Ask comic book aficionados about the 1980s and many will immediately reference such seminal publications as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Others will mention such crowd-pleasing series as Marvel Comics’ Uncanny X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, or Secret Wars. Even others will point to the decade’s plethora of new creator-owned titles, like Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, or Los Bros. Hernandez’s Love and Rockets. This book’s most prevalent message is that none of these publications would have been printed if not for the proliferation and ascension of a new sales venue for comic books: the specialty comic book stores known as The Direct Market. As the 1980s dawned, the comic book industry was in critical condition due to the dwindling sales supplied by newsstand outlets. By the time the 1980s ended, however, the industry’s fortunes had reversed as the Direct Market had fully replaced the newsstand as the principal pointof-sale for comic books.
INTRODUCTION & Acknowledgements
The Times they were a’
Changin’
Unquestionably for the comic book industry, the 1980s were boom years, both financially and creatively. For the first time in their histories, the two biggest publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics, offered royalties to writers and artists working on their best-selling titles. The lure of royalty payments incentivized professionals to be imaginative and strive for excellence. And then there were the many writers and artists who released their own creations exclusively to the Direct Market and found themselves financially and critically rewarded for doing so. Their success encouraged many more professionals (and publishers) to take the Direct Market plunge. In turn, because the Direct Market wasn’t beholden to the restrictive standards of the newsstand’s regulatory Comics Code Authority, contents of comic books became more explicit. Along with that, the norms of the medium changed. Narrative techniques became more sophisticated, and embracing it all was a comic book readership that was more mature than it had ever been before. But the decade had its share of misfortunes too. A glut of product in the mid-1980s threatened to undermine the Direct Market just as it was flourishing. There was also a pervading fear that if the comic book industry didn’t police itself, outside watchdog groups would find the explicit content produced in comic books unacceptable and demand censorship. By the end of the 1980s, some grew concerned the comic book industry was becoming too reliant on the Direct Market for its success, and it was a concern that turned prophetic… But that’s a tale to be told in a different volume of American Comic Book Chronicles and by a different author. As far as this volume goes, I cannot emphasize enough that it was as much a collaborative project as an individual one. This book was produced through the efforts and assistance of many, many people. Foremost among them are four writers who were called upon to help me finish this volume in a timely manner: Jim Beard, Dave Dykema, Paul Brian McCoy and Jason Sacks. I designate them my “cavalry” because they rode in and saved the day. 4