A Brief History in American Comics: Part 8: The Growth of Fandoms in the 1980s

The 1980’s comic sales reached a new market, due at least in part to the new specialty “fan shop” comic stores that began arising for collectors and readers alike. Although comic sales never quite reached pre-Comic Code levels, the new shown interest allowed the market to somewhat recover [3]. 

Even adventure comics began to hit a snag when comics about World War II seemed far enough in the past to seem irrelevant to many readers.  But where war comics were on the decline, superhero comics were on a substantial rise. Through the 1970s and 80s, sales for superhero titles went up, as did the general fan-base for superheroes [3].  

Although the superhero genre was “in decline since the late sixties,” the next couple of decades would ignite the genre and the comic industry in general. “The slow maturation that American mainstream comics had been experiencing over the previous decade took a dramatic leap forward [6].”

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1970s anthology, Star Reach, “lacked the inhibitions of the Comics Code, freeing creators to pursue more sophisticated themes. “Paired with the American trend towards longer, more involved stories, this led to a new focus on the craft of writing for the comics medium as a literary pursuit in itself, rather than simply a frame on which to hang the art [6].” 

In 1975, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum “reinvigorate[ed]” the X-men franchise, opening up “a major shift” in American comic stories. Chris Claremont later took over for Wein on The Uncanny X-Men, and, focusing on the teen-centered market, developed more complex plots and individualization of characters in lieu of an issue’s “self-contained stories”. Claremont also helped develop the “’family’ theme” of X-Men, “in a direct appeal to the outsider’s desire for a place of belonging—a theme many young superhero comic fans could relate to and become deeply invested in [6].” 

 

 As the stories of serials grew longer, publishers began to release “mini-series” and “maxi-series” starting from 1979. The end of episodic comics also aided to their “collectability” since several issues were needed to keep track of full stories and events. However, this also resulted in hampering the ability for new readers to keep track of previous events, thus gave rise to the “comics’ fandom as an insular subculture [6]”.  

Greater, more in-depth stories allowed for more political and “adult-focused content” for the more “mature-reader” of the 1980’s. The feminism wave of the 1960s brought awareness to popular sexist stereotypes, calling for “the complete reassessment of the industry’s treatment of women characters.” However, it wasn’t until the 1980s when publishers began to include this transformation [3].

By the end of the 1970s, comic book sales (including superhero titles) were low. Still sold at newspaper stands (and viewed as similar product), comic books were sold merely as a buffer profit or “bonus” by vendors, rather than as a valuable merchandise. However, the venues of underground comix proved that comics could be sold in separate or different venues from newspapers and still sell, such as specialty stores. Some of these stores evolved and grew their markets into general comic stores, where readers could purchase and collectors could sell or trade their old comic books. Comics also began to be ordered beforehand by consumers, rather than vendors purchasing them wholesale, thus cutting down on vendor returns and profit risk. This direct market approach allowed store owners to not only cut down on the stock received from publishers, but to customize their stores according to what they wanted to provide, allowing the stores themselves to help regulate title distributions. This newfound profitability “saved the comic book, but by doing so… changed the comic book’s appearance [4].” “By the mid-1990s, over ninety percent of all comics were being sold through this channel. In the space of a few short years, the fan market had gone from being a parallel outlet of little commercial importance, to becoming the new mainstream [3].”  

“It was these ‘veteran fans’ that dictated the creative evolution of the comics, and increasingly, it was other veteran fans like them who would produce the comics they read. In short, in order to survive in the direct market, publishers were forced to attend to the needs of their most enthusiastic supporters, isolating themselves more and more from the outside world… [4]” 

In 1984, Marvel’s Secret Wars became the “first large crossover ‘event’”, which covered a single storyline across several comic titles (think Marvels’ current film series). DC attempted a similar event with Crisis on Infinite Earths [6].  

The downturn of comic sales in the 70s and 80s is often shown to correspond to the rise of TV and video games. However, this factor may have also helped spread popularity of certain serials, such as Star Wars (1982) and Indiana Jones (1984), based on their film counterparts [3]. 

The Rise of the Graphic Novel  

“In the latter half of the 1970s, comics like Sabre (1978), by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy, a sci-fi thriller with nudity, announced the arrival of a new age in which a non-children’s audience could access comics that broke with the limitations of the Comics Code, but not with those of the traditional genres [4]. 

 

Comics “not subject to Comics Code censorship” and often included more ‘mature’ content compared to major publishers, “ground-level” comics were a newfound middle ground. Star Reach was one popular comic of this type, and one of the few comics “where mainstream and Underground met.” Star Reach also included the first printing of an English-translated Japanese comic, although the pieces did not insight any greater interest in importing manga.Star Reach was one of “the earliest concerted attempts by mainstream creators to enter the world of alternative publishing [6]”.  

Gil Kane released His Name is Savage (1968) but it didn’t sell well, despite its magazine format and higher “abundance of text” to appear more literary-conscious [4]. Blackmark (1971) was Kane’s second attempt and proclaimed it as “the next step forward in pictorial fiction”. Although Blackmark was visually impressive, it was in essence reminiscent of pulp magazines of the 1950’s rather than an overall new look [6]. 

 

There were some other attempts to further the comic medium through the 1970s, including Jack Katz’s First Kingdom[4], but none quite popularized it until Will Eisner’s Contract with God in 1978, released as what he called a “graphic novel”,used in attempt for more literate-serious attention [8]. Released at a time when comics were still viewed as material for children or less mature readers, this collection of four related stories, as well as others by Eisner and several others, would only later help to project the medium into a field of higher criticism.

Next time in A Scroll in Time…
  Thank you all for your part in keeping this blog going. This entry marks the end of Season One, and thus the start of a new turning point. I will be taking a several-month hiatus from posting, during which I will be catching up on a bunch of research materials and writing a bunch of new, more in-depth accounts and entries. I apologize for the sometimes uncertain posting schedule that has occurred in the last year, but by preparing my entries earlier, I hope to eliminate that for the years to come. I am having so much fun doing this blog, and hope to bring a vast new interest in learning and understanding the ways culture and history shape our comics today. 

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[1] Couperie, Pierre, Maurice Horn, Proto Destefanis, Edouard François, Claude Moliterni, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, and Eileen Hennessy. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown, 1968. Print.
[2] Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Reading, PA. 1970. Print.
[3] Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels. Hong Kong. 1996. Print.
[4] Garcia, Santiago. On the Graphic Novel. University Press of Mississippi. 2015. Print.
[5] Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York. 2008. Print.
[6] Mazur, Dan, and Alexander Danner. Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. Print.
[7] Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation. Baltimore, MD. 2003. Print.
[8] Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. M Press. 2005. Print.