The comics industry came into 2024 facing a lot of uncertainties. The pandemic boom was clearly behind us, but what would the new status quo look like? Would there be a shakeout of publishers, distributors and retailers? How would companies adapt to a less favorable media landscape, with superhero movies facing headwinds?
We may be ending the year with more questions than answers, but here are five major trends that helped shape the business this year.
The Big Two have a creative rebound. So much of the fate of the retail business still hinges on the success of Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the engines that bring fans back into stores week after week. After a lackluster 2023 with few big hits or compelling stories, both companies gave fans something to cheer about and open their wallets for.
Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man was the year’s first major hit, paving the way for a year of strong success from the Ultimate Universe and books like X-Men and Doom. Marvel also successfully capitalized on the year’s biggest comic movie, Deadpool and Wolverine, with a bunch of fun tie-ins.
DC got going over the summer with the DC Absolute and the fall DC All In series, which were actual “events” with a style and swagger we haven’t seen in a while. Enthusiasm seems to remain high for the new series coming out of that.
In short, both companies appear to have their big guns firing on all cylinders, and there is some genuine fan excitement for these books. These things run in cycles, so it’s probably unrealistic to bet that the renaissance will last indefinitely, but the business is healthier when Marvel and DC aren’t stuck in the mud.
Licensed books are killing it. Another bright spot for the business is that other publishers in and around the top 10 (whatever that actually means these days in the absence of authoritative sales charts) are doing a bang-up job with licensed content. Some of the year’s best and most popular content are in licensed books, including ones that recently changed hands.
The reigning champion in this arena is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whose success is buoying IDW Publishing through some otherwise tough times. Skybound has taken over the Hasbro licenses like GI Joe and Transformers, with good results. There’s also Godzilla, who starred in some DC crossovers earlier this year and will reportedly be lumbering through the Marvel Universe next year. Conan is thriving at Titan Comics, alongside evergreens like Star Trek, Blade Runner and Doctor Who. Mad Cave Studios has reinvented nearly century-old characters like Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy with strong creative teams.
Dynamite Entertainment in particular has built a solid publishing business around turning unlikely or undervalued licenses like their Hanna-Barbera titles (Space Ghost, Jonny Quest, ThunderCats, Herculoids) into fun titles, alongside proven winners like Red Sonja, Vampirella, and their long running Army of Darkness. Dynamite has even pulled the neat trick of keeping Disney and Warner Bros happy simultaneously.
Licensed comics can be easy to take for granted and at their worst become sinkholes of mediocrity. However, at this moment, publishers, readers and creative teams are taking them seriously, which not only provides a good middle tier for sales, but also a launching point and source of income for creators while they develop their own original work.
More turmoil at the distributor level. While many people expected BOOM! Studios to be sold, few had PRH on their bingo card as the buyer. What does it mean that the massive book publisher and emerging comics distribution powerhouse is now also in the periodical comics business? Hard to say in the long run, but the short-term impact is that BOOM!, one of the last mainstays at Diamond, has predictably jumped ship to PRH, hitting the company with more bad news at a time when it is already facing the closure of one of its two warehouses and other headwinds (see “PRH Taking Over BOOM! Distribution“).
Because of Diamond’s historical commitment to retailers and comics publishers at all levels, not just the big guys, any further deterioration would be very bad news for the business even if Lunar and PRH could pick up the slack. Can the newcomers handle the scale and complexity of the business? Are they flexible enough to provide the high-touch service that comic shops need, and that Diamond strives to deliver, albeit imperfectly? Spoilers for my upcoming 2025 predictions column, but I think this may be a bigger issue next year.
An off year for manga and kids books? The rise of manga and kid-oriented graphic novels sold in the trade book channel has been the story of the past decade. Growth in these two areas has dwarfed periodical comics, helped the trade channel seize the majority of the ~$1.86 billion comics market, and turned publishers like Scholastic and VIZ Media into the 800-pound gorillas of the business.
But as data shared at this year’s ICV2 Insider Talks revealed, momentum in that side of the business may be waning (see “ICv2 White Paper“). Manga sales in particular showed a 21% decline in the first half of 2024, although it is possible dollar sales are not down quite as much.
On the younger readers front, so much of the market is driven by Scholastic in general and Dav Pilkey in particular that the success of those titles may be concealing rot elsewhere in the system. Mid-tier publishers that invested in kids books may find it hard to replicate the results of Scholastic, which benefits from its brand and unique distribution channel.
WEBTOON goes public, bringing new attention to the digital space. WEBTOON launched its big IPO this summer, raising over $315 million on a valuation of $2.6 billion. That is big news for the South Korean publisher of vertically-scrolling digital comics, user-generated content, and burgeoning entertainment franchises like Lore Olympus. I t’s also the kind of story that draws more business attention to the space in general.
DC and Marvel have both ramped up their own efforts in the vertically-scrolling space, and digital platform Global Comix has also heavily invested in turning the comics business on its side by reformatting older content.
But has this trend in the industry hit a ceiling? WEBTOON’s stock price collapsed over the summer, and the stock is currently down 35% from its IPO price, despite the stock market as a whole being on a historic upswing. WEBTOON rivals have also been sending mixed signals amid declining numbers in their home markets in Northeast Asia, which local media is describing as a “crisis.” Perhaps in 2025 we will get some more data points to determine if this shift is real, and if so, whether it is related to the content, the company ‘s business model, or factors related to the medium itself.
Naughty and nice. When the dust settles on 2024, I think we’ll find the business ended up in a better place than it started. It’s not all sweetness and light, considering the number of retailers still facing headwinds, but the trends that contribute most to the health of the industry appeared to be favorable this last year.
Will that continue in 2025? I’ll cover that in my annual Forecasts column next time. In the meantime, everyone have a fun and safe holiday. I hope Santa brings everyone all the cool treats and swag you’ve been hoping for!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture and a two-time Eisner-Award nominee.
Source: ICV2
