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Decompressed comics: an economic disaster |
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'Decompression' in comics refers to comics told with more pictures and fewer words. So comics need more pages to tell a story. It's always nice to have more pages, but this ignores the bottom line of business: pages cost money. In purely economic terms, decompressed stories are a disaster for Marvel, and for American superhero comics in general. This page will look at the reasons. Cost per story In the 1990s, superhero comics became glossier and the art became like paintings. The causes (the direct market, older readers, gimmick driven sales, the success of Image) are less important than the result: the price of each comic increased. At the same time, Marvel was intent on squeezing more profit from each comic, so prices rose even further (especially in the period that led to bankruptcy in 1996-97). Finally, after the bubble burst in 1993 sales plummeted, so unit costs further increased. So comic prices increased much faster than inflation. Tim Hartnett gave us the numbers in "Cutting Costs III: Clarifying Decompression." These figures are for an individual comic, adjusted for inflation. Hence a 1965 comic cost 12c then but would cost 69c in 2005 when the article was written. We paid $0.69 in 1965. We paid $0.90 in 1975. We paid $1.11 in 1985. We paid $1.79 in 1995. We paid $2.99 in 2005. This alone is a real problem: readers are being priced out of comics. So what did the publishers do? They adopted the worst possible strategy for sales, short of just closing down completely. They adopted a decompressed style that requires the user to buy five or six issues for a complete story. As a result: In 1965, one story cost $0.69 (adjusted for inflation) In 2005, one story cost $17.94 That's a 2600 percent price increase!! Back in the 1960s you could buy Marvel's entire output for less than the price of a single story today, even after adjusting for inflation! Sure, paper has got more expensive for everybody, but this is not necessarily a killer blow. Now we have the Internet for almost free distribution so creative solutions must be possible. And yes, trade paperbacks are a little cheaper, but they are still ten times more expensive than the equivalent silver age story. They still cost more than a typical DVD. They are still prohibitively expensive when compared with competing forms of entertainment. Comics cost ten or twenty times more than they used to. Are they ten or twenty times better? Clearly the market does not think so. Decompressed stories drive away new readers It's not just the price that drives away new readers. Decompressed stories seem designed to drive away new readers in other ways as well. I'm assuming here that the new reader is looking at a trade paperback. A non-fan will probably never go inside a comic shop so will never see a regular comic. Decompressed stories, even in a trade, are still decompressed. Characters are introduced with little or no explanation. And titles have many variants - original, Ultimate, non-continuity specials, reprints from years ago. It's all very confusing for a new reader. And if they want to find out what happens next, will they wait six months for the next trade? Will their local bookshop even include every trade published? There is no ongoing relationship with a title. Any sales are one-offs and the reader drifts away again. Decompressed stories drive away old readers Only the hardcore fans buy large numbers of comics every month. Most of us just buy one or two or even have a break of several years. Decompressed stories do not hold your hand, they do not explain everything. It is so easy to become lost. That was my experience. I stopped buying comics in 1986, and came back in 2004. I considered myself a Fantastic Four Fan, since I had every issue until I left. But I came back and was totally lost. I searched the Net and found the Fantastic Four, and the Ultimate FF, and Marvel Knights FF, and Heroes Reborn FF, and Marvel Adventures FF, and didn't know which one was the team I used to follow. So I read some pages online and was even more confused - the decompressed style assumed that I knew everything already. So I found the nearest comic shop, over 200 miles away (I live in the country) and bought a few issues at random. I was deeply disappointed. Each was just a chapter in a larger story and I felt I had wasted my money. Maybe I should have bought some trade paperbacks, but I was on a limited budget and did not want to take chances. Finally I persevered and managed to work out what was happening, but it really felt like the comics industry did not want me. Decompressed stories drive away hardcore fans The financial core of Marvel's readership used to be the fans who would buy everything. back in the 1960s you could buy Marvel's entire output for $1.50 a month. Even after inflation that's an acceptable price to most people. But over the years the number of titles has increased, the cost of each has increased, and thanks to decompressed stories you have to read a lot of issues to keep up with what is happening. Gradually, over the years, the number of fans who bought everything has gone down to small handful, compared with the vast army of fans from days gone by. And once you have dropped one title it's easy to drop another. And another. Thanks to decompressed stories, hardcore fans are not as hardcore as before. Another issue is raised expectations. Decompressed stories mean expensive stories. The more you spend, the less tolerant you are when comics do stuff you don't like. Expensive comics create easily dissatisfied readers, and they leave. |
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The case for decompression Decompression began gradually, in the late 1960s, but did not become dominant until the late 1980s and 1990s. There are many reasons why it took off then: 1. TV. Today's kids are not used to reading, and prefer pictures. 2. Manga are decompressed, and sell well. 3. Hot talents have created commercially successful decompressed stories. 4. Trade paperback sales are increasing. 5. Paper costs are high so we have to focus on quality, not quantity. 6. Some people find decompressed stories more enjoyable. Let's look at each argument in turn. The TV argument TV attracts far more money than comics, so why not use its methods? The answer is because TV will always do it better. Comics can never win on those terms. To win in any market you need to either be the best, the cheapest, or to fulfill a niche. TV is more dynamic and better funded than any comics. TV is cheaper to obtain than any comic. And if you have niche interests there are hundreds of on-demand channels plus online video. There is no place for comics in this market. Whenever comics try to compete on the same terms as TV they lose. When faced with TV, comics need to offer something different, or just give up the fight. The manga argument Japanese manga are generally printed on cheap newsprint, usually in black and white, with relatively simple art. And they sell in high quantities. All of this keeps the unit costs right down. But western superhero comics are now published on high quality paper, in small numbers, involving detailed art. The costs are far higher. By decompressing these stories we just price ourselves out of the market. If western comics want to imitate the successful methods of manga they need to move to cheap paper and high volume comics. They also need the comic reading culture of Japan that allows for thousands of titles on every topic under the sun, not just superheroes. Copying just one part of a competitor's strategy without seeing the big picture is a recipe for disaster. The hot talent argument Yes, some great talents can produce stunning decompressed stories. But that is true for any format. Michelangelo painted great stories on ceilings. Does that mean we should all give up paper and deliver comics on ceilings? Some writers and artists produce better work in a decompressed format. Some don't. The only thing we can say for certain is that decompressed costs more. For a time in the late 1980s and 1990s, decompressed stories were new and seemed exciting. But the novelty wore off a long time ago. The trade paperback argument Trade paperbacks do not have to be decompressed. When I visit a bookshop the bets selling trades seem to be the collections of old, compressed stories. They are simply better value for money. If trade paperbacks sell it is simply because they get into regular bookshops. Not because people like decompressed stories. If the trade paperbacks were better value they would sell even more. It's simple economics. The paper cost argument The 'expensive paper' argument is the craziest one of all. If paper becomes expensive then the intelligent response is to use less, not more! Paper costs were not the reason comics disappeared from newsstands in the 1970s. Other magazines had the same costs yet survived. Comics were simply lower priced, so newsagents made less money on them. A more rational response would have been to increase the value of each comic to the user, and thus be able to raise its price. E.g. by bundling titles into anthologies as they do in Japan. or better still, finding ways to better connect with the readers. Higher quality: the economic argument Decompressed stories are sometimes better than other stories, though clearly not better enough to justify the huge price rise. And sometimes they are worse: Dialog is often worse. It is more natural, but it's harder to work out what's going on. Pacing is often worse. Pages can go past without much happening. Realism often feels worse. The more realistic dialog leads us to expect more realistic stories, so the disappointment is greater when they fail. Art is often worse. Compression teaches discipline in storytelling. Compare these examples of compressed art (by Steranko) and uncompressed art (by Davis). Both are great artists, but which one is easier to follow? They are less intellectual. Decompressed comics are basically picture books: the ability to read is not essential. Old style comics required every reader to deconstruct long passages of text. And discourage new readers: sparse dialog (with no footnotes) makes it hard to know what's going on. The inside cover summary is helpful, but story itself is only a chapter. In contrast, the best old comics make everyone feel welcome. In general I concede that uncompressed art does allow for slightly better art and story, on average. But how much better? Enough to justify the massively greater cost of all those extra pages? Higher quality (2): how to measure it? There is a simple way to measure the real value of a decompressed story. Offer someone a trade paperback for ten dollars and a DVD for ten dollars and see which one they prefer. The DVD lasts longer and represents a far greater investment of creative time. Only committed comic fans prefer the comic. But make the trade paperback a six hour read, and suddenly the equation changes. The real question is, how can we make the compressed story a more rewarding experience? Answer: by learning from the masters of efficient storytelling. |
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Why do publishers continue this economic suicide? Why are publishers so wedded to decompressed comics? Three reasons come to mind. 1. Publishers have forgotten how to compete on the open market. For a generation (since the early 1980s) comics have been sold to fans in specialist shops. Trade paperbacks are in bookshops, but it is still existing fans who buy most of them. Publishers hand fans have forgotten what it is like for comics to compete with other media. 2. "Compression" is confused with "low paid" and "old". If you ask someone why they prefer decompressed stories, they will remember terrible dialog in old comics. But thoe comics were wrirten in a hurry by low paid writers trying to appeal to a previous generation's interests and expectations. Those forces no longer apply. 3. Self-selection. The only people still buying comics are those who like decompression. They find the old style writing to be too descriptive, too naive. Well guess what, some of us like descriptive and naive! Some of us find the new more "adult" writing style to be pretentious and dull. And self-defeating. better dialog raises the expectation of deeper stories, but they are as shallow and temporary as ever. (The people who praise decompression are usually the same people who condemn continuity. Go figure.) 4. The artists like it this way. First, because uncompressed art takes less time and effort. Second, because artists can sell original pages to fans, and fans pay more for single panel pages that can be hung like paintings on the wall. But all of this is at the cost of lower sales in the long run. 5. Marvel Time (1). Marvel Time dictates that time is stretched and characters are not allowed to change. If time slows down it is natural for stories to slow down as well. Each comic contains fewer events because there is simply less to tell. 6. Marvel Time (2). Marvel Time dictates characters are not allowed to change. So it becomes harder and harder to think of interesting stories. Writers must be grateful that they now have six months to think of each new plot. What is the answer? This page is mainly about the economics of decompressed stories. An economic problem needs an economic solution. What is it? Well that's up to the publishers, but when faced with an over-priced product, you can go one of three ways: 1. Accept lower and lower sales. 2. Make the product more desirable. 3. Make the product cheaper. The easiest answer is to use compressed storytelling and cheap paper again. And perhaps use the manga technique of simple black and white drawings, where one (highly paid) artist to do the layouts and other (much cheaper) artists to fill in the details. Another answer is to make greater use of online comics. Or to publish fewer titles but spend more time on each, hoping for greater sales in the long run. Or invest so much in each title that it can be sold at a high price to a much wider market. Whatever the choice, one thing is clear. If comics want to re-enter the mass market then decompression (in its present form) must go. |
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