Quinn Patrick
Five factors that have led to the fall of mainstream American comics, true believers!
One of the most divsive aspects of 90's comics was the the same notion of 'extreme' that made its presence known in everything from sports to Fruit Roll Ups. Comics focused more than ever on characters with bizarrely aggressive names (Deadpool, Killshot, Stryfe, Bloodstryke) and equally bizarre musculatures instead of cogent story lines and empathetic characterization. Old readers were put off, and new readers were confused.
All industries experience a bubble at some point. From the mid 90's to early aughts, comics suffered from a collectors bubble: virtually every comic had some kind of special edition re-release with a raised cover, a bagged issue, or variant art. Greedy comic companies used the eagerness of comic collectors to pull in millions, but once the enthusiasm for special editions wore off, the industry took a hit.
By the late '90s, certain series - Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman - had so many different titles with so much intersection and so much plot convolution that readers were put off by the confusing visage of the comics scene of the time. Titles were cut left and right in the early 2000s as companies scrambled to find a way to make up for the lost profits of dying series'.
Oh, the internet. Bane of everything. Just like the music industry has had to re-adapt to the prevalence of easily-downloaded illegal tunes, the comics industry is still grappling with how to combat torrents of popular trade paperbacks wreaking hell on overall sales. Several companies have tried in-house comics readers, and companies like Comixology have tried to make legitimate online comic viewing a popular cause, but there isn't as much traction as was expected for the idea.
