[Op-Ed] Are Marvel and DC about to collapse?

No.

No, Marvel and DC are not about to collapse. If you spend way too much time on YouTube and Twitter, you might be persuaded to think otherwise, but the continuation of the Big 2 for the foreseeable future is almost guaranteed.

However, change is coming, and it could be ugly for a subset of Marvel and DC employees and contractors. Here’s why…

If you live in the United States, it’s no secret that a combination of COVID lockdown side effects, general economic downturn, and cultural shifts in consumer buying habits have negatively impacted the Big 2. There are oodles of pundits breaking down the root cause of the US’s current economic state, pundits much smarter than me, so I’ll ask you to indulge that description as a relative fact.

How have the Big 2 chosen to respond to these economic pressures and an aging fanbase? Not well.

Regardless of the image they want to project, Marvel and DC are known as superhero comic publishers. When you pick up a comic published by either company, that image comes with set of expectations. Chiefly, a reader expects to pay a reasonable price to be entertained with costume-wearing heroes engaging in action and adventure for about twenty minutes. The keywords here are “reasonable price”, “action and adventure, and “entertainment.”

Unfortunately, the Big 2 have not only rejected their long-established image, but they’ve largely rejected those keywords. It’s troubling that Marvel and DC have an image that worked and delivered a product that people loved but have now chosen to move away from both for an assortment of reasons.

When you look at the comics put out weekly by the Big 2 (and I read almost all of them), the general themes are convoluted, decompressed, inconsistent with the character’s origins, expensive, filled with dozens of derivative characters, and either boring or infuriating storylines. Couple those observations with a ballooning cover price, and you get a comic that’s expensive and fails to entertain a large swath of established readers. Naturally, sales volumes are suffering as a result.

Where a smaller publisher might risk bankruptcy (e.g. AfterShock), Marvel and DC are backed by much larger corporations with much deeper pockets. So, the Big 2 aren’t at risk of going under, but there is a breaking point in corporate financial terms that will force an organization to change, and that’s where the tea leaves are pointing.

For DC, David Zaslav’s steely emphasis on cutting costs and only spending money on profitable work is drawing closer to DC Comics by the day. The editorial staff is as thin as possible, so expect to see significant cuts in upper management and a reduction in the number of comics printed monthly. If a long-running title isn’t profitable, the likelihood of keeping it running is coming to an end.

For Marvel, a major announcement came out this week that Ike Perlmutter was fired, and Marvel Entertainment was absorbed into the Disney umbrella. What does this mean for Marvel Comics specifically? Nothing yet, but it’s a sure bet the senior management will be reduced to eliminate redundancies and within the limits of what a tiny editorial team can support. Similar to DC, expect unprofitable comics to be cut and an overall reduction of comics printed monthly.

In both cases, Marvel and DC have strayed away from what made them successful, paying a severe penalty for doing so. Now, the Big 2 are cornered and will be forced to take the only measures available in their current state:

• Quality over quantity
• Emphasis on profitable titles
• Quicker decisions to cut titles that are floundering or outright failing
• Tightened belts until adequate profitability is achieved

If you’re the least bit business-minded, those bullets are basic rules of business, but it’s amazing how far a company can stray when priorities get out of whack. Marvel and DC definitely fall into the “priorities out of whack” category.

So, are the Big 2 dying? No, but some painful and necessary changes are coming like a freight train. Expect confusion, mistakes, and the general appearance of instability (or more instability than you see today), but the Big 2 will survive. If they get their priorities straight, Marvel and DC will be better comic publishers in the future.

Fingers crossed.

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