Thursday, February 17, 2005

From bootlegging to Captain America

The LA Times ran an interesting editorial on Tuesday regarding the bleak future of the American comics industry. It relates the history of the comics industry and how it all started out as, basically, a quick scam for ex-bootleggers and the likes. Then, using the recent Stan Lee court case, it shows how the industry has never really shaken off those old business principles. The point of the article was that very little genuine innovation or originality is breaching the walls of mainstream comics and therefore the industry is really just lumbering to a slow death. Unlike in Japan and mainland Europe where creators are afforded far more rights. Of course to a degree he's right but, by and large, he does seem to regard DC and Marvel as the be all and end all of the business. Surely all that's really going to happen is that the big two are going to continue to concede ground to the smaller players. In a similar way to how the large syndicates are going to start losing ground to independent players over their attitude to creator rights.