The Changing Role of Comic Books in Adventure Entertainment

Can Internal Imagination Compete with Immersive Tech?

There's no getting around it. Entertainment becomes more an more immersive. And it's not just video games. There's also the IMAX experience that transforms a regular "watch the movie" outing into a 3-D adventure.

While some long for the days of books and radio with their theater of the mind, others embrace the new tech of immersion. Is there still room for both? Can the two still compete on level ground?

Curious, I posed the following questions to readers, writers, and publishers.

In a world where the top-selling entertainment items have become immersive and interactive, can anything really be done to save or revive the internalized and imaginative medium of comic books as an industry?

Robert Bear: To be honest, I think comics already made the transition (to video). The medium may be a fading medium and that is an issue for all mediums at some point. Book sales have dwindled some due to the switch to audio books. Much like film has mostly went away, taken over by digital format, comics may have to give way to a more inclusive or interactive format.

Andrew Salmon: Comics are done. The younger generation watches the movies, then... watches the movies again while waiting for the next movie. Very few get hooked on the comics. But it's really a reflection of changing needs. Kids grow up addicted to screens of any and all shapes and sizes. And the movies show on screens so they're good with that. Comics are also way too expensive these days. That's not helping. I'm not saying comics will disappear entirely but they now sell at levels that would have got each title cancelled a few decades ago. It's mostly older folk reading them now and we won't live forever. Sad reality. I believe they will always exist in some form but as a "go-to" medium, that ain't happening.

Matthew Gomez: Moving beyond the big two publishers. Supporting indie comics. Getting more trades into traditional bookstores, including indie stores.

Frank Fradella: I find that a lot of people want to throw stones at the giants, but the fact is that they own their marketshare because they earned it. They all-but created the industry and while they may at times have strangled out their competition, they have their success in the marketplace because what they're selling SELLS.

I'd much rather see people adopt the point of view that 90 percent of the playing field belongs to them, so let's look at what they know.

The problem, ultimately, is that they have millions invested in market research annually that continues to tell them that nobody wants non-superhero comics. At least not enough to make it financially worthwhile. They're not guessing. They know. If there was money in it, THEY'D be doing it.

An indie publisher can publish a western comic, but it's not going to be enough to move the needle in public perception that comics = superheroes. The problem is a cultural one.

Other countries have non-superhero comics and graphic novels. The fact that Americans by-and-large conflate "comics" with "superheroes" is something that Sean and I battled [through Cyber Age Adventures and iHero Entertainment] for a decade, with little success.

John Morgan Neal: Get the comics in more hands. By hook or crook. Kids are naturally drawn to them.

PJ Lozito: Make comics good again. Take a look at a bunch of 1960s Marvels and DCs. High quality!

Ian Ramirez: There will always be a place for stories in every medium. Just because we may stare at a screen, does not mean we won't be looking at panels filled with art and littered with dialogue boxes.

Percival Constantine: People don’t want interactive 24/7. Look at books. There are a lot of novelists who are making a full-time living off their books, maybe more than ever before. And books are even more internalized than comics because all the images have to come from the reader.

Ashton Adams: Yes, the industry can be saved. A major evolution has to occur that probably won’t look much like the current one. But comics media will survive.

Corrina Lawson: Comics books are doing just fine, except the market may be shifting to the bookstore market. Look at Ghosts.

If books and comics both operate in the same medium (that of the internalized and imaginative), why hasn't the book publishing world suffered the same decline in market that comics have?

Dave Creek: Industry stats on book sales look at the industry, that is the large publishers -- not self-publishing authors who make up a large part of book sales. It's also why you see reports claiming that ebook sales are declining. That decline is often among the major publishers because their ebook prices are so high. Meanwhile, cheaper indie books are cleaning up.

John Morgan Neal: Books are not a visual medium. Not as much crossover and there are more older readers overall that aren't into gaming or high tech.

Kel McKay: I would argue that books are a slightly different audience demographic than comics. Those who are interested in  comics are often also interested in technology-based entertainments. So there has been a slow drag in that direction as the technology improves.

Corrina Lawson: Book publishing is tight and has constructed over the past ten years. YA, however, is still an excellent market and that's where many of the successful graphic novels are being aimed.

