BOOMS AND BUSTS: MARK MILLAR EXPLAINS HIS THEORY

[MattBrady]

by Mark Millar

Being stupid, I tried to crash into the US comics scene at the worst possible time. It was the mid-nineties and the number of comic stores had halved one year and halved again the next as everyone—and I mean everyone—seemed to be losing their jobs. Those actual, grown-up proper writers and artists who’d been in full employment for the last decade were crashing and burning and a huge number of people were very quickly chasing the very small number of jobs that were around. But I remained optimistic. Why? Because I’d found this little interview with Denny O’Neil some years earlier…

The interview had been conducted in a period roughly comparable to where we are now in 2006. That is, sustained growth in the market over a number of years and a rosy outlook for the foreseeable future. Denny said something that really struck me in that interview and that was how great is was for the biz to be on such a high after the low, low lows of the seventies when Marvel were sometimes reduced to sixteen pages of story, filling the rest of a book with ads just to keep the wolves from the door. After the horrible collapse of the 70s and the big wave of firings and smaller companies going under, it was great to be sitting there, he said, in a spanking new WB-paid office and looking at a market with healthy, sustainable sales.

Sound familiar?

It certainly cheered me up and made me realize that, like any other market, the comics industry goes through booms and busts and what we were experiencing in the 90s was just a downturn soon to be followed (I prayed) by an upturn. I looked into the figures a little more, examining the market for the previous two generations and noticed that the peaks and troughs formed what was essentially a sine-graph going back to the dawn of the Golden Age in 1935. We had a peak in the 40s, a trough in the 50s, a peak in the 60s, a trough in the 70s and so on until we hit the worst trough of all in the mid-90s when the market suffered the nastiest collapse in our publishing history. The pattern seemed to be record highs (in terms of revenue and creator salaries) immediately followed by record lows where Chicken Littles everywhere predicted the death of the medium as a whole. And so, as the FINAL DEMANDS piled up on my desk and absolutely no work was to be found for long periods of time in the ‘90s, my friends and I consoled ourselves with the notion that we’d only have to tighten our belts for, er, a few years and things would be just peachy again when the pick-up of 2005 and beyond got into full swing.

Like I’ve said many times, comics tend to move in twenty years cycles. Twenty years after Crisis and Secret War we have Infinite Crisis and Civil War at the top of the charts. Where were are right now, in market terms, is very close to 1986, right down to the numbers where the initial printings on Dark Knight and Watchmen are almost identical to our big books now and the frenzied re-order activity eerily accurate too. Like 1986, we also have a phenomenal number of talented people in the biz and I would say, especially among the writers, that we have MORE right now than we had back then. I don’t think anyone’s reached the giddy creative heights of a Dark Knight or a Watchmen recently, but some have come close and it’s clear to see why the market (especially the big two) have made such significant gains in terms of growth year-on-year since the turn of the millennium. It’s an exciting time to be in this business. Marvel and DC seem more enthused about their books than they have been in a long time and the independent scene is at least as thrilled by the influx of comic-book movies as their lycra-clad cousins. A self-contained three issue mini-series is now enough to get you a movie deal and, even if you aren’t writing the screenplay yourself, you can expect anything from 500,000 dollars to even a million for single picture rights, the same again for sequels and prequels and that’s not even counting DVDs, TV rights and merchandise. As I’ve maintained in interviews throughout all this time, the best is yet to come and the boom that ran from 1986-2003 is going to be nothing compared to the boom we’re experiencing now just two decades later. The Image guys became overnight millionaires in 1992, but imagine what could be accomplished now in the multimedia age as new characters are exploited in all these different formats. The boom of the ‘60s could never have anticipated the millionaire creators of the ‘80s. Is it possible that a comic-creator generates the next Harry Potter as a series of creator-owned books? Could we be looking at the first comics billionaire a few years down the line?

