Originally published at: Zestworld is trying to shake up the comic world | Boing Boing
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I presume that this is an on-line publisher?
The biggest thing killing comic books is the “comic book” format. I know a lot of comic fans don’t want to hear this, but I strongly believe it’s true. If comics publishers want to capture the hearts (and wallets) of young readers, they’ve got to put themselves in the minds of young readers. Given a choice between 25 pages of comic book for $4 or 200 pages of manga for $10, they are overwhelmingly choosing the latter. “But the colors!” the older comics fans say, “the production values!” To which I can only respond: The. Kids. Don’t. Care.
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Very true. Although to be fair, the biggest thing killing comics is probably the publishers themselves. If they’re not charging too much for small comics, they’re screwing around their fans with their usual crappy business practices.
As an example, I have a friend who’s a HUGE comic fan and a few years ago he swore off the monthlies for good. He got sick of making a point of supporting his favourite creatives and series only to have them release “special edition” collections of an arc with additional scenes or plot or what have you.
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DEFINITELY! I also hate how it seems like the publishers constantly have their thumb on the cancel button: “If you want your favorite series to exist for long enough to get published as a graphic novel, you have to buy the monthlies every month to show us there’s enough demand for the graphic novel.” There have been a lot of stories that I’ve bought over the years that I would have rather just waited and bought the graphic novel, but instead I bought the monthlies so that they’d keep publishing the title and I would (hopefully) get to read the entire story. Once I recognized this pattern, my comics buying went way down. (Then my FLCS moved to a much less convenient location just as the pandemic hit and my buying has dropped to almost nothing.)
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I applaud their efforts to be fair to comics creators. However the promotional image alone was enough for me to lose interest in their output. It’s the same goddamn stuff that soured me on comics years ago: superheroes and the old ultraviolence.
Trying to shake up?
Not trying to spice up?
Come on, it’s called Zestworld, have some fun with it.
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If they’re specifically trying to target the manga buying audience they also need to adjust their content. The traditional adult superhero thing isn’t going to work. They need to take a look at what the big shounen manga titles from Japan are about and do some new American created stuff along those same lines. It’s a proven formula and is why American animated cartoons that have adopted this mindset have continued to thrive alongside anime.
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