Ashton Adams: That’s just simple cost benefit. $4 for a comic with a (generous) 15 minute entertainment value vs. a book for $10 that has hours or days worth? Comic’s value isn’t there anymore. I have to make a conscious decision to make a bad spending choice for my entertainment time when buying a comic just for the love of them.

Matthew Gomez: Comics still(!) face a certain stigma of being for kids, despite generally being price-pointed out of kids' budgets. Book world, while taking a hit, has the benefit of being a) not stigmatized and b) being generally more diverse. If I go into a bookstore I'm not faced with an overwhelming barrage of variations on a genre. In a lot of ways, for the book market to look like the comics market, it would be like walking into a bookstore and being faced with 90 percent pirate bodice rippers. And in some cases, you would feel like you had to read 10 years worth to know what was going on currently.

Percival Constantine: Two words: direct market. Diamond still holds a stranglehold on the industry and the direct market has been holding comics back in a way that books didn’t have to worry about.

PJ Lozito: As expensive as books get (someone like Mary Higgins Clark gets $7.99 for a mass market paperback), they still offer a lot of pages. A comic book, at this point, is a pamphlet you read while your coffee cools.

Vik-Thor Rose: Part of it is price... when 3 floppies can cost more than a paperback book, and can be read in a fraction of the time.

Is there any kind of marketing or culture re-shaping that can be done to rebrand or rebuild the audience for sequential illustration formats? If so, what repercussions might that have on the "insider club" that has been loyal all these years to their tights and capes books that one the one hand, kept the industry alive but also created the insular market that is gradually killing it?

Ashton Adams: Evolve or die. Screw the insiders club. That’s a sure fire way to kill the industry quick. You need the highest quality product for the best price like everything else. You want to put out McDonald's you can’t price like Ruth’s Chris.

Corrina Lawson: Get comics where people can read them. See: the success of the tie-in works connected to DC Super Hero Girls and the Superhero High stuff.

Keith Gleason: I don't know what the answer is but when you see a small indie company like Alterna Comics start printing on newsprint paper again and get the cover price down to $1.50 and their profits start to double and triple there's something to that, now imagine if Marvel and DC did that.

Frank Fradella: We grew up in an era when comics were on spinner racks. When I started, they were 25¢ which seemed a reasonable trade for the amount of time you spent reading them. Then came the direct market, a exponential rise in prices, and an exclusionary culture.

You're not going to change anything unless you change everything. You've got to eliminate every objection people have to buying comics -- price, availability, and culture.

Mike Schneider: We need a reading device designed for digital comics. Flexible, gutterless, dual-screen full color paper white at an affordable price point and DC, Marvel, and others publishers throwing in with the same all you can read service would go a long way.

Marlin Williams: The days of riding your bike to the store that sold comics is lost to the newer generation. It's easier to view on an electronic device and much more convenient.

John Pyka: To answer your question think back to how you were introduced to and hooked on comics... technology may have changed but human nature is constant. My first Comics were given to me. I think we need to start gifting comics more often.

Matthew Gomez: Diversification in genre. Adapt and change. The old guard is going to be pissed as hell about, but then it seems easy to get a significant portion of them angry about anything (could be an over-generalization and obviously those that yell loudest get the most attention, even if they are only a small subset as a whole).

Percival Constantine: Pay attention to manga. I know a lot of American comic fans roll their eyes at that suggestion, but guess what? Manga is popular. Manga sells.

John Morgan Neal: Utilize the even more well know comic book characters and worlds and make folks realize they exist. Too many times I have been asked when holding a comic. "They still make those?"

Simon McCoy: I don't know what parents give kids these days as an allowance (assuming they do) but I'm still a firm believer in the idea that the average comic book is too expensive to hook kids these days. They also have options that weren't available when a lot of us were kids: smart phones, tablets, pcs, game consoles -- and these things can provide content without even leaving your home.

You can pay for a month of Netflix at the price of, what... three comic books at most? And quite possibly two? The most iconic characters will survive, but I think print comic books will become even more of a niche thing.