So why am I little uneasy? Things look pretty rosy right now and set to get even better over the next few years. I know what’s planned at the big two and it’s great. I also know about all the indie books in pre-production as movies and I would be willing to bet Brian Hitch’s left testicle that the best times still lie ahead by a longshot. I think companies and retailers are in for a magnificent few years, but if this sine graph if correct then bust must inevitably follow boom and I’ve always made gags about the big collapse of 2013. We’re wise to the peaks and troughs now and I had always assumed, like Alan Greenspan and British Chancellor Gordon Brown both assumed over the last few years, that careful management of the economy could make steady, sustained growth a reality and a return to peaks and troughs could be avoided. But can it? Economic cycles are living, breathing forms and history has shown they’re as impossible to control as the tides. But surely so many creators working hard and pulling the industry from the nadir of the mid 90s into the zenith we’re heading towards now means that there’s no chance of another collapse. Good comics means good sales, right? But there’s one factor I’d never taken into account. Something that just hit me a couple of days ago and that was that the very thing that helped us in recent years. The huge boost of money and interest injected into the comic-market is exactly what might prove our demise a little less than a decade from now.

And that, my friends, is Hollywood.

You will find no bigger cheerleader than me for the impact Hollywood has had on the industry. It’s brought in a whole new wave of readers whose first experience of X-Men and Wolverine was Bryan Singer and Hugh Jackman. It’s made it possible for comic pros to avoid mainstream superheroes if they desire and still make a good living with the number of indie books being snapped up and the symbiotic growth of their brands whether it’s Hellboy, Sin City or Max Allen Collins Road to Perdition books. But the fact that Hollywood knows where we ARE now is both thrilling and terrifying: Because the poaching has begun and many of our favourite creators are going to be disappearing over the next few years.

This really struck me a few days ago when I requested an artist and discovered he’d be out of commission for the next eighteen months because he’d just landed a gig on a huge sci-fi movie. Eighteen months is a long time for a comics artist to be gone and this guy is so good, so popular, that I know he’ll have another three movie gigs waiting for him when his current commitment is done. And he’s not alone. Six months ago, John Cassaday signed a deal to direct his first motion picture. Adi Granov can’t do comics for the foreseeable future because he’s running the design department on the upcoming Iron Man movie. Producers have finally wised up to the fact that a huge amount of talented people are working in this business and we’re no longer just being used as R&D for Hollywood guys looking to buy something cheap. A guy like John Cassaday, for example, is a brilliant visual storyteller and, as far as producers are concerned, could be the next Frank Miller. They’re scouting hard already, but imagine how ferocious this is going to get once these guys have a few movie hits under their belt.

Likewise, every writer I know has a movie deal at the moment. I can’t think of a single working pro at the big two who isn’t involved with Hollywood in at least some capacity. And the more I like their comics work, the more Hollywood seems to like them too. It wouldn’t be inconceivable to imagine that their part-time movie gigs become full-time over the next few years and I’ll give you an example in numbers. Supposing a writer had an idea for a brand new, four part series. Selling this to a comic company might net him anywhere from 10,000 dollars to 40,000 dollars. It’s a lot of money, of course, and especially sweet when it’s doing something you love. But taking that same story and writing a first draft of a screenplay (something that takes about the same length of time as a four issue mini) and you could be looking at ten times the amount. Get a bidding war going and you might be looking at two or three million dollars for your cool little concept (as a couple of comic-book pros managed recently when they flogged a couple of original screenplays). As much as people love this biz, and I don’t think I’ve met a pro who doesn’t LOVE what he or she is doing, that’s a lot of cash to turn down. I think it will be especially hard for artists. They can only have a much more limited amount of work in print and, even if they aren’t creating anything, could make ten or twenty times their comic-book salaries every week if they take a good production jobs on a major motion picture.

This isn’t speculation. It’s happening right now. The number of creators working in Hollywood already is pretty astonishing when you look at the figures. But so what? Even if this current wave of top pros get wiped out chasing the Hollywood dollar there’s millions of newbies waiting in the wings to replace them, right? That’s the way comics has always worked in the past. Conway, Thomas and Wein were replaced by Moore, Miller and Byrne. The industry just shrugs and happily welcomes a new wave of superstars every decade or so, hungry young punks who’ve been honing their skills on the sidelines and eager to make a splash. True, but the difference here is that comic-book creators in the past have usually left the mainstream with a certain amount of regret. Historically, they’ve been chewed up and spat out and, if they’re making a living in television or (very unlikely) movies it’s generally been because they had to get out there and find some work after a slew of proposals got rejected by the big two. This time, however, the comic pros will be leaving of their own accord and working in a business with better perks and cash. The comparison I’d like to make is with the British sci-fi weekly 2000AD and it’s a very sobering notion.

