Originally published January 11, 2002, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1469

 

It has been said that time travel is not only possible, but routine. Because, in a sense, we are all time travelers, heading as one toward a future destination. It’s just going to take a while to get there, that’s all. And once we’re there, we look behind us, see where we were, and marvel at how we managed to get to the present point.

You and I have been doing some time traveling in this column. And now we’re going to reset our minds to where we were while simultaneously keeping hold of where we are. Thus we have achieved time travel… or, at the very least, a couple of columns.

Back in the year 1992, I ran a survey in this column that took its cue from a weekly news magazine. That magazine took a poll of its readership, endeavoring to project what the shape of the world would be like ten years hence. I decided that it would be interesting to do the same with CBG readers. To take a whack at discerning the state of the comic industry in the then-unthinkably far future of 2002. It seemed a lark. First, just the year itself: 2002. It sounded so… so science fiction. One year past the iconic 2001. Second, who even