Can Non-Series Fiction Compete with Series Fiction? (A Reader and Writer Roundtable)

Is it possible to build a strong reader base without writing a series? The logic today for selling books and building readership seems to be a series of series, where one book leads into the next, then into the next, etc. Is the time of the stand-alone adventure novel is legitimately over (except in the case of big-name writers)? What are your thoughts, oh readers and writers and publishers? (Oh my!)

Tally Johnson: Things seem to be main-character driven. Like the Jack Reacher books for example. The sequential series do well but an overarching lead seems to be the key.

James Palmer: Generally speaking, series are easier to build audience interest. I'm trying to go with trilogies that end after three books, then starting a new unrelated trilogy. We'll see if it works.

Simon McCoy: Stephen King developed a fan base even though most of the time his characters appeared only in a book or two, but he was writing horror for the most part rather than adventure or pulp. I think it's more common for a reader to fall in love with character(s) or setting more so than the style the books are being written.

Evan Peterson: King really has a lot of cross-pollination of characters between his novels, regardless of whether they are stand-alone books or parts of a series.

That said, King came up in a time before everything was a series like it is now. Were he to just get started today, I wonder if he'd have the same success with the same books. The successful stand-alone novel is a rarity now, and even rarer is a second successful stand-alone novel from the same author

Richard Laswell: As a reader, I prefer stand-alone books, no matter the length. I often feel that a sequential series is more of a marketing ploy by the publisher in a bid to milk more money from a storyline.

As an example, had Stephen King not had control of The Stand, I could easily see a publisher chopping it into two or three separate novels.

That said, there is something which appeals to the human mind in the idea of linear narrative. To be able to experience a character grow into their full potential is very rewarding.

Robert Freese: I'm not much into series. I read Joe Lansdale's Hap and Leonard series but that's it. I've never had any interest in writing a series, but I am currently writing a sequel to one of my earlier books. But that will end the story. No interest in writing about these characters over and over again.

Selah Janel: I mean, comics not included, most of Gaiman's work is stand-alone, but he tends to tap into archetypes and pantheons that people are at least aware of or has really strong protagonists in his YA stuff. Andrew Davidson's Gargoyle blew things up when it came out and I don't know if he's done anything else since then. I think if anything, series get promoted more constantly because the character names etc are constantly in the public eye vs a single title which has a marketing shelf life to an extent. I think it really depends on genre, audience, and a good story as much as anything else.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: I’ll read a good series, but I don’t mess with serial novels at all since I have never read one that was well done (apart from The Green Mile and Dickens).

They need to be stand-alones to get me interested or marketed as a long series, like Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time.

John Hartness: The horror genre is mostly standalone, as is literary fiction and several other genres. Fantasy and science fiction are largely driven by series, but then you have runaway successes like The Martian. So traditional publishing can still make best-selling stand-alones when they throw their weight behind it. But most successful indies in sci-fi and fantasy are working in series. Today. But wait six months, the industry will reinvent itself again.

Neen Edwards: I think that's why I like The Dresden Files. Each story is different and can stand alone, but I love the main character enough to read his different adventures. However, I'm not big on series in general that go on and on about the same plot. It gets boring after a while.

JH Glaze: I say screw conventional series!

Rob Cerio: The big exception to this in recent years was Ready Player One, but that book hit the nostalgia drum so hard...

David James: I think Dan Brown seems to be doing okay with his Langdon novels and he's still a relatively new author being popular only after The DaVinci Code took off a little over a decade ago. I suppose it's all a matter of the readers and the type of book. I had read Brown before he became popular, so I was already satisfied and wasn't "jumping on the bandwagon" at that point.

Series that have built over time isn't fully a recent trend, although it's more prevalent now. Think the Dune novels by Frank Herbert (especially before his son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson finished the story after his death, although you can consider those too), the Foundation novels by Asimov, even Robert Jordan began his series (which I think is really what began this current trend) in the early 90's.

Yet, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, and others, all had series of novels with the same characters, and even if they could be individual adventures, each one tended to flow into the next. I just love the adventures of Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan, and Odd Thomas.

