I have roughly $40K worth of comics in the house, most of which are in bags. Last time I bought a comic? Maybe 2003? 2005? Somewhere in there. I think the very last comic I purchased in a comic store was one of the Walking dead comics, back when they were the hot new thing. Used stuff ain't selling either, so I intend to hold onto it for a while then figure out whether to pulp it, decorate with it or find some nerds and give it to them. Why did I stop? World of Warcraft. Team Fortress 2. Got a real job. Ran out of time to give a shit about comics, honestly. I've not seen any of the Avenger's movies, not seen the new Batmans. I have too much other nonsense going on. My generation bought a ton of comics and I wonder how many other people my age are in the same boat.
I walk into the local comics store every Wednesday, and most Wednesdays they either tell me they don't have anything I want to read or show me back issues/novels/random things they bought expecting to be able to sell them to me. I have an awful lot of Lovecraft memorabilia that's sitting on my shelf for no reason other than good will towards various comics shops. I feel some irrational guilt because I really like the Comic Book Guys and all the people I shoot the shit with when I stop by, but the industry... I think everything is great about comics but the comics industry.
Let's be honest: if even who-the-fuck-is-that back-barrel forgotten whoosits like Namor the Submariner are slated for $250m summer blockbusters that cost you $12 to watch, it takes a true corner-case dead-end out-market dweeb to pay $5 a month for 22 pages of fucking X-men for the nth time. They're fuckin' thankful for the 50,000 sales they get a month because those are the fuckin' dregs, man. This is why they lose their shit over things like "black human torch." Marvel's problem is that Disney has no reason to give the first fuck about 200,000 active comic buyers other than they kind-of sort-of sustain intellectual property that chugs merrily along printing money. All of Marvel Comics probably costs Disney less than it costs them to print the weekly itineraries for Aulani and they see no reason to build up IP through risk since they're probably the most risk-averse company in entertainment. Those numbers aren't just small, they're ridiculous: Any given month, 50,000 X-men comics sold. Turner Diaries? half a million copies. Anarchist Cookbook? Two million copies. Marvel is effectively an underground press pretending it's still the '50s.
One of the comic shops here tried for a while to carry locally created and published stuff. They gave up relatively quickly because the people who tried to make and print stuff tried with the best of intentions, but it just wasn't working. Which is a shame, cause some of that "underground" stuff was kind of cool.
Speaking as someone who talked to six different presses about doing my graphic novel, roughly 90% of all the small-press stuff is self-financed. It used to sort of work out - you spend $30k getting a book illustrated and putting out 5,000 copies. 2500 of them get bought at $10. You get 80% of that. Turns out you're only about $12k in the hole on your book and if that means you get a movie option out of it, you made a hell of a brilliant investment. Lookin' at you, 30 days of night. Wanted had sold less than 10,000 copies at the time Timur Bekmambetov optioned it. That was the universe that existed before Disney made eight fucking summer blockbusters to justify the Avengers.
I know a guy who used to make $800/page drawing for Marvel. He left for Hollywood in time to storyboard Alien Vs. predator. I know the guy who did the character design for the X-men movies. he has an MFA in sculpture and when we've talked about comics, he's said "I mean, I could draw that but it's so much easier to just farm it out to Korea."
I remember reading somewhere, I don't remember (maybe you?), that during the height of the speculation market the numbers could be considered inflated because a lot of people would buy multiple copies of the same issue, one to read, the other to hold onto in hopes of value jumping. I don't remember Warner Brothers buying DC. I do remember Disney buying Marvel and thinking either A) the comics would improve because Disney would have the capital to pump into Marvel and prop them up or B) the comics would drop in quality because Disney would be more focused on the non-comics market. I'm sad to see it was B, though it's been kind of fun to see all of the Marvel merchandise that's out there now. Speaking of sales and the death of news stand sales. On my drive home from work today, I was daydreaming about opening up a corner store and thinking that I didn't want to sell Liquor because I didn't want to hassle with the license, the liabilities, etc. So I thought about what I'd carry instead and I figured I'd get two magazine racks. One with the magazines you usually see in the corner store, the other one full of nothing but comics. Then I thought about what I'd put in them and I figured only family friendly and teen titles, because I don't think that parents understand that there are adult comics out there now and parents willing to buy their kids at a corner store definitely wouldn't be as savy as parents who would go to an actual comic shop. Then I thought about all of the family friendly titles I know, made a hell of a list, and deliberately kept Marvel and DC off of them. It was a fun way to kill an afternoon commute.
You build whatever the neighborhood wants and focus on a high-margin, low-investment product that you can sell through experience. There's a hobby store nearby. Hobby Lobby took over the space next door in 2007. They're still going strong because they sell the shit Hobby Lobby doesn't have... and they also do R/C tournaments, parties, and they can fix your quadcopter. i've got four comics shops within easy driving distance... but I've got six tabletop gaming outfits. When I left in 2007 that number was two. If you make it a place people want to hang out and spend money, they will hang out and spend money. If you can make what you sell cost enough to cover the rent, you're good to go. We've got GameStops all over the place, same as anywhere else... but these guys have gone from one location to nine in the past eight years 'cuz you can hang out and have fun.
