2000's

I thought on the last 12 years and realized it is a difficult task deciding what is important now and going forward. There are a few milestones as the industry has lost some of its brightest creators like Mike Wieringo, Dave Stevens and EC Comics great Johnny Craig along with many others. In the last year alone Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud and Joe Kubert have been lost to us. What should have been the biggest event in many years, the end of Dave Sim‘s monumental run of Cerebus, came and went with hardly a notice by the comics industry. DC’s interesting attempt at webcomics, Zuda started with promise and failed to create any real buzz.

Marvel launched the Ultimate Universe, a supposedly continuity-light version of the standard Marvel U. After a dodgy start and a few missteps, things went well for a while but it didn’t take long however to be just as continuity driven as the rest of Marvel. There are still bright spots though, Miles Morales is the new Spider-man and the ultimate version of the Avengers is interesting enough that the Marvel movies are largely based on it.

It is those Marvel films that will likely be the most remembered of the decade. From Sony’s Spider-man films to Fox’s X-franchise all the way to the Marvel/Disney partnership, these films have been an outstanding success. Less successful were Fox’s attempt at The Fantastic Four and Daredevil franchises and while not dreadful, these films failed in most of the important ways; they failed to impress fans and were just not very strong films. The Marvel/Disney slate of films ended 2012 impressively with The Avengers and set up the start of the next cycle of films that starts with 2013’s Iron Man 3.

The surge in popularity of digital delivery systems for comics content has yet to surpass print in terms of sales but the market continues steadily to grow for digital comics and publishers are looking for any way to exploit that demand.

I suppose the last ‘big thing’ of recent years is the 400 gorilla in the room; The New 52. Having read about half of the books at one point or another in the last year, I cannot say that much of merit has changed. Superman has become a bit more of a jerk or far more human, depending on which book you read. Batman and Green Lantern have not changed at all and most of the rest of the universe started with great promise but then quickly faded into the same old storytelling tropes as before. While some of the changes were needed over at DC in the last few years (like getting rid of all the Wildstorm books and folding them into the DCU) many have been just plain odd. The folding back into the DCU of characters like Constantine while canceling the Vertigo version just seems short-sighted to me.

I wish there was some great hope for revitalizing the industry in the coming years. While I’m not certain that one is needed, I do see a serious point of change coming. Everything with comics, from the creation and production to their distribution and merchandising is about to change. The question is, will it change and survive or change and simply fade away.