Kevin J. Anderson is an established author, and he still works hard to get out as many different novels as possible. I would recommend his Dan Shamble novels to you as a good example of something he attempted recently -- kind of along the lines of what you're suggesting - which has gained a following.

There are a lot of examples out there and others might be able to name some. I guess it depends on just how big of a following you desire.

John Gerdes: What about somebody like Kurt Vonnegut who did not ever write a series but had a lot of recurring characters?

Pj Lozito: We were all stunned at Pocket when Walter Mosley deviated from Easy Rawlins. He wanted to publish new characters, a literary novel, a science fiction novel, non-fiction, a play, YA. It didn't hurt his career in the least.

What makes a horror book scary?

This week's roundtable is for READERS. (Or writers who double as readers in their spare time. What do mean, what's that?) As we move deeper into October and are rounding second base toward Halloween, let's talk scary.

What makes a book scary or creepy to you?

Blake Wilkie: It's all in the pacing and imagery in the descriptions. Like when a vampire bites someone. To say they just sink the fangs in doesn't work. Be descriptive. It it a slow indulging bite savoring the moment or a feral attack out of fierce hunger? Why is it one or the other? How does the bite feel to both involved, etc?

Danielle Piper: The scariest stories I've ever read were the ones that involved situations that could actually happen. I've seen far too much fantasy to be scared by it anymore. I despise authors who rehash something cool they saw in a movie or on TV, trying to steal a cool element they hope you're not familiar with already.

Janet Walden-West: As far as scary -- COULD it happen? Having been in close proximity to the Body Farm, zombies are the scariest thing ever.

Jim Comer: Dread. George Martin's Sandkings.

William D. Prystauk: I have never read a creepy or scary book. Yes, I've read horror, but it never resonates like a movie. Craven, King, Rice, and Nevill, have always fallen short.

Selah Janel: I like books that make me worry about whether the plot could happen to me or not. Even if it's outrageous, I want to suspend my belief long enough to be scared out of my mind by the possibilities. Ray Bradbury's story 'The Next in Line' is terrifying because it deals with the very real fears of death, claustrophobia, not being able to get out of a situation, plus the added element of a callous spouse. I cannot read this story without shuddering and seeing myself suffering from that sort of desperation and loneliness.

With stories that have elements of something supernatural or "other," I want to believe that there may be the faintest possibility that it could happen. It's why movies and books about possession are so terrifying - it's a concept that's so rooted in people's beliefs and faiths and deals with our most primal fears... plus, no matter how logical you try to be... what if it's real? What if it could happen to you and there's nothing you could do to stop it?

Herika Raymer: When a book explores things that could happen, that is what scares me. I prefer psychological thrillers, where the antagonist or monster is not completely shown, but there are plenty of stories where the monster is in plain sight that are just as chilling. I read alot of True Crime stories because of that, Ann Rule / Patricia Springer / Steve Jackson. Stories about pandemics that wipe out whole populations, as presented by Dean Koonz and Stephen King and a few others, those are creepy as well.

James Ritchey III: Scaryness. OH! And Creepyness. But seriously? By exploring stuff we're all creeped out by, and being smart about it. Psychological horror is ten times more effective than bending to genre stereotypes. Feral children and the amputation of hands freak me out, for instance. Three words for ya... Suspense, Suspense, Suspense -- THEN you rip the hapless victim's lungs out.

Joe Bonadonna: When it's in the realm of possibility.

What do writers try to do to make a book scary or creepy, but it just doesn't work for you?

William D. Prystauk: Atmosphere is what they seem to create most as well as characters you want to root for. However, I never feel a jolt. It's clear I need some compelling audio/video to move me along.

Jim Comer: Stephen King lost it somewhere.

Selah Janel: I think sometimes writers try to get a little too clever. It's a fine line -- I like detail, but if too many elements are thrown in together, sometimes it becomes a jumble or downright cartoonish. For example, I love a lot of Stephen King's titles. He's insanely good at what he does, a master. Misery is freaky because it's so possible, plus there's the isolation factor, and his short story N is one of the most terrifying things I've read in my life. However, they both share the fact that they're fairly linear stories that deal with one main problem or element. Annie Wilkes is the opposing force in Misery, and although N takes a little while to develop, there's no denying the tension as minds begin to unravel as the thing in the field is discovered.

