I See Posts Before My Eyes

vbartilucci asked: " It was a woefully wasteful system, one that meant you were often printing three copies, selling one, and destroying the other two after shipping them all over the world." I understand the point, but what it did was make comics far easier to get. Comics are largely a destination purchase now - you have to seek them out, as opposed to walking into any candy or drug store. What else can be done to increase accessibility, especially to young people, the legendary "new readers"?

brevoortformspring:

You’re conflating two things that are not quite connected in the way that you think they are. Comics didn’t disappear from those locations because of the shift in distribution, the shift in distribution happened because comics were disappearing from those locations. As an item, the comic book rack wasn’t generating enough revenue-per-foot as many other things, and so those newsstand outlets gradually but consistently stopped carrying comics, regardless of their returnability. They weren’t worth the effort to stock and restock the racks for the relatively meager profit they generated in those outlets—a cigarette machine or a soda machine or a video game generated more profit, and with less maintenance. It was evolving and switching to the Direct Market that saved the comics industry—without that shift, mainstream comics would have died off by, at the latest, the mid-1980s.

Oh, I’m well acquainted with how it happened - I was there for it, as were you.  Comics weren’t enough of a money maker, but it was due to the price of the comics, not how many were being sold. The stores were selling enough, but only making a few cents on each, as opposed to “glossy” magazines which were more profitable.  It’s why DC created the Dollar Comics line, to provide an item the stores could make more money on.

But the end result was the same - comics went from being ubiquitous to being a destination purchase, and the number of potential readers dropped.  

So I go back to the same question - what can the industry do to get comics back into the reach of kids and parents?  All the movies and TV shows sure make people aware the characters exist, but there’s still the need to find a store that sells them, as opposed to the toys, which are everywhere.