Why has the comic book medium become so dumbed down? Why is everything being written so unintelligently? Why are superstar authors, who wrote so well in previous decades, now writing at such a juvenile level?

This phenomenon isn't just in reference to cape shit (though it's clearly been hit the hardest), but even indie and euro books are starting to suffer.

What happened to intelligent, thought provoking comic stories? What happened to good storytelling? Or.. I suppose, what killed good comics?

Mainstream media has to appeal to the broadest audience which includes the lowest common denominator. That's mostly it. Good writers don't appeal to them.

Rhetorical question threads are gay.

>>149536294
But surely this isn't good for business in the long term. I mean, who is even buying the shit these companies churn out?

>>149536302
This isn't rhetorical. I do indeed want an answer, anon. I mean, if you have some really great books you'd like to recommend, I'm all for it.

>>149536257 (OP)
companies play safe, everything is sanitazed, everything is OK, no risk, everybody playsafe

everything is boring
nobody puts effort in making a good book anymore.

>>149536392
But why is this also the case in creator owned spaces?

>>149536742
Because they just don't care anymore.

>>149536768
But Batman sells (mostly because of his name). And other things sell because of the author's name. So whose buying the rest?

>>149536742
You mean you don't know?

>>149536294
>Mainstream media has to appeal to the broadest audience
Comics aren't really mainstream anymore, so that doesn't track.
There's only so much "lowest common denominator" especially in a modern economy where everyone in that lowest bracket is too poor for endless consumption anyways.

>>149536257 (OP)
>1930s-1960s scripters and artists read and imitated great books (aka the Western Canon) and studied classical art
>1970s-mid-1990s scripters and artists read and imitated good comics created by the 1930s-1970s scripters and artists and studied cartoon art
>mid-1990s-2000s scripters and artists read and imitated mid comics by 1970s-1990s scripters and artists and studied comic art on their own
>2000s-2010s scripters and artists barely read any comics and didn't study art, they just imitated the 1990s-2000s movies and cartoons and traced manga
>2020s scripters and artists haven't read any any comics or books, they mostly use ChatGPT to create plots for them, and trace AI images instead of studying art
This is the only reason why modern comics suck. Zoomers can't write good stories and can't draw for shit, they're worse than fucking Chuck Austen and Rob Liefeld.

>>149536742
Good writing actually requires life experience. You can't teach that at fucking CALart. There's no real experience gained from staring at a desk. Everything becomes sterile and derivative. Corporations are only exasperating this problem, and they could literally make all the cape slop with AI now.

>>149537047
While it's important to read other comics and study art, it's also important to study cinema and literature and have life experiences. That's what separates the older artists. Also Idk if any zoomers actually work on nu-comics.

>>149537098
>Also Idk if any zoomers actually work on nu-comics.
Any adult under the age of 28 is a zoomer, so yes, some of them do work in comics.

>>149536791
>But Batman sells (mostly because of his name
He doesn't, "the best-selling comic book of 2024" aka Absolute Batman aka Batman AF sells like 65k copies a month now, ASM sells 48k, which would have been cancellation numbers just 20 years ago. No single comic book sells more than 100k copies outside of #1's (mostly because of the variant covers).

>>149537260
That's truly grim.

>>149537098
>it's also important to study cinema and literature and have life experiences
That's exactly what guys like Bob Kane, Gardner Fox, Wally Wood, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Dennis O'Neil, and all the other writers and artists of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages did. Those who followed them, including the British hacks and posers, and those who came after them read fewer books, watched fewer good movies, and had fewer real-life experiences. And now the entire industry is full of nepo babies who got into comics not because of their merits, but because of their obedience and loyalty, or, in the case of female writers and artists, it's because they slept with editors.

>>149537393
Then why did the British hacks write so much better than them?

Boomers and Xers are retiring and dying out, and they have been the main comic book-buying cohort since the 1990s, millennials have never been into comics, they were raised oikophobic and always preferred manga and anime to comics and Western animation, and zoomers don't even read anything, they're functionally illiterate and have severe ADHD and autism, all they do is scroll through their TikTok FYP all day and consume Chinese propaganda like mindless zombies, you can't even make them focus on a task that takes more than 60 seconds.
That's the main reason comic books are dying. Not because there aren't good stories to tell anymore, but rather because there's no one to sell those stories to.

>>149537710
>In 2024, print book sales saw a small increase of less than 1%, marking the first rise in three years, with total sales reaching approximately 782.7 million units. The adult fiction segment, particularly the fantasy genre, experienced significant growth, with sales rising by 35.8%.