Because those are so laser-focus and take their time, I tend to get frustrated with titles like IT and Rose Red. With IT, isn't it enough to have a killer clown? There is so much detail heaped in, that I can't even comprehend everything that's going on, and by the time IT's true nature is revealed I just...I don't know. It's not as scary to me as if it were just a weird clown chasing kids around trying to get them.  With Rose Red, there was so much buildup, so much amazing back story, that the ending almost fizzled. Parts of it gave me nightmares, but the ending pretty much ruined it for me because it was fairly tame in comparison. He's not the only one that's guilty of this -- a lot of horror writers try to cram in a lot, and then their endings have no hope of living up to expectations. Horror is walking a fine line as it is -- if you make things too over the top it can inadvertently trigger a humorous response, so writers have to be careful as to what their intentions with a story really are.

Herika Raymer: Splattergore. I do realize that making a story gory and visceral sells, but to me it is just gross. I have to have a story, not just blood and guts. In some cases, I prefer a story over blood and guts.

James Ritchey III: When they try to make it scary and creepy, but make it nonscary and noncreepy, instead -- by SUCKING as a writer -- by not thinking about what they're putting on the page.

Joe Bonadonna: Go for the jugular. When they want to be cerebral and miss hitting the emotions.

How much gore is too much, and does gore help you feel creeped out during a scary book?

Janet Walden-West: No such thing as too much as long as it moves the story.

William D. Prystauk: If gore is necessary to the story, so be it. However, gore itself does not lead to scary. However, if we love or hate the character, then the element of gore may take on a whole new meaning.

Jim Comer: No. Clive Barker.

Selah Janel: It depends. I generally am not a huge fan of gore, however, in some cases it's a necessity or definitely lends itself to a scene. Tom Hollands vampire transformation scenes in Lord of the Dead are grisly masterpieces that gave me a visceral reaction -- but he also took his time and built up to them so they conveyed a very real sense of danger.

The Sonja Blue series is a great example of how to do splatterpunk right. Nancy A. Collins immediately plunges the reader into a graphic nightmare and keeps them there, but is able to create empathetic characters to balance it out. Plus, her characters and world have reasons for being violent and graphic - Sonja isn't just part vampire or a slayer; she's ruled by the voices in her head and is obsessed with getting revenge on her accidental sire. These creatures play for keeps, so it makes sense to show every little detail.

I'm a huge fan of Clive Barker, because his gore works with his stories - but he also knows when to pull back. Stories like Rawhead Rex and The Midnight Meat Train do have their gross points, not gonna lie. But, those elements don't rule the whole story, so when you stumble upon them you almost have to re-read them to make sure you got that detail right. It's a punch in the stomach, a knock in the teeth. You realize "Oh my God, THAT'S what could happen!?" He plays those scenes absolutely right, otherwise the premises in each story could be too over-the-top or borderline cartoonish. He makes sure to play on people's visceral emotions and not just write another monster story.

Not every horror story needs gore, because not everything that scares us is about shedding blood. The Haunting of Hill House is a great example of subtle horror with a big pay-off. The first time I read this, I was totally confused as to whether the hauntings are real or in Eleanor's head... and either way, the thought of each is freaky as hell because of the way things are portrayed.

Herika Raymer: I guess it depends. On the one hand I read where Hannibal was eating his hunter's brains while the man was still alive and it creeped me out, usually I would just say 'ew' and move on. However, there was no explicit statement of blood and gore everywhere - I guess was got me was that it was clean. On the other hand I have read stories where a room decorated in splatter did creep me out, but those were mostly crime driven stories where the scenes were few and far between. I guess when gore is essentially on every other page, then I get desensitized to it. I do not want to 'be used to the gore', I want it to creep me out.

James Ritchey III: Between 15 and 25 percent gore are my only acceptable parameters--and that includes maiming, body horror and blood. Or more. I dunno--gore doesn't scare me. Read Vampire Junction for how to do it right.

Joe Bonadonna: Gore doesn't bother me, but it can get boring. Don't really need to know every little detail. Leave something to our imaginations.