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This goes again to something I have pointed out about one of the reasons Marvel claimed for the cancelation of X-MEN - THE HIDDEN YEARS, namely that it was the "worst selling X-Book ever!" Which it was, if the sales were taken in isolation, and not compared to the rest of the line. If that was done, we quickly discovered that ALL the X-Books were pulling in the lowest sales they'd seen in a long time, and, altho it was at the bottom of that particular group, XHY was in fact selling better than quite a few titles which were NOT canceled.

The worst part of that chart, tho, is those meaningless spikes, steadily increasing in number as we march thru the 1980s, and Marvel begins to pander more and more to the most mindless segment of the marketplace. The unthinking speculators, who have not a clue about what it is that really makes a comicbook "valuable" in a monetary sense. Things like scarcity and historical significance, neither of which apply in any real sense to any of those spikes.

Most "amusing" in the article linked by Kevin, tho, is the statement by Tom Breevort that the coming of the Direct Sales Market in the 1980s was seen by most people as a sign that the industry did have a future after all.

Well, yes. If by "future" we are talking about something akin to the man who fell from the top of the Empire State Building, and as he passed each floor was heard to say "So far so good… so far so good…"

Who gave Quesada that credit???  There was nothing spectacular about his reign.  I do know there were anger over "The Sins Of The Past" storyline from fans.  He probably getting credit for sales other than comics. 

Another reason for the decline could be the talent has become more important than the characters in the comic book industry.

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And, even worse, that "zoning in", by creating barriers not only to new readers by also to long-time readers, who were driven away by costly "events" and such stunts -- well, that kind of "zoning in" actually served to REDUCE the already shrunken numbers.

For the past 30 years or so, every downward turn in sales has been directly traceable to the degree to which the product has been rendered inaccessible, not just from a standpoint of readability, but from a standpoint of actual physical access.

According the that Fantastic Four sales shart, the two FF runs with the most consistent sales on an ongoing basis is the Lee/Kirby run and JB's run.

At least there are some things that still make sense in this world.

Grant Morrison makes valid points about the industry, but the interview falls flat because he doesn't express an culpability for "the way things are."

At least, that's the way it felt to me when I read through it.

For example, after stating that comics are in a death spiral and that DC's gamble is unlikely to work (which is a very stark thing for the "prized employee" of the company in question to say), he follows up with:

"With comics, the quality now is better than it's ever been, there are more people now who are really good at what they do, doing what they do. Everything's available for free, I think that's the real problem, nobody wants to buy it anymore."

It's not the creators, he says, the current creators are the best of all time. It's the readers, who want everything for free.