Since you said that, I'll let you in on a secret; half the appeal of superhero comics, and most shared universes, is communal. You haven't read every relevant comic, I haven't read every relevant comic, the author hasn't read every relevant comic, but we all talk to each other so we all know the significant bits, where 'significant' means the things people talk about. This isn't relevant to comics not published by Marvel or DC, except to the extent that they're working in the context defined by Marvel and DC, but it applies to the bulk of comics being printed. If you torrented all the things and read every comic published by the big two, and 2000AD, and the head comics of the 60s and 70s, you'd still be a little confused, because people making comics are people who have been reading comics all their lives and that meta-level you miss out on if don't hang around comic shops and go to conventions and read the right/wrong sites. It's an extremely incestuous medium.I have to say that I am very surprised that there's not a single mention of piracy destroying the medium. Kudos, as it seems to be the goto cop out when it comes to something not selling well.
Do you have comic shops in Sweden? I think you're in Sweden. If so, go. Talk to your comic shop guys. Tell them what kinds of things you enjoy out of stories, settings, plots, etc. Tell them what you don't enjoy. Tell them what titles tickle your fancy and why and what ones you think you want to avoid and why. Tell them your budget and what you hope to get out of your reading experience. See what they suggest. If you're looking at reading cape comics and you know that you don't want to invest a lot of time and money into following anything in particular, ask them about stand alone stories that they'd recommend. For example, if you're interested in Batman, they might recommend the graphic novel The Long Halloween. It's a great Batman story, disconnected from the Batman universe as far as continuity is concerned, and has a large cast of characters that you can enjoy and appreciate without even knowing The Batman comics too well. If you're looking at comics as a medium and aren't too interested in following in particular, ask them about standalone graphic novels they might recommend. There's stuff there all over the genre spectrum from science fiction to drama to mystery to crime to autobiographies. There's stuff out there that spans from the mundane to the surreal to the avant garde. If you're really new, and really interested in comics as a medium, before anything else, I recommend you check out Understanding Comics by Scott McLeod. As crazy as it sounds, reading comics well requires a little understanding of how the medium works, and that book will help you be able to dive into comics headfirst and allow you to appreciate them than if you just went in all willy nilly.
Comics I'm actively reading now and why . . . The Valiant Universe: They only have anywhere from 9-12 titles running at any single time. If I save up and buy three or four times a year, I can get everything in collected editions and while I'm behind the people that buy floppies/digital, I still know what's going on. The same writers are on a title for the majority of the book, until the editors feel a title has run its course, and are willing to drop it for something new until they feel like they can go and pick up a certain set of characters down the road. While there are events, you don't need to buy all of the participating titles in an event to get the whole story, and unlike a lot of Marvel events, the events have lasting consequences in the universe. Usagi Yojimbo: Owned, written, and drawn by Stan Sakai for over 30 years. It's the shit. East of West: From volume one, it's been readily apparent that Hickman has a pretty damn good idea of where he wants his story to go, how he wants it to unfold, and the man himself says he has an end in sight and expects the book to end after around 50-60 issues. Black Science: I have no idea what the fuck I'm reading half the time, but I like the way Remender is writing it. He seems to be enjoying what he's doing and I'm enjoying going on for the ride. The Street Tiger: I only have the first two issues, in floppy. They're both beautifully drawn and the author seems to have a good story he wants to tell. I usually don't buy floppies. Seeing as how I don't know if this book will come out in trade, I'm willing to make an exception for it. Random Bullshit Floppies I Pick Up To Up My Total at Checkout So I Can Get a Discount at the Comic Shop but Unless I Hear Some Buzz, They're Sure as Shit NOT Marvel or DC Because Read the Fucking Article Cause the Criticisms in it are FUCKING LEGIT
I buy a lot of comics, actually. Mostly DC, because I like Batman and they're cheaper than Marvel. The one Marvel series I get, Amazing Spider-Man, is a complete pain in the butt to keep up with. Tons of little short side series, some issues of which never actually made it to my friendly neighborhood comic dude or any other retailer in the area, and every so often they'll release an issue (NOT an annual) that's three times normal cover price. On the other hand, I'm generally pleased with how DC has done things since "New 52", at least with the series that I care about.
Honestly, New 52 is when I jumped in so I can't really make a comparison to past continuity. All I can say is that I've generally been pretty pleased with how they've handled things. There have been some excellent story arcs, IMHO. One thing that did happen to Detective Comics recently is they reverted to the old pre-New 52 numbering system (I think they did it for Action Comics too). When New 52 happened they reset all the issue numbers back to 1, and that made some collectors unhappy because they wanted "Issue 1000". Eventually DC decided to go back to the old numbering system for a few titles, so the numbers jumped from Issue 52 to Issue 900-something after a recent storyline event.
Yeah, I know a few other people who took the opportunity to get in at that point as well. Because of money constraints I really only get titles in the Batman sphere (Nightwing, Batgirl, Batman et. al.), and I've usually been happy. Batman especially. The Court of Owls arc way back in the beginning of New 52 was great. I also get titles from Image, Titan and Marvel. Of those, Outcast is probably my favorite right now.