Analysis of Alan Moore’s Mania.com Interview Pt. 3

There’s an interview at Mania.com with Alan Moore that’s causing a big stir out there in Geekland. In it, he goes off on his usual anti-comic industry rants. But the controversial thing to me is that a lot of it is right on the money. In a series, we’ll be analyzing some of his points. In this third installment, let’s take a look at the fate of the monthly comic book:

We are seeing the death of comics publishing as we know it. The pamphlets—the individual issues—are not selling. They haven’t been selling for years. The companies using them as a way of financing the eventual trade paperback. I don’t really see the traditional fare of the comics industry—which is, regrettably, superheroes—I don’t see that as being best suited to survive in a serious bookshop environment.

I agree with that. I haven’t bought an actual monthly issue of a comic book on a regular basis in years. Besides the annoyance of spending ten minutes reading fifteen pages, then waiting another month to find out what happens, there’s no way to justify the price at over three dollars a pop. That’s true, especially when you could rent a two-hour movie for the same price. Besides, we all know the full run of any good stories will be collected in a cheaper and uninterrupted format in a year’s time as a graphic novel.

Where is the future of comics headed? I personally think it can and should go to the digital format. Should have been there years ago. That, plus, stop publishing monthly comics. Publish graphic novels with full storylines, instead.

What do you think of Moore’s comments? Let us know in the comments!