“Notable: According to the Statement of Ownership on this issue’s “Fantastic Four Fan Page,” there was an average of 443,238 issues of each John Byrne FF printed during the proceeding 12 months, but 204,366 were eventually returned by newsstands. Is there any wonder why the direct market caught on?”

That might be a valid point, if not for the fact that today, if a comic sells even HALF as many copies as this FF issue did, despite how many copies were returned, they call that a “big hit.” The lack of returnability is one of the major stumbling blocks of why sales are so much lower today. There were surely problems with the newsstand marketplace, too, but selling more copies over the direct market did seem to be one of them.

James:

The direct market was a response to the fact that the newsstand distribution model was already broken. The demise of Mom ’n’ Pop groceries in the late ’70s took a terrible toll on the comics industry, and things were made worse by the fact that the big box stores that replaced them had no desire to deal with such a low-margin item. The direct market saved the industry — short term. But the point you make is an excellent one, in that the direct market isolated comics. During the Bronze Age, kids got hooked on comics because they picked them up at the local grocery store. Without that first taste, why would a kid today go seek out a comic-book store? Perhaps the direct market didn’t save the industry, but instead just kicked the can down the road.

Andrew

The Direct Market was a model doomed to failure mainly for the reasons you mentioned Andrew. As a kid living in Jamaica and even now as an adult we dont have a creature called a LCS. I remember writing to Dick Giordano at DC back in 84 when DC decided to go Direct with New Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes, that move took both comics away from our distribution network and it wasnt until a couple years later when I started traveling that I was able to get a couple issues (finally got a full run through ebay). Not having them widely distributed prevents potential millions of new readers having access to the product

Dick was kind enough to respond on his nifty stationary, but what the direct market has done is to create an incestuous environment, and one that is now at the mercy of one sole distributor

As far the LCS goes, I remember how thrilled I was at the age of about 12 when I found out there were actually shops dedicated solely to comics and other assorted geekery. And then the thrill wore off when I encountered the all-too-often stereotypically cranky staff (a la the corpulent comics guy in ‘The Simpsons’) who seemed annoyed that a pre-teen had deigned to buy comics in their sanctum sanctorum. So I still did a lot of my comics purchases in grocery or drug stores. All that to say that I think it’s kind of sad that kids now don’t have that drug/grocery store spinner-rack gateway to comics that most of us old guys did. …And I find it mind-boggling that there is only one distributor for comics…

BTW

we can still buy comic books in supermarkets and pharmacies in Jamaica

The spinner racks were the gateway drug for us Bronze-era kids, and that’s missing today. And, Edo, I agree, there are many comic-book stores out there that aren’t friendly to kids. (Or women. Or human beings of any sort, really.) But there are others that do a good job, and events like Free Comic Book Day try to draw kids in. It might not matter, though. A combination of the Diamond monopoly, online mail-order comics stores, the slow demise of the “floppy” format/rise of the TPB, and digital distribution of content seem to be combining to evolve the market again. Comics as a form will certainly survive, but the comic book as we’ve known them seem to be living on borrowed time.

(Wow. That was a treatise. I think we can officially declare this thread off topic!)

Cheers,
Andrew