Illustration by Rich Woodall
Historically, comic books have been relegated to the basement of pop culture—viewed as kiddie fare. At least until the 1980s and 1990s, when they started being seen as investments and collectors looked to score big with the next hot comic.
eBay’s launch in 1995 precipitated the comic book crash. Suddenly, fans were aware of how many copies of their coveted comics were out there, and comic book publishers, who had overproduced comic books and supposed “collectors’ editions,” had glutted the market with less interesting material.
That’s not to say certain comic heroes didn’t continue to generate thousands of dollars at auctions. In the case of Batman and Superman, prices could spike to more than $1 million. But, overall, comic book sales plummeted and Marvel Comics went bankrupt.
Yes, THAT Marvel. The one that now churns out multimillion-dollar movies every few months. In fact, it was Hollywood that created the industry’s bounce back. Between 2011 and 2014, comic book sales—print and digital—grew 30 percent to $935 million, according to Comichron. Digital sales alone have grown 300 percent, from $25 million to $100 million, during the same period. Comic sales hit a 20-year high in 2014, according to estimates from Comichron and ICv2, two industry analysts.
In 2014, Marvel Comics, which publishes such iconic titles as Spider-Man, X-Men and the Avengers, claimed the largest share of the market with 34.4 percent of retail sales, followed by DC Comics (home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) at 28.9 percent, and Image Comics, the publisher behind The Walking Dead, at 9.2 percent, according to Diamond Comics Distributors Inc., the largest comic distributor in the industry.
The popularity of comic books is fueling all sectors of entertainment. At least seven movies based on comics are set to be released in 2016, including Deadpool, Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, Suicide Squad and Doctor Strange. Another seven comic book movies are already slated for 2017. And one of the biggest movies of 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy, based on a little-known Marvel comic, also produced a hit soundtrack.
It’s that kind of economic clout that prompted Disney to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in 2009. And that’s just the big screen. Comics are ever more prevalent on the small screen with television shows like the Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and The Walking Dead, which commands the third highest ad rates of any TV show in 2015, according to Variety. Not that there haven’t been a few misses. Even
Broadway caught comic fever in 2011 with a musical based on Spider-Man—the most expensive Broadway show launched at the time. While it was plagued by technical problems and critics were less than enthusiastic, it ran through 2014 and is being relaunched as a stadium tour.
Chris Proulx, co-owner of Double Midnight Comics. Photo by Christine Carignan
“The craziest thing is if you asked me when we first started, I would not believe that there would be an Ant-Man Movie pulling in big bucks and a Green Arrow TV Show,” says Chris Proulx, co-owner of Double Midnight Comics in Manchester. His store, which opened in 2002, was among the few Queen City businesses to actually expand during the recession. Double Midnight Comics expanded the footprint of its Manchester store and, in 2013, opened a second location in Concord. The two stores, combined with the company’s big event, Granite State Comicon, now generate about $1 million in revenue, according to Proulx.
Granite State Comicon in Manchester. Clockwise from top: cosplayers; Billy Dee Williams speaks on a panel; a Dr. Who cosplayer visits a vendor booth; an illustrator works on a piece. Courtesy photos.
Holy Tourism Attractions!
Which brings us to the explosion of comic book events. Granite State Comicon, held at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, celebrated its 13th anniversary this year by drawing its largest crowd yet—about 10,000 comic book fans. Proulx says Granite State Comicon grew from a small comic book show with a few hundred attendees checking out a handful of comic artists and vendors in 8,000 square feet to a two-day event in 60,000 square feet with celebrity guests (this year’s event included Billy Dee Williams, who played Star Wars’ Lando Calrissian) that now draw thousands. Ticket prices in 2015 ranged from $20 for a single day pass to a $60 VIP pass. Based on the success of the Granite State Comicon, Double Midnight Comics produced a second comic book convention in Worcester, Mass. this year—MASSive Comic Con—that attracted about 5,000 attendees.
“Whatever we can do to have more events and more things for people to do in our own state is a positive. Having Granite State Comicon in Manchester is a huge boon,” says Brenda Noiseux, a tech manager who lives in NH and a comic book fan who helps organize panels at Double Midnight’s events. “These events help to attract more young professionals and more professionals in general to our state.” Noiseux says the conventions also bring people together. “You’re surrounded by people who are just as geeky as you are. It’s a really great feeling,” she says.