Back in the seventies and eighties, 2000AD was the coolest comic in Britain. It’s where John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Steve Dillon and all the superstars of the period got their big break. Then, overnight, they were all whisked away by a big company called DC Comics who offered more cash and better working conditions. Suddenly, 2000AD was like a ghost town and the editors were forced to quickly assemble a B-team of newbies like me, Garth Ennis, John Smith and a lot of artists who couldn’t hold a candle to the creative hurricanes they’d replaced. I’m the first to admit we weren’t ready. We could barely read and write, just out of high school, and suddenly found ourselves trying to sustain a great British weekly and sales, not surprisingly, took a hit. But the scary thing is that the American publishers had now found somewhere to feed and so even us, this rag-tag gang of semi-hopeless kids, got snapped up and given the better pay and conditions DC Comics had to offer. Thus, 2000AD was further diminished in terms of talent and literally couldn’t find anyone to fill the pages. The minute an artist looked even half-decent they were immediately snapped up and the magazine now a sells a fraction of even the 90K weekly sales it managed under our lacklustre run. Similarly, I think the same thing lies ahead for mainstream American comics. Hollywood now knows where to look and though it might have taken Frank Miller twenty years from writing Daredevil to directing Sin City I know people who haven’t been in the industry five minutes being courted by some of the biggest names in cinema.

If this trough happens eight years down the line (and I pray that it doesn’t), but if it does and that sine graph I drew proves correct then I think the 2000AD analogy is very apt. The wealth and success of the American publishers offered when they poached UK talent is the reason there’s no British comic scene anymore (or about as much as there’s a British film scene). Brendan McCarthy asked on Newsarama last week why the huge number of great British creators isn’t translating into a great British weekly and I suspect someone will say the same thing about the American comics scene in 2015 or thereabouts. Why, with all these brilliant guys who came from comics, isn’t there a comic scene in America anymore? And the truth will be that once you’re living a certain lifestyle it’s hard to go back and, even if you do, where’s the fun if all the great artists, the really great ones like the Hitches and the Cassadays, are busy directing movies and television for more acclaim and cash than they ever made here. An artist friend of mine was recently offered a gig on a HUGE movie and he’s planning to take three top-drawer comic-book artists with him for over a year. This is already a serious concern.

It’s a sad thought, but something that already seems to be happening around us. We were blessed with the Whedons and the Smiths in recent years and so this is maybe the logical next step where we have to trade our guys too, our biggest money-makers. What’s especially saddening is that the next wave of comic pros look set to be snapped up before they ever get a chance to show what the new blood can do. Will we ever see another great new talent like Garth Ennis or BKV do a sixty-issue run before Hollywood gets them? It’s great for the creators because there’s going to be a near-infinite market for creativity as people who would have only worked in comics suddenly find themselves in movies, TV and games, but as someone who eats and breathes comics I think it’s slightly worrying because the ball is already rolling here and it’s insane to ask people with wives and families to turn down what could be their greatest opportunity ever.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I think the advances we’ve made in the last five years, if this current momentum is anything to go by, bodes well for the next near-decade. I don’t think there’s ever BEEN a better time to be opening a comic-store, for example, or trying to break into the biz because creative people aren’t exactly going to be out of work when the metamorphosis of the business begins a few years down the line. It’s true that every crash has been worse than the last and it’s clear the market won’t exist in any form we understand now when not only the good, but even the mediocre writers are artists suddenly find themselves snapped up by the money-men. But bear in mind that every boom has also been bigger than the previous boom and some startling days lie ahead over the next few years if current trends are anything to go by. Also, it’s worth remembering that comics, as a medium, can never go away. I think we’re going to see a lot less Superman and Spider-Man comics in ten years time as publishers struggle with a shrinking talent pool and these characters migrate full-time into movies (the Marvel Universe is almost established as a DVD collection now). However, the plus-side is that we’re going to see lots more smaller, more personal material, probably not involving big publishers and being entirely done in the web.

Also, let’s not get despondent about 2015 when, if the curve is correct, 2025 looks bigger than ever. Start working on those pitches now.

[randomengine]

Good riddance to them...

