Are Comic Books on the Back Burner?

[Comics N' Toons]

Obviously comic book publishing isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but do you think Marvel and DC (and maybe other publishers in the future) eventually plan to put their publishing of books on hold in favor of film franchises? Are they already favoring one over the other?

Will the books eventually just be film vehicles? Thoughts?

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

Films and merchandising are where the big money is now. I think that comics publishers (at least the big two) look on comics readers as simply a ready-made focus group (that pays them for the privilege!) for testing out ideas/proof of concept. I feel they look at their DtV animated movies the same way. Then they can see what works, what doesn't, and tailor their big screen stuff (and market the lunchboxes, action figures, etc) accordingly.

 

[Sithborg]

Doubt it, though the publishers do need to begin thinking of new business practices.

 

[Detective Conan]

Depends. What do you mean by film vehicles? If you mean in the sense of comics becoming connected to the movies then absolutely not. The comics will always exist as they are now. If anything, the comics will continue to function as essentially idea factories for filmmakers to mine inspiration from for the movies which is why even though Feige has recently taking control of most of Marvel it’s unlikely Feige is ever going to put Marvel comics on hold to only have Marvel be a movies and television because even though the MCU is far, far more successful than the comics division that success could not entirely be without them taking inspiration from all the comics creators before them, and turning them into billion dollar franchises. There’s still great work being done(both by Marvel and DC) in the comics that could serve as great source material to filmmakers for the movies.

Feige and most other filmmakers who work on these comic book related IP are in fact big fans of the comics themselves and continue to use the comics themselves as inspiration for the movies, and the comics are still relatively successful(for the most part) so as the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”