That’s not the only major comic book event drawing thousands of comic fans to NH’s city centers. Free Comic Book Day is an international annual event held the first Saturday of May. It’s meant to attract new readers and draw people into comic book stores. The biggest Free Comic Book Day event in NH is organized by Jet Pack Comics in Rochester in partnership with the Rochester Main Street program. Under Owner Ralph DiBernardo, Jetpack Comics has participated in every Free Comic Book Day since the store opened in 2005. He says by year two, about 1,000 people were coming to his store. That’s when he decided to approach Rochester Main Street, an organization that promotes Rochester’s downtown, to see if there was a way for the community to capitalize on it.
Ralph DiBernardo, owner of Jetpack Comics in Rochester. Photo by Matthew J. Mowry
Through that partnership, Free Comic Book Day now has 22 businesses in Rochester’s downtown business district handing out free comic books to shoppers and visitors. The event also features comic book artists and movie memorabilia, such as the iconic car from Back to the Future. In 2014, Jetpack Comics featured the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who had not reunited for years. That was the event’s biggest success, attracting about 8,000 visitors, DiBernardo says. Even without the draw of the Turtle creators, the 2015 event still brought about 5,500 to the Lilac City, he says.
While DiBernardo says he is overjoyed by the success of the community event, that achievement comes with growing pains. “We can’t get more people through our store. Businesses couldn’t afford to buy the amount of comic books to make [a larger] event work,” he says.
The cost for businesses to participate is a $25 donation to Rochester Main Street and then a sliding fee of $100 to $250 depending on the number and types of comics they receive to hand out. Rochester Main Street Executive Director Michael Provost says that Jetpack Comics underwrites most of the cost of providing the comics so businesses actually receive more comics than they pay for. Rochester Main Street has namedJetpack Comics as its Business of the Year in 2008 and 2012.
Provost and DiBernardo say retail businesses may not make many sales on Free Comic Book Day, but restaurants do well. Provost says, “We look at it as an opportunity to showcase our many businesses.” He adds some businesses use the day as a marketing opportunity by offering attendees coupons and deals that bring them back.
The event is promoted statewide and brings in visitors far beyond Rochester. “It’s been an interesting phenomenon,” Provost says of the growth of the event, which is so big that giveaways are now limited to one comic book per family. “It’s tough to find parking that day,” Provost says. “If it gets bigger, we will make arrangements to park at the high school and have a trolley that runs to downtown.”
Double Midnight Comics has also participated in Free Comic Book Day since 2003, but after seeing the success that Jetpack Comics experienced, Double Midnight decided to add more kapow by inviting comic book artists, Star Wars and Pirates groups and cosplayers (fans that dress in costume as their favorite characters). Proulx now estimates the Manchester store alone sees about 5,000 people come through its doors on Free Comic Book Day.
“We get 20 different artists, a tent, movie cars, and the line goes from the door to the other end of the plaza for four hours. The first guy got in line at 6 o’clock Friday night,” Proulx says.
The store is also adding more oomph to Free Comic Book Day at its Concord shop. There it has engaged other businesses, such as Granite State Candy, which gives a free scoop of ice cream to people who show up in costume that day. “We had a line wrap around the building there this year for the first time,” Proulx says.
Now Concord may get its own comic book convention as well. Emily Drouin, a comic book artist who creates her own comic book for children, has been helping to organize “kid zones” and kid activities at area comic book conventions, including Granite State Comicon and MASSive Comicon. Drouin says comicons can be overwhelming for younger attendees and can be places where they are exposed to more mature material.
Drouin is therefore launching her own comicon aimed at families—KidsCon New England—which will be held on June 11, 2016 at the Holiday Inn in Concord. “We will have all family friendly comic book creators there. No blood and gore. We will have activities for the kids like Jedi training, face painters, balloonists, pirates, a superheroes meet and greet, and [a local] Ghostbusters [cosplay group] will be there,” she says. “We will also have cartooning workshops and a kid’s costume contest.”
Drouin hopes KidsCon New England will attract more than 500 visitors in its first year. “It’s something I think is needed,” Drouin says. “Our slogan is promoting art, education and literacy through comics.”
Transforming Readership
Drouin and Noiseux are part of a trend helping to reshape the comic book industry. A certified ophthalmic assistant by day, Drouin is a comic book artist, freelance illustrator and comic convention organizer by night. Noiseux is a senior product manager at Blackbaud, a tech company in Massachusetts, who says she didn’t even read comics until seven years ago. She’s now the organizer of League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, a bi-monthly women’s comics discussion group in Manchester. She also founded Women Read Comics, a website that helps promote women’s comics discussion groups. Noiseux helped to start the League in 2012 at Double Midnight Comics as she says, “There weren’t as many events for women fans or women comic readers who wanted to get together in a friendly space.” The group started with five and now has 15 participants.
