Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Flip-Flop is Dead

While the fate of the single issue, 22 page comic or "floppies" versus the success of the graphic novel, trade, or phone book anthology "like shonen jump" has been a recent hot topic due to rising prices across the board I think it's the debate of this era in comics.but the verdict has been passed for most fans already that the floppy is dying or already dead in the water but I want to investigate how this happened.

Like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, cost is an issue brought up with the death of floppies. The recent rise of comics to $3.99 by the big two has been irking many fans as a sign of an archaic format but let's really look at the change. Most of these comics have been stuffed with "bonus material" to justify the new price. Now if you're raising the price there's nothing bonus about the material that trades up space where more story could have been.

Speaking of price, lets take some time out to think of the marketability of floppies for a minute. We're in a recession for goodness sake! Comics are an elastic good "we'll only pay so much for them over necessities" , so lower the price and cut the cost. I really wouldn't care if my issue of Ultimate spidey came in newsprint and in B/W instead of that glossy stuff if I can save money and buy more comics. And this is essentially why the phone book kicks the but of floppies in the money department.

Speaking of big books, the inception of the trade has damaged the floppy's life through "writing for the trade" the industries current style of writing decompressed stories that take several issues to tell. This leaves us with single issues that feel incomplete and the feeling that you've been cheated out of your money.

But the final and most damning nail in floppies' collective coffin are their distribution. Like a quarantined victim of some super virus, the floppy has been exiled by its masters to the decrepit layer of the comic book shop, with no hope of broadening a fan base while trades and graphic novels roam the plains of every Borders and Barnes and Nobles in the land.

A ray of hope shined when there was an announcement that Marvel would be distributing tons of marvel "products" to Walgreen across the US. We soon learned that the knuckle heads at Marvel only meant everything from action figures and bedspreads and not actual comics...And we wonder why floppies are dead.

So contrary to popular opinion the floppy format did not die because it at lived its time and was simply out modded. The industry and the consumers, through our validation of buying the new style of writing did everything in our power to make the floppy obsolete. I'm not claiming superiority of any format but I just want to live in a world where floppies can be done right and coexist with big books.

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