to cooperate against his own better wishes, and how that one story created enough goodwill and generated enough major publicity to allow you to reinvent yourself.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:14 am
8- I have no idea why people don’t realize webcomics do well for their creators. I saw someone post on the Rama actually laughing at the webcomic way of doing things saying something to the effect of “even the popular webcomics would be lucky to get as many readers as Ms. Marvel.” Last I checked Ms. Marvel was hovering around 30,000 readers. Not bad.
The other day Jeph Jacques, author/artist of Questionable Content, announced that he had over 100,000 unique hits for his site. That’s Jeph Loeb level attention there. And it’s not even the most popular webcomic out there; Penny Arcade is the obvious choice and has heavy contenders with the likes of PvP, xkcd, 8bit Theater, Girly, and Sam and Fuzzy. I’d be surprised if these sites didn’t get twice the readers of Ms. Marvel.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am
2 – Either Marvel are just abusing/flaunting their position as market leaders or they must clearly know how “hardcore” their audience is in order to get away with putting the prices up so much. Say for example New Avengers sells 100,000 at $3 raking in $300,000 and then at the new price $400,000. Now in order for them just to make as much profit they were getting at the old price, 25,000 people would have to drop the book. That is not going to happen all at the one time. Yes, maybe further down the road maybe but for the immediate future they will be raking in a ton of extra cash with no added cost to them (no cardstock cover, no added print quality, no added content, maybe they would have to renegotiate page rates but that’s about the only loss I can think of to them).
But $3 is my limit especially now since we are getting screwed over on exchange rates and prices only just went up last week at my store. I would be willing to pay extra, for extra, like Criminal or the soon to be instant classic Incognito, but for a Marvel Universe book, no chance.
3 – You mention that J.G. Jones was doing pencils, inks and a cover. Well should DC have not considered lightening his load a bit by taking him off cover duties (they were shipping a variant anyway so it would have been easy to use that one, or just draft in another cover artist). They could have taken him off inks as well, sure Jones might have protested if he thought his work wouldn’t have looked as good but at the end of the day, DC would have been able to pull rank.
4 – Maybe people are just sick of ‘events’ and expensive books and are just trying something different.
Oh and that Javacrpit/Cookies balls came up again, good job I copied the post as a precaution.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Hey Guv, the Java issue has been identified and will be fixed shortly (yeah, I was on the team for two weeks and figured it out. Booya.
)
December 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
2 – Marvel are just stuck on “douche” mode the past years. The feeling of contempt towards their readers, the way they act like nothing they do will ever be wrong even when it does turn out to be wrong. It’s only natural they think the price increase with no added value to the books would make sense. There is a direct correlation to more Marvel properties being in production in Hollywood and the level of
3 – DC likes being the bumbling idiot who always screws up big things (IC, everything after IC, Countdown, RIP and Final Crisis) then wants another chance, and get upset when the fans finally give up on them.
5 – The CBLDF always seems like it’s talking down to the community, never to them. Their press releases are also terrible, like those of a politician, where you will disagree just so you don’t have to be on the same side of the smug jerk who wrote it. And of course, if we don’t go along with them or think they’re fighting the wrong case, we are self hating comic book readers. That’s a good way to lose support.
Also, their executives need to stay away from hot tubs.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am
1. Why Don’t Alternative Comic Books Sell Better In Comics Shops?
Because monthly/serial comics are dead. How are sales on trades of those series?
Also, spectacle-filled escapism will always sell better. Always has.
2.) Why On Earth Does Marvel Think $3.99 Comic Books Is A Good Idea?
Because that’s the cost of life support for the monthly/serial comic. I’m curiuos about how this will affect trade pricing. It used to be that buying a trade saved money compared to the serial format, but that’s hardly the case any more.
It’s time to start seriously looking at online distribution.
3. Why Has DC’s Final Crisis Been So Cocked Up?
I neither know nor care.
Do these big events ever really come out without hitches, and does anybody outside of their core audience ever care?
4. Why Have Sales Gone Up On The Lower Part Of The Top 300?
I don’t read sales charts and, thus, have no particular insight.
5. Why Is It That People Still Don’t Seem To Get The CBLDF?
Because we live in a fundamentally conservative nation, founded on Puritan and Quaker ideals, and because people cannot differentiate between fictional depiction of a crime and the actual crime itself. Or because people can’t accept that a retailer making a stupid mistake was accidental and will create no lasting damage to anybody.
6. Why Is No One Alarmed That DC/Marvel Dominate Market Share?
It hasn’t destroyed the industry yet.
Plus, with online and bookstore channels now open, I actually believe that the industry could (barely, and not in a direct market form) survive the utter implosion of DC and Marvel.
7. Whatever Happened to Traditional Self-Publishing?
They’re online now.