According to comic book analysts, women and older adults are growing segments of the comic book market. As a result, publishers are offering more female driven stories. Marvel launched its newest iteration of Ms. Marvel, which is expected to get big screen treatment in the coming years. And it magically transformed Thor into a female character as well.
Comics have widespread appeal. Alison Bechdel, a national artist, is known for her gay-themed comic strips and for originating the Bechdel Test (rating movies by whether at least two women are in it who talk to each other about something besides a man). She wrote and illustrated a memoir of growing up in her family’s funeral home, discovering her own sexuality and dealing with fallout from her father’s suicide and the discovery that he was a closeted gay man. It was told in a graphic novel, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” that was published in 2007, named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been transformed into a Tony-award- winning Broadway musical.
“I think we’re in a real great time where we have more options in publishers. We are seeing more diversity throughout even the big two [Marvel and DC],” Noiseux says. “If you like historic fiction comics, you can find it, or horror comics.
Michelle Campbell Barry, a NH resident who works as director of technology PR at Red Lorry Yellow Lorry in Boston, has been a comic book reader since she was a kid. She says, “There is a new generation of young women who are growing up much more empowered than we were in the 70s. They’re more critical about how women are depicted in comic books and feel comfortable speaking out about when they see a depiction they don’t like.”
Michelle Campbell Barry (far right) at Boston Comicon with, from left, Brett Dalton, from ABC’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.;” Barry’s husband, Frank; and Hayley Atwell, who plays Agent Peggy Carter in “Captain America” and ABC’s “Agent Carter.” Photo courtesy of Michelle Barry.
Noiseux says many people still have an image of comic fans as the stereotypical “Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons—a snooty geek with a chip on his shoulder. “But there are a lot more casual comic book readers out here,” she says. “Today there are so many comics available; comics are really for everyone.”
Proulx says the broadening comic book demographic also includes more young adult readers.“It’s everybody. It’s professionals, kids, women, older guys,” he says.
Provost compares comic books to Harley Davidsons. “You’re not in a gang if you are into Harleys, and you’re not a geek if you’re into comics,” he says.
Comic books also play into the geek chic culture that has risen over the past 15 years. And indeed professionals that may not have confessed their love of comics in the workplace a few years ago now discuss it proudly.
Josh Nason, email reputation manager at Dyn in Manchester, stopped collecting comics while in high school but started again as an adult after a friend noticed a Batman ornament on his desk at work and invited him to check out Double Midnight Comics. That visit rekindled Nason’s love of comics, prompting him to purchase a large collection from a coach of a local professional sports team. “It’s a fun release. It takes me back to my childhood,” Nason says.
Josh Nason, email reputation manager at Dyn in Manchester. Photo by Christine Carignan
And he shares his love of comic books at work. Two bobble heads—one of the Batman villain Bane and another of Iron Man––decorate his desk. He also co-hosts a podcast about comic books called Near Mint Comic Show. Two years ago Double Midnight helped to bring in artists for the company’s “Dyntini” mixer for Geek Week, an annual all-things-geek company-wide extravaganza.
Being a nerd is more acceptable now, Barry says. “Nerds run the world in a lot of ways that we didn’t used to. There was a period of time I would not have mentioned [her love of comics] in the workplace,” she says, adding that she recently pitched a superhero campaign to a client. “They loved it. It’s part of my daily life as a professional.” When Barry took time off from work last year to attend the mother of comicons in San Diego, her boss asked her to send pictures. “Years ago I would have made up a story about where I was going,” she says. Women are also making names for themselves in the traditionally male-dominated industry. Drouin hopes to become one of them. She started her own sci-fi comic series for kids, called Eplis, in 2013, which she publishes independently. “I love the indie scene,” says Drouin, who earned her Bachelor’s in graphic design from Keene State College.
Adults and teenagers are the lifeblood for many comic books stores. “Even today it’s tough to get [younger] kids into comics,” DiBernardo of Jetpack Comics says. “Most comic titles today are written in chapters and geared to adults with the patience to stay with a story arc over six issues. The best selling kids books tend to be titles like Sponge Bob Square Pants, Scooby Doo and other titles that are not only kid-friendly but resolve storylines in a single issue.”
DiBernardo jokes that when he opened his first bookstore in Portsmouth in the 1980s, police asked him where he kept the drugs and hookers because they could not believe a comic book shop could survive. “Today it is widely accepted,” DiBernardo says. “I see a lot of teenagers and 20-somethings all finding their place in the comic book market. Comic book stores used to be considered seedy. Nowadays that stigma is gone due to shops like Double Midnight and ourselves. They are not dark and dingy and disorganized.”
