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with the only momentum in the industry being the meteoric rise of manga, and to a smaller extent, YA graphic novels.
Even the mainstream comic book site shills and some of the superstar creators inexorably tied to their jobs at the Big 2 have had to admit as of late that things are not going well, although they will acknowledge some reasons why, while utterly denying others.
What we can say, however, is that substantial number of Gen X-age comic buyers (40 to 60) walked away from the hobby starting around 2014-16
when they noticed that a lot of the legacy characters they had come to enjoy were being disrespected or replaced or that didactic and strident political messages were being conveyed in a genre that was primarily intended to entertain.
Again, I repeat: there are MANY reasons why the mainstream comic book industry is suffering. But this is definitely one of them. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be thousands of disgruntled fans, and dozens of Youtube channels, complaining about it, while many of them have gone off to support other publishers which better reflect their interests.
In any case, these Gen-X readers grew up in the late 70s, all of the 80s, and a good part of the 90s. They have often said that they prefer comics which remind them of that time period (to our credit, Heroineburgh is one of those).
So, recently, a interesting trend has emerged which reflects this exact sentiment. The postmodern types have thoroughly taken over the Big 2 (and many aspects of the next 3 biggest companies as well) but what they didn't have a handle on were properties that pop up from time to time but don't necessarily have a steady publication schedule to infiltrate.
A lot of these sporadic titles are nostalgia based IP from the 80s and 90s which are mainly available as licensed properties, since the companies that own them (such as Hasbro) do not necessarily print comics themselves. Some of these properties, such as Masters of the Universe, have unfortunately been meddled with due to the existence of a current cartoon. But there are many others that the ideologues have simply neglected
or that have been poorly received (such as the Aubrey Sitterson GI Joe run on IDW, or the blink-and-you-missed-it Thundercats Roar TV show with the terrible CalArts aesthetic).
But here are some recent examples of nostalgia IP successes that have blossomed while the industry has plummeted:
- Boom! has had the Power Rangers license since 2016, and it's one of the main things still keeping that company afloat. There's never been a single instance of political messaging that I can find. Fans just continue to enjoy the books.
- Skybound is Robert Kirkman's imprint on Image. After his incredible success with both Walking Dead and Invincible, he's been snapping up IPs which did not do as well at other companies like IDW (which did have some woke injections) and revitalizing them. The new Transformers series on Skybound is the surprise hit of the year, in some cases literally helping to keep comic shops afloat. And GI Joe seems on track to be next.
- Dynamite, one of the kings of politically-neutral licensing publishers, revived the Gargoyles title in 2022 and has, of course, kept alive the names of the sexy likes of Red Sonja and Barbarella (both of whom now have movies coming soon).
So here's the latest surprising news where a nostalgia property brings Gen-X back to the shops, and it could be one of the biggest comic book stories of 2024. The new Thundercats series on Dynamite has pre-ordered 100,000 copies through the direct market, And while that does not reach the frenzy levels of the 90s where X-Men titles could sell 500K, it does temporarily outstrip the offerings from current Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and X-Men.
https://www.superherohype.com/comics/56 ... -pre-sales
The book is written by Irish writer Declan Shalvey, who seems to be known for mostly straight-ahead comic book action. He has absolutely no politics on his Twitter - just action-packed comics promotion.
Here are two sexy variants starring Cheetara for Issues 1 and 2.
Art is by Ivan Tao and Lucio Parrillo.
The series is in stores Feb 7.
What do you think? Will you be checking this out if Cheetara looks hot?
- Thundercats-01-E-Tao.jpg (667.28 KiB) Viewed 930 times
- Thundercats-02-B-Parrillo.jpg (528.73 KiB) Viewed 930 times