8. Why Is The Fact That A Few People Are Making That Kind Of Money On Webcomics Not A Bigger Story?
Because DC and Marvel aren’t doing it, and 98% of this industry doesn’t care if those two aren’t part of the story.
9. How Many Staffed Editorial Cartoonist Positions Will There Be Ten Years From Now?
73.
10. What Is The Big Picture Future Of Translated Manga?
Given that superhero publishers have managed a “business as usual” business model for decades, I’m not sure why manga is going to have to radically change. Maybe they’ll go online.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
1.Why Don’t Alternative Comic Books Sell Better In Comics Shops?It’s my belief that alternative comics and mainstream superhero comics have very different target demographics, and that since the “indie” books started being widely available at Barnes & Noble (and more and more widely in trades as opposed to floppies), those folks who don’t buy mainstream comics probably have less and less reason to go into direct-market stores. There’s also a weird kind of desire on the part of a lot of the indie crowd (the ones who have some kind of “geek chic” thing going on) to further ghettoize the superhero crowd. It went from “comics aren’t just Batman!” to “to Hell with Batman!”
2.Why On Earth Does Marvel Think $3.99 Comic Books Is A Good Idea?
Marvel’s time from floppy to collection is a lot better than DC’s. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if their logic is, “We’ll raise the price so high and so fast that it’ll injure the overall well-being of the monthly comics market, but our fans will still come get the trades from us and maybe injuring the market will hurt our competitors more than it does us.” It also seems as though going up a buck across the board is a way to ensure that if some people drop titles because of an increase, they’re making enough more per-unit that it won’t matter.
3.Why Has DC’s Final Crisis Been So Cocked Up?
I don’t want to be yet another of the many people out there on the Internet ranting about how it’s all DiDio’s fault…but that’s how it appears to me. I don’t know the ins and outs of this particular comic, but I can say that the weird scheduling/plotting/other issues that are happening here are somewhat reminiscent of things I’ve heard from a number of creators about Dan DiDio’s handling of other titles. Without going into specifics, it’s my understanding that he changes his mind on a dime and, like Joe Quesada, has tighter control over the company than his predecessors did and therefore his whims can be really destructive.
4.Why Have Sales Gone Up On The Lower Part Of The Top 300?
The Internet is my guess. It’s so much easier for small fish to promote themselves competitively now than it has been in the past. The fact that the dominant comics media are now online changes the dynamic: at Wizard magazine, for example, they have limited page count and therefore have to make hard decisions regarding who to cover. But that’s not (as much) true online, where you don’t have to spend a ton of money to cover the small press community.
5.Why Is It That People Still Don’t Seem To Get The CBLDF?
People are politically apathetic and all news in this country is a weird, tabloid parody of real news. The fact that people want to ignore the important issues that the CBLDF exists to deal with and instead focus on whether they like the people the CBLDF are protecting is no surprise.
6.Why Is No One Alarmed That DC/Marvel Dominate Market Share?
People aren’t thinking about it. If they were, and were smart at all, they’d be terrified. It’s true, DC and Marvel really DO only pay attention to what serves their own interests. And short-term interests at that. Cancellations on books like Blue Beetle are indicative of the way the Big Two don’t take chances, and that they’re increasingly set on bleeding the small, dedicated fanbase dry rather than bringing in new readers. See also: the return of tired Silver Age characters and concepts best left buried at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
7.Whatever Happened to Traditional Self-Publishing?
I think most creators are simply not able to take the kinds of chances that Jeff Smith and Terry Moore can. God bless the ones who can, but yeah…Image is an appealing option for most people who have enough talent to, honestly, make it on their own if Image weren’t there. A promotions hand-up is a HUGE thing in today’s market, where fans were increasingly selective and isolated even before the larger economy collapsed.
8.Why Is The Fact That A Few People Are Making That Kind Of Money On Webcomics Not A Bigger Story?
Reporters are lazy. Just look at my answer for this question!
9.How Many Staffed Editorial Cartoonist Positions Will There Be Ten Years From Now?
Not many. As the newspaper market contracts and wire services make the work of the most famous and popular cartoonists widely available for cheap, this wil be the kind of job that just ceases to exist at a lot of papers. Sad, but true. I’m guessing that the MAJOR newspapers will have paid cartoonists, very small papers will have unpaid cartoonists who do it to get published and everyone in the middle will either take advantage of the unpaid market or buy them off the wires.
10.What Is The Big Picture Future Of Translated Manga?
Frankly, I have no idea. This isn’t my area of expertise and I’ll happily admit it. I think this is one area where, by and large, fans are more informed and could make better-educated guesses than reporters and bloggers are. At least reporters and bloggers like yours truly, who spend most of our time covering the mainstream, American comics business.