According to a few publishers and editors of comics attending this year's New York Comic Con, kids are reading comics again. Or, at the very least, people seem to think they are.
The cause seems to be a happy confluence of a couple different things: the successful cross-promotion and marketing of a number of gigantical licensed properties like Iron Man, Naruto, Transformers, etc; the growing use of graphic novels in schools; and higher quality graphic novels that appeal to both adults and YA readers. I would also suggest that comics have great production values these days, which makes them much more appealing to a wider audience. Also, the garbage-culture stigma surrounding comics, while still very much present, is more mild than it used to be.
At Saturday’s PWCW-sponsored Comics Industry panel, “Selling Good Books in a Bad Economy,”.Kuo-yu Liang, v-p of sales and marketing for Diamond Book Distributors, was bullish on kids’ comics. “We see the category growing,” he said, although he cautioned that titles needed to be priced sensibly and affordably. Publishers also have a variety of channels that can exploit to get graphic novels into the hands of children’s, including bookstores, libraries, schools and book fairs, and he noted the importance of licensing. “If you go down the kids’ aisles, everything is licensed,” he said, citing material like the Transformers books carried by mass market retailer Wal-Mart as an example.
“I think there is real growth in quality children’s literature in comics formats,” said literary agent Judith Hansen. “I see publishers coming to me asking for quality literature in the comics format.” She cited Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese as an example of a title that could be found in both the adult graphic novel section and the children’s section in a bookstore. “Books that have that crossover will be a growth area for the industry,” she said.
Be prepared for a growing number of "Zap! Pow! Funsies! Comics ARE For Kids After All!" articles...
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on Feb 12th, 2009 at 9:54 am
My Mother in-law is an English teacher, she actually uses Comics as a teaching aid.
She finds it helps getting kids into reading and I happily supply her with as many graphic novals as I can find, we find that we have to get Hard Covers, Soft Covers get damaged too easily.
You also have to be careful with the content, I happily picked her up the new Spirit Grpahic Novel when it came out for her to use.
on Feb 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
This is just the beginning. Compared to last year, it seems like there are 2x the number of YA titles coming out from the various publishers. My hope is that this can continue for many years to come.
As my part in this, I'm actually building a kids comics website at Kidjutsu, where kids can read comics from webcomics creators online for free. All in one place.
Andrew, I'd love to get your feedback on what we're doing.