We are living through tough times, folks. Just like nearly every industry, the comics industry has been hit by the economic downturn. We've seen layoffs, restructuring, cancelled titles, innovative imprints cut, revenue-saving policy changes, and companies fold. The economy has hit me at home, literally: I'm writing this while sitting on my favorite armchair on a weekday afternoon because my hours at SLG have been cut by 40% until business picks up.
And it will pick up, eventually, but perhaps it will look different from what we are used to. I have a feeling that what will pull us through this recession in the comics industry is not business but art. Changes in structure and overhead can save money, but the only thing that is going to make money are comics that people want to buy and read. The two biggest economic downturns of the last century were the Great Depression, of course, and the recession of the late 1970s/early 1980s. These were also times of great creativity in the comics world.
Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster began developing Superman at the height of the Depression, and with his debut in 1938, the modern superhero comic was born. Although the tone and style of stories has changed over the years, the superhero has been the core of the American comics industry for seventy years. But can he carry us for another seventy or do we need something new to re-strengthen the industry?
A new vision for comics arose in the late seventies and early eighties, when alternative comics like those by Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb in RAW, Dave Sim's Cerebus and Gilbert and Jamie Hernadez's Love and Rockets appeared. Though they didn't challenge superheroes for sales dominance, these comics did influence a change throughout the comic book industry: By the mid-eighties, comic book writers like Alan Moore were pushing superheroes closer to the "gritty" reality model that is still prevalent today. The influence allowed comics to remain relevant, and the effects continue to be felt: thanks to the upcoming movie, Watchman has been the best-selling graphic novel in bookstores for six months straight; less related to movie news is the fact that it is "the most popular graphic novel of all time."
We can't deny that health of the comics industry is wrapped up in the sales of superhero comics. However, it seems that since the initial innovation of the superhero comic, its cultural relevance is tied to how well it incorporates the artistic developments of alternative comics, which, not being bound by continuity or mythos, are freer to explore the concerns and themes of the zeitgeist.
In the 1930s, while people were struggling with poverty and confronting the looming threat of fascism, Siegal and Shuster invented a man who did not have to struggle and who used his power for the benefit of humanity. In the early 1980s, when the economy was failing but the country had no clear moral battle on the horizon, alternative comics began to take on, as Charles Hatfield writes in his book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, "the exploration of searchingly personal and at times more political themes."
Superman offered a kind of empowerment through escapism, while the early 1980s alternative comics offered direct confrontation of inner and political conflict. What will troubled economic times bring us this time around? As the first decade of the twenty-first century draws near a close, graphic novels are the rising format, and their sophistication artistry and storytelling has become the rule rather than the commented-upon exception. Let's hope that what has inspired artists to create these graphic novels will inspire the public to read them.
Jennifer de Guzman is editor-in-chief at the independent comics publisher SLG Publishing. She also writes fiction—mostly in prose, occasionally in comics—and holds an M.F.A. in literature and creative writing from San Jose State University. The opinions expressed are her own and not necessarily those of Publishers Weekly or PW Comics Week.