Surviving the Digital Age
While Hollywood may be thriving on comic books and the new fans the stories are attracting, comic book stores have diversified to keep customers coming through the doors. Like many print publishers, comic book publishers release the digital editions the same day the print version comes out.
“If they wanted to help comic stores, they would release digital a week later,” says John Lawrence, owner of The Comic Store in Nashua. However, he says he understands why that’s not the case. The overhead on the print version is greater, and both distributors and stores take a cut of each sale, whereas digital eliminates those middle men and expenses.
John Lawrence, owner of The Comic Store in Nashua. Photo by Christine Carignan.
The store has called Nashua home for more than 30 years. Lawrence says comic book sales are actually a smaller part of his business as most of his $500,000 annual sales are games and merchandise such as statues, toys, clothing and models. “Things that can’t be downloaded,” Lawrence adds. “We focus on customer service. It has to do with knowledge—when a book was released, what’s available, when a character was introduced, if a book is out of print.”
The Comic Store in Nashua sells collectibles including Funko Pop! figuerines. Photo by Christine Carignan.
Lawrence says sales at The Comic Store in Nashua have increased by about 20 percent since moving four years ago from a strip mall to a business district that is within one and half miles of 1,500 homes, opening a new customer base for him. Another draw for customers, Lawrence says, is that his store offers one of the largest selections of Gundam models—models of giant robots popular in Japanese anime—in New England. “People travel from all over” for them, he says. The Comic Store also uses 8,000 square feet of warehouse space. That has worked to his advantage. Sales of Pokémon merchandise at the store slowed down in the early 2000s, but when it picked up again in 2005 and 2006, Lawrence had all sorts of that merchandise in his warehouse ready to go to meet demand when competitors did not.
Games, and providing game rooms for customers, are also major drivers of business at Double Midnight Comics and Jetpack Comics. “When we first opened, we focused on comic books but also carried Magic the Gathering. We set aside dedicated game space that grew over the years,” Proulx of Double Midnight Comics says. “We also use the space for live music and movie screenings. It’s become a geek rec center. We have trivia nights and a women’s comic reader group meets there.” Double Midnight’s sales are split evenly between comic books and related merchandise, and games.
Proulx says while digital comics are on the rise, people still like to hold comic books and they like interacting with others, which is why Double Midnight holds special events like the Halloween Howl in Concord and the Manchester Christmas Parade. Double Midnight Comics also partners with area movie theaters to provide giveaways for comic-related movies and they even organized a mini comicon in the lobby of O’Neil Cinemas when the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie came out earlier this year.
Double Midnight Comics, which employs about a dozen people, has made a name for itself both in Manchester and in the industry. The store has received many local awards and it was nominated for the Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award four times––a national award for comic book shops.
Proulx says while its digital sales are on the rise, so are print products. “When people want the newer stuff, they hit the comic shops,” Proulx says. “It’s been a growth year for comics.” And he anticipates that the slate of new movies set to hit theaters will help that growth continue. Jetpack Comics in Rochester also continues to grow. While DiBernardo declined to divulge specific revenue figures, he says the store has experienced average annual revenue growth of 12 to 13 percent. Jet Pack Comics employs nine, including four full-time employees.
What Will the Future Hold?
Comics are hot now, but the future of the industry is on many people’s minds. Lawrence of The Comic Store says publishers are trying new gimmicks to appeal to younger readers, but that’s not the bulk of the comic book audience.
“Video games compete for kids attention, and the industry is trying to grow that market. But teenagers don’t want it,” Lawrence says. “With publicly traded companies, they are more concerned with quarterly earnings, and they are trying to create a product to go after a demographic that doesn’t exist. They need to write decent stories for adults who will then bring their kids into it.”
Proulx is more optimistic, saying while there will come a saturation point in the market for comic book-based movies, comic fans will continue to be loyal.
“There’s definitely room for growth. Our original location is growing strong, and Concord is growing. Not that long after opening Concord, people were asking when the next one is coming. A third [store] is not out of the question,” he says. DiBernardo of Jetpack says while he knows the comic boom won’t last forever, he is toying with the idea of opening a second smaller comic shop in a “prominent downtown.”
While the sheer number of comics available can attract new customers, some worry it comes at the expense of quality. “There’s almost too much out there. If quality can be maintained, I don’t see why we can’t keep [the momentum] going,” Proulx says.
“There is a ridiculous amount of mediocre material and a handful of quality material,” laments DiBernardo. He usually stocks enough issues for a three-to-six month supply and purchases about 20 percent over to ensure titles are on the shelf.
For others, though, this is a golden age. “If you have not tried comics before and are curious, now is a great time to come to the fold,” Noiseux says. “There is so much that’s good out there.”
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