Once upon the time, comics used to be one of the most popular ways for kids to read a story. Images like this one weren’t an uncommon sight, and the most popular comics were ones that people of all ages could read. Many comics could be handed to any girl or boy without fear of inappropriate content being shown to them, but over time that started to shift for a variety of reasons, and comics started being aimed at adults even more than they were at younger readers. One of the biggest reasons was the great efforts those within the industry took to legitimize comics as a literary art form, as Chris Staros, the publisher at Top Shelf Productions, shared.
“If you go back to the 80’s when there was ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and ‘Maus’, comics had their first taste of respectability in the press. Really, the industry didn’t have the wealth of material it has now to follow those books up with. The world sort of lost interest in comics again,” said Staros.
“Then it seemed like in the 1990’s, there was a concerted effort by lots of publishers – Top Shelf being one of them – to really legitimize comics as a literary art form. To help redeem it,” he said. “All of us really, really worked hard to kind of put out that kind of material to lead the way. Our first tries were the collected ‘From Hell’ and ‘Blankets’; they were books to help from our end to pave the way to legitimize comics as an art form. During that early transition, all the people who were writing about comics at the time wrote articles with the same title, ‘Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics aren’t for just kids any more!’ No one could resist that title. No journalist, even Pulitzer Prize winners.”
In the process, Staros and the rest were getting what they wanted, but in a way, he started to realize that it became a market overcorrection in a way, and one that was equally unhealthy for the medium.
“Before the problem was, by the time you were 16, there wasn’t anything left for you in comics. You had gotten your car and your girlfriend, and this kid stuff wasn’t going to hold your interest any more. But with all of the literary stuff out there, you could read comics until you were 80 and still get something meaningful out of them alongside your car and your girl. Now the opposite problem occurred. You could read comics from 16 to infinity, but you wouldn’t have jumped on the comic book bandwagon to begin with because there wasn’t anything for kids.”
In its efforts to grow up, the comic industry had left its initial, most passionate audience behind: kids. Because of that, the perception that comics were almost exclusively for teenagers and young men developed, and that comics as a medium continues to ignore what should be the foundation of its readership. That idea lives on today, in many minds.
But is that perception still the reality of the situation? Are kids an important demographic for today’s industry, and if so, what are they reading and how are they reading them? These are all important questions, and ones that don’t necessarily have readily available answers, but this week, we’re going to do our best to try and find them. I’m proud to introduce a week long event at Multiversity focused on the current state of kids and their relationship with comics. We’re calling it “All-Ages Week”.
This series of articles is going to hopefully challenge what you think you already know and expand on ideas you hadn’t yet thought of, while exploring the keys to success and the roadblocks that prevent it along the way. We’ll be covering a lot of ground, looking at the power of your local library, how format impacts readership, the divide between the book and direct markets, a survey of what parents think of comics, Marvel and DC’s role in the all-ages universe, and much more, but we’ll be starting it all with a look at the state of the all-ages union in 2015.
And it won’t just be us, as we’ve spoken with top comic creators, publishers, comic shop owners, bookstores, librarians, industry pundits, and many more, and they’ll help give us expert insight into the subjects at hand.
Welcome to All-Ages Week. We hope you enjoy it.
