Comic Book Websites 101

Comic book companies are always saying they want to market to the uncommon consumer – the person who wouldn’t ordinarily buy a comic book. Generally the theory had always been that there was very little a comic book company could do to turn off a true collector. But since the early 1990s, collecting comic books has become less of a quantity game and more of a quality pursuit. The comic book audience became jaded by collectors’ covers and crossover events. This resulted in the re-emergence of comic book readers vis a vis collectors.

Readers are less likely to slavishly collect every issue of a comic book just to complete a collection if the story and/or art is sub-par. To a reader, the pursuit isn’t of the tangible thing – the book itself – but rather of the knowledge itself. To the credit of the big publishers, they’ve responded to the change in the market by focusing on compelling story-telling rather than gimmicks.

But it’s still a challenge to keep up. I write for and edit a comic book fan site (www.supermanhomepage.com) so I need to stay abreast of both the stories on the comic book page as well as creator gossip. It took some time but here are the sites I visit regularly in order to feel well-informed about the industry.

1. Comics Continuum (www.comicscontinuum.com) – This website provides an overview of the industry. There’s one update daily generally and the daily report usually contains five to seven items ranging from news to previews of upcoming books to information about comic book characters in other media (TV, films, interactive, etc.). The site releases full advance solicited previews for every comic book company. From time to time, the site will feature interviews but their strong suit is news, not features.