>>149537478
They didn't. Brits completely misunderstood comic books as a medium. They tried to turn them into literature as they understood it (basically, Sherlock Holmes-esque pulpfics with pictures), which they aren't. For a while, this novelty factor worked because no one wrote comics like Moore, Morrison, Gaiman and their friends did in the 1980s. Then, the novelty faded away, and suddenly, everyone realized that comics just aren't cool anymore. They weren't entertaining enough for kids because kids always want action, bright colors, and a clear distinction between good and evil in their comics, they don't want heavy existential themes and grey, ambiguos characters there. But comics also weren't serious enough for adults because, as it turned out, it's simply impossible to create a good philosophical comic book because of format limitations. And as it turned out, the comic book writers who tried to write actual books (e.g. Moore and Gaiman) just aren't some deep thinkers, their knowledge of philosophy, history, mythology, and even magic wasn't that extensive.

>>149537769
It's mostly thanks to millennial women, not zoomers. Zoomers don't read books, especially fantasy. The only things they're interested in are Tiktok, Snapchat, and multiplayer video games like Fortnite and Roblox.

>>149537991
How old do you think a zoomer is?

>>149536257 (OP)
>>149536348
>flood the industry with shitskins and women
>"wtf why is writing so terrible?"
Sage for irrelevant time wasting question

>>149536257 (OP)

>>149537940
>it's simply impossible to create a good philosophical comic book because of format limitations
This. I would rather write out the fucking story, and just have an occasional illustation to convey what's going on in my head.

>>149538920
>it's simply impossible to create a good philosophical comic book because of format limitations
I disagree. Plenty of philosophical stories, that have been turned into comics, work just as good. It's the quality of the author, not the format.

>>149536257 (OP)

Comics are for children. That's not an insult.

>>149538615
Masonic order is more open for newcomers than american comic industry.

>>149540649
Are they though? Why are comics viewed as the only medium where all material must be aimed at children?

>>149536257 (OP)
Because general social comportment has degraded proportional to the amount of media saturation, but specifically communication media. People are more interested in relaying snappy messages or shocking degeneracy in lieu of real communication, or just regurgitation of safe manufactured party lines.
Technology-driven brainrot, in other words. Even this post is tailored to those needs.

>>149541939
Damn.. That's depressing, anon.

>>149536257 (OP)
>Why has the comic book medium become so dumbed down? Why is everything being written so unintelligently? Why are superstar authors, who wrote so well in previous decades, now writing at such a juvenile level?
Which is funny to even say because most of these modern day comic book writers are all into "politics is in everything" I would assume with this in mind that they would make coherent interesting stories.

>>149541939
This mother fucker is right. Very smart dude here. And I 100% agree.

>>149537940
They did. The 80s era of Brit comics, from 2000 AD to the American stuff, may be the peak of action-genre comic books, aside from a handful of American greats like Frank Miller. The Brits that followed weren't quite as good, and they got worse and worse and are now in the same shitpile as current American writers.

>>149536294
This doesn't apply to comics.

>>149543115
Comic book writers just bullshit and virtue signal (equality, trans rights) to get networked.

>>149541939
explains the Ultimates

>>149543115
In a roundabout way, I believe it does, since current writers consume mainstream slop and then regurgitate in there work.

>>149537047
Basically media inbreeding
You can notice it too in modern movies, literature, cartoons and other stuff

>>149543201
What a piece of shit that comic is.
Its fans like to claim people only dislike it because muh politics, but they literally only "like" it because of muh politics.

>>149540649
It may not be an insult, but it is bullshit.

>>149542942
>> Thatcher and Whitehouse killed all the fun

>>149544838
Does it even HAVE fans? Oh it certainly had readers. People hyped it Timbuktu but outside the push and the hype do the people who read it even remember it? Is there nostalgia for it? I very much don't think so. Ult Spidey, sure. F4 has people sucking off the Maker these days but nobody gives a shit about the ultimates anymore.

>>149540649
I feel like you're missing the core argument. Comics were for children, yes. This isn't being debated. But comics, even if they were for children, didn't always used to talk down to readers so much. You could go read X-men or Silver Surfer and the characters would speak in huge grandiose ways. They would reflect on life and their place in the universe. They took their own material very seriously and treated the drama with real pathos. Now characters all speak in memes. The drama is dumbed down. Comics back then were for children, but comics today are for idiots.

>>149543115
Name 3 current comic book writers who are right leaning.

>>149547957
that has nothing to do with anything