It is like when The Rock left wrestling for movies...

We are better without him. We want people in the medium that care about it. Are passionate about it. Would turn down diamonds and pearls for it.

[LostMarauder]

Hmmm...could part of the upcoming "bust" be partially due to late books and the deconstruction of the traditional heroes?

[Nick MB]

Originally Posted by LostMarauder

Hmmm...could part of the upcoming "bust" be partially due to late books and the deconstruction of the traditional heroes?

Did you read the piece, or just read the first paragraph and go straight to the reply button?

[He-Bot]

Originally Posted by randomengine

Good riddance to them...

It is like when The Rock left wrestling for movies...

We are better without him. We want people in the medium that care about it. Are passionate about it. Would turn down diamonds and pearls for it.

Yeh, good luck with that.

[Superfrick]

I hope Ultimates 2 is finished before the next crash!!!

[Vulcan]

his ideas sound plausible, but thats assuming that everyone in the business is just after a bigger pay packet.

[Commander X]

Fascinating... food for thought, certainly. I hadn't realized so much of comics' talent was being pulled away like this.

I think Miller brings up an excellent point when he mentions creators' families, and the financial needs driving this. I hope everyone who posts here reads that carefully, and keeps in mind that not all artists and writers can live off the heady fumes of COMIC LOVE... most of them need money.

For silly stuff like food.

[LIEFELDISGOD]

I tend to agree with Mark, but I’m not sure to what extent. Maybe I’m just being optimistic, but I hope the industry isn’t doomed.

Though, remember the early 90s after the Image guys left Marvel. Remember all the craptastic knock-off artists on everyone of Marvel’s books? Sounds like what he was talking about with the 200AD thing.

Also look at Steve Skroce. The guy is one of the best comic book artists around. He pretty much just sticks to movies.

There is (or used to be) a thread over on the Liefeld boards about the whereabouts of this Extreme Studios artists or that one. Stephen Platt, Jeff Matsuda, Dan Fraga, etc. Each time the answer is Hollywood. Be it animation, music videos, or movies. While those may not be big names, you can see how easy it is for comics pros to get work in Hollywood. What happens when Hollywood starts coming after the big names?

I hope it doesn’t mean the demise of the industry, but I can see it.

[Matthew E]

Millar is basically talking about two things here: a sine-wave pattern of comics prosperity, and the prospect of a comics bust being caused by prominent creators leaving comics for Hollywood. But he's talking about them like they're one thing, which I have a slight conceptual problem with.

He may very well be right about the impending effects of Hollywood on comics. I don't know. I'll leave that to others to pick apart.

But I don't trust his sine-wave pattern. I don't trust it because he didn't explain what drives it. He explained what he thinks is going to cause the next trough, yes, but that's not the same thing as explaining the boom-and-bust pattern itself.

Numbers can basically do two things. They can go up or they can go down. What Millar has referred to is a set of numbers that have done both things in what looks like a fairly regular pattern. But without an explanation of what's causing them to do that, we can't tell if the pattern has any predictive value or if it's just been random up to now.

[Sparro]

Wow...with all this on his mind... No wonder his books are always late. The man is dealing with the weight of an entire industry on his shoulders>

[juliop83]

Ahhh Millar , writer and prophet.

[Excelsior!]

Originally Posted by LostMarauder

Hmmm...could part of the upcoming "bust" be partially due to late books and the deconstruction of the traditional heroes?

That's a separate issue...

...namely "why kids don't read comics anymore, and why the only reason the public still has any kind of attachment for superheroes is through other media like videogames, movies and cartoons".

[LostMarauder]

Originally Posted by Nick MB

Did you read the piece, or just read the first paragraph and go straight to the reply button?

Yep, read it all...didn't see the factors I mentioned listed at all.

[Ace]

There will always be incredibly creative people who are incredible marks for comics and that will want to write Superman or the X-Men no matter how they can and that will be willing to turn down bigger paydays to do so.

Vaughan is absolutely not one of them. He turned down freaking "BRIAN K. VAUGHAN'S MARVEL SPOTLIGHT" so that he could do more things that he created and owned. More power to him, but that's not at all the same thing as a Kirkman that's chomping at the bits to do Ultimate Spider-Man, and that will likely see a piano dropped on Bendis' head by 2009 to get it.

