Opinion: Videogames Could End Up Like Comics

Comics, amazingly enough, have a lot of reasons keeping people from buying them in droves.

1. Availability.

I used to be able to pick up comic books on a little spinning rack at my home town grocery store when I was young. Now, if I am not in a comic book store or a book store, I simply can't find the things anywhere. In the case of the book stores, the actual comic book section is often greatly overshadowed by a manga section sitting right next to it. Of course that is when you just consider the graphic novel or collected editions of established series, in terms of actual new standard comic books, those are still in weak supply in my area (especially since the comic book shop closed down).

2. PRICE

Yeah, price. It isn't an arm and leg to buy a comic book, but the last time I looked it was too much for too little. Around 24 pages of a comic, ads, ads, and more ads, and you still paid about $2 for something you can read in as little as 15 minutes. Either make the basic book thicker and meatier or cut down on your price to be more effective in getting the attention of most folks.

3. What the heck is going on?

There's Wolverine, even though he died 10 times, fighting Dark Phoenix, who is alive again, and he runs her through, but luckily it was a Skrull imposter. Suddenly Namor shows up being a villain again, only he is a Skrull imposter too because the real Namor shows up to beat him down.

Too many retcons, too many loopholes, and too many references to ALL OF THIS CRAP makes for a reading experience to newcomers that is nothing short of mindboggling insane and nonsensical (which would be fine if it was a Deadpool comic).

4. Authors change everything

Kind of related to point 3. When a new author comes on board to be the head of an already established franchise, most (if not all) feel the extreme need to radically change things with the story. Once or twice wouldn't be to much of a problem, however some characters have been changed so many times over the course of their existance they require a total franchise reboot just to get everything back on track. And for some characters, this reboot has occured multiple times.

5. Negative stigma still associated with the product

If comics were still fun, easy to follow, and reasonably priced, this point wouldn't matter in the slightest. Given the previous flaws combined with this one and you have pretty bad situation on your hands. To make it simple, nerds read comics and basically no one else but children (social stigma, folks, not my personal opinion).

The comic book industry isn't in any danger of dying (yet, anyway) because the people that are crazy about them are crazy about them enough to keep them floating for years. Unfortunately they are not attracting any new people, young or old, and are failing to keep the casual readers interested in them enough to make the industry take off. Short of changing their game drastically and MAKING THE PUBLIC AWARE OF THOSE CHANGES OUTSIDE  OF  JUST THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY WITH STUFF LIKE TV SPOTS AND SUCH, I fail to see how they can turn their negative tide around.