The most compelling serial in American comic books right now is the industry's attempt to save itself from its ongoing crash and burn. The villains are the overgrown fanboys who've poisoned the industry by pandering to their own nostalgia.
In the '80s, a big hit in the comics world meant monthly sales of 500,000 copies. A series that sold less than 100,000 was due to be eaten by Galactus. These days, only two titles (Uncanny X-Men and X-Men) regularly beat the 100-grand mark. The sales cutoff point for canceling a series is between 12,000 and 35,000.
Back in the '80s, though, the big companies, flush with unearned sales success, began selling comics through specialty stores rather than through magazine distributors that accepted returns and served newsstands. By the end of the decade, they were marketing themselves to older speculators rather than younger readers, with tricks like multiple covers and issues that came in sealed bags along with ridiculous publicity gimmicks — (anybody remember the death of Superman?)
And it worked for a while: For the first time in 40 years, there were print runs of more than a million copies. When Marvel Comics had its IPO, you almost believed a dubious business enterprise could fly.
There weren't more readers coming in; they were just buying multiple copies of everything. Sometime around 1992, even the dumber speculators realized that if there were maybe a million comic collectors in America and 10 million copies of X-Men #1 to go around, they weren't going to get rich on their stashes no matter how carefully they double-bagged them, which is why you can now find most of the "collectible" comics from 10 years ago selling for 50 cents, negotiable, on pretty much any street corner.
Meanwhile, the big-name artists who fueled the speculator boom realized that work-made-for-hire agreements (which forced them to forfeit all rights to their work) were a mug's game. They took a cue from United Artists and started their own company, Image, which instantly splintered into vanity factions and factory-style hack work that was even worse than what they'd left behind. They also realized that they, too, could make a lot more from licensing action figures and videogames.
The problem is that the industry is run by people who actually care about nothing other than whether the Hulk or the Thing is stronger: They're overgrown, myopic fanboys, who have no interest in selling comics to anyone but other fanboys.
What's left of the American comics business, then, is almost entirely a superhero nostalgia act, tugging up its sagging Underoos and trying to suck its gut in. Imagine if the only shows on TV were Westerns because network executives liked them and insisted that nobody would watch if they programmed anything else, and you'll get the idea. Anything that sells is run into the ground (There are roughly a dozen Superman-related titles per month now.)
Every time the business comes up with some huge event to spark interest — rebooting the moribund Spider-Man franchise into something even duller: X-Men crossovers that a physicist couldn't keep track of — it's fans check their watches and start edging toward the door.
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