[Fan4Fan]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

his ideas sound plausible, but thats assuming that everyone in the business is just after a bigger pay packet.

And no new talent ever materializes...

[moor]

Originally Posted by randomengine

Good riddance to them...

It is like when The Rock left wrestling for movies...

We are better without him. We want people in the medium that care about it. Are passionate about it. Would turn down diamonds and pearls for it.

Silliest post ever.

[DBHughes]

The British comics analogy is worth noting, but the damage to American comics will not be caused entirely because of other mediums snapping up talent. As always, the problem lies with the editors. As it is now, editors don't actually read much; they just sign the people they know. If the known creators disappear, the editors are not going to start suddenly reading stuff to find replacements; the editors will just pick from more people they know even if those people are not talented.

Just look at the 90's. Especially in the case of Marvel, most of the books were being written by editors when there was no other known quantity available. Hell, even recently we had an example of this over at DC with Flash. Just before Infnite Crisis, Darwyn Cooke was meant to do the last arc in the ongoing Flash title; but Cooke had to abandon that arc due to other work. Who did the arc in Cooke's place? A DC editor did the multi-part story; and the story was incredibly awful as a result.

Nothing will change of course, but the only way to avoid the problem Millar points out is to make comics editors do their actual job instead of everyone else's job. That solution will never occur, though. After all, we're still in a situation where surviving the mail room is your best qualification for being an editor.

[Bevbos]

I thought it was a very well-reasoned argument.

However, it does overlook that Hollywood itself may someday take a major hit that would it a lot less appealing to comics creators.

But, overall, a fairly prescient-seeming argument. That's ok for me though, because I need to stop collecting comics at some point, or I won't be able to fit into my apartment. 2013 sounds reasonable to me.

[maybeitsteve]

Originally Posted by LostMarauder

Hmmm...could part of the upcoming "bust" be partially due to late books and the deconstruction of the traditional heroes?

That's a no. Now go home and re-read your old silver-age collection and leave us alone. We'll all be happier.

[HeX111]

I think the freshness and rejuvinating the talent pool is definately something good for the medium, in the same way that these creative people have helped the American comic genre, they are going to be pushing the American cinema in the same way... and inspiring new people to really make that push into the new scene...

honestly, if this article and prediction is right or wrong is of no consequence, what it does is it lights a fire under the asses of people who WANT to do the work, but are somewhat fearful of rejection and thus don't take that step and just go for it... it makes people like me, who have been working on my scripts and trying to fix the problems with my art, it makes me really put that much more effort into it because there's a chance that... maybe, just maybe, my chances of actually getting that shot at writing or drawing go up a little bit because someone else is going elsewhere... it gives me inspiration to be one of those few who could possibly come in and fill the roles left by the departure of others... and that's a GOOD thing

[Zeitgeist]

Originally Posted by Sparro

Wow...with all this on his mind... No wonder his books are always late. The man is dealing with the weight of an entire industry on his shoulders>

First of all i very much doubt Millar's books are ALLWAYS late, apart from Ultimates and Civil War i cant recall any significant delays
Secondly there has been no proof what so ever that the lateness has to do with Millar not delivering scripts, the fault on the two projects are slow artists

[Red Turnado]

As much as I loath "Exculsive Contracts", these might help keep a few talented folks around or back to comics. Even though you 'might make big bucks, you still don't have the health Insurance and other perks that those contracts give you. One big health problem could wipe out a hundred thousand dollar or even a 7 figure account, (which is before taxes of course.)
That might keep a few of the older Pros, Peter David, or even a few returing folks after Hellywood eats them up and spits them out. This also might be why JMS and Joss Whedon have signed these deals with the devil. (DC and Marvel use these so I am not playing the one company is better game.)

As for the bust of the industry, like the nations economy Millar is right in this too shall cycle.

[Goat warrior]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

Adi Granov can’t do comics for the foreseeable future because he’s running the design department on the upcoming Iron Man movie. .

Hum, it seems the Iron Man movie will be late...

[LostMarauder]

Originally Posted by maybeitsteve

That's a no. Now go home and re-read your old silver-age collection and leave us alone. We'll all be happier.

Sorry...at this point I don't own anything over ten years old. I still buy new stuff...when and if it hits the stands.