Research Paper- Comic Book Industry Creative Project

Terence Zhu

Cassidy Picken

Engl 100

Dec-6-2019

Comic Book Industry Research Paper

Creative comic book cover inked

 The comic book industry was the topic I wanted to indulge and educate myself in for this paper. Although, more specifically, I wanted to dive into the reasons for why the comic book industry seemed to be failing. In the research paper, I wanted to reach one conclusion if possible to why the industry seemed to be less successful than their contemporaries, manga and the film industry. However I found that there were many sources rather than one definitive answer to why the industry wasn’t as popular as it once was. Now with this research assignment, I decided that one of the more interesting ways of presenting all of the information that I have gathered, would be to make a comic book cover.

For the cover, I wanted the focus to be how heavy this is for the industry if they don’t succeed in bringing up the sales. In the foreground we have the hero representing the current industry, and inspired by atlas, trying to hold the “comic industry” or “world” up. With the hero, I wanted to show that the industry has tried moving to a more technological media by adding a robotic arm. I also wanted to make it clear it was the physical comic industry by making the head a printer. In the background are the other industries watching as comics struggle as they sit comfortably. The film industry is absorbing parts of the comic world and reusing them in adaptations coming from the book “The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood’s Leading Genre” by Liam Burke in 2015, this also explains the note taking as well as the roll of film flowing all around. The Japanese clothed man represents the manga industry and is linked with two small bridges coming from the source of “Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood” by Nothrop Davis in 2015. Something I tried to do with Manga man was emulating the shape of the moon to show some sort of similarity with the comic world, however the effects of this is not as adequet as I would have liked it to be. The three industry based characters have costumes more recognizable as a stereotype to their mediums, Comic industry is more classic capes and spandex look, the film industry contains a more technological and iron man-esque suit, and the manga industry keeps a traditional kimono and chibi appearance. As mentioned in these two, the film industry profits off of the most successful stories, the nostalgic factor and the cross influences between the two. The man in the middle represents the higher ups and more industry professionals turning a more or less blind eye at the problem, with trying to make it seem like everything is fine as seen with interviews at panels during Comic-con. With the comic world, there are multiple things happening such as the declining sales arrows hitting the world and creating fractures, on the right there are ships evacuating representing people moving towards a different medium. Underneath the industry figure, we have printed comics piling on and on, the source of this imagery is from the video “Why Collecting Comics RUINED the Industry! | Comic Misconceptions.” on youtube from Scott Nisewander of the channel “Nerdsync”. Behind the comics are people who are currently observing the industry idly, this is representative of all the sources that I have gathered for this paper. The two included names above Cassidy and mine are the heads of the two biggest comic book companies as of December of 2019 with Jim Lee being the more prominent of DC while still being co president, and Kevin Feige being the head director of Marvel entertainment.

The conclusion that I was able to reach with this paper was that the comic book industry is slowly in decline due to poor sales, being very reliant on other mediums as marketing strategies,  past incidents causing some bad reputation, and other media outlets. The reasons that their contemporaries seem to be succeeding in comparison is due to the fact that they have a broader reach with advertising and due to the cheaper prices as seen with graphic novels priced between 15-35 dollars USD and manga priced at 10-15 USD. 

Work Cited

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