The Times reports "rising comic sales"

For most of my life (there have been gaps) I have been a avid comics reader and collector. Back in the sixties there were always plenty of British weeklies in WHSmiths and the smaller newsagents carried supplies of the full colour monthly American ones.  Until the nineties when British comics virtually disappeared and the US ones were broken by the speculators market this was almost the sole source.

That said whilst at Polytechnic back in the late seventies I did go to my first comic shop "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed)"in Soho. Wonderful place but newsagents still remained my main source. Later came the Forbidden Planet. When I returned to comic collecting (by accident more than design) I found comic shops were now the sole source of comics except for 2000AD, The Beano, Dandy and Commando  the last of the "pocket" book titles.

 

Nowadays even The Dandy has gone and comic shops seem to me to have been struggling a bit when it comes to new comics. There were always piles of these things lying around unsold in some of the larger stores. I chose to use a subscription service through the now closed Avalon Comics and these days at 30th Century Comics in Putney (see side bar).

Avalon went out of business because the landlord doubled the rent. They went on line but I wasn't into mail order when I worked because it was such a pain to find the time to collect stuff from the Post Office. Besides I like visiting stores and was more than happy to go to 30th Century Comics where their range of back issues both British and American is amazing.

 

However when it comes to new comics (the circulations of which are tiny compared to sixties, seventies and up to some time in the nineties when the market collapsed) my local shop stopped ordering new titles for casual sale as these were a lot of effort for very little return. Their market was and remains back issues. I have to say that I can't remember picking up a new comic from the racks as everything I wanted I pre-ordered via Previews and still do, though less as as a pensioner!

Recently a post appeared on one of the comic forums stating Orbital Comics in Central London was going to do the same.  I haven't been there for over two years and when I did turn up last week after the Free Tibet protest it was closed for building work so I couldn't check this out!

Meanwhile Super-Hero movies, Marvel's in particular have made the genre mainstream again. Yet I see or saw no evidence of any real growth in the market. In fact Titan stopped publishing it's range of UK DC reprints and even Panini has dropped the very long running Mighty World of Marvel.

Comic sales charts (estimates aside) don't show that much growth. A few titles have sold through well but I suspect the number of fans is fairly static and it depends more on how many they buy rather than attracting hordes of new readers.

 

However in yesterday's edition of The Times (no link £ Paywall) whilst lamenting the decline of the bookshop (something else I still prefer to use) reports:

Data on openings and closures has revealed that a net increase in comic shops (from 2013) has been mirrored by significant decreases in the number of booksellers on high streets. Industry figures suggested the "Marvel effect" had renewed interest with new and older generations sapping up tales of Iron Man, Black Panther ad Captain America.

However

It's the back issues from the Golden and Silver Age that people are buying Mattia Savoldelli from London's orbital Comics said. The Marvel Films had increased the price of back issues. When Black Panther came out there was a crazy increase in the value of the first (Fantastic Four) it appeared in.



Another speculator craze? One hopes not it drives real fans out of the market place, These things are expensive enough. This appears to only effect the back issue market this time as Mattia continues:

Margins are small....it is a gamble buying new titles which cannot be returned to the suppliers. It can be way too expensive to have some sitting on the shelves for years.

The increase in sales remains sadly for back issues and not the new stuff which would be sad for the future as those of us who were around in the Silver Age won't be around forever. New comics are expensive not easily obtained unless you live near a comic shop and for the young seem to have been by-passed for other media even though they go to the movies.

It would be sad to see a world where the joy of comics is no longer part of childhood. They were a great way to learn to read and could be combined with more educational material such as Look & Learn which had the best British comic strip ever, The Trigan Empire.

Treat your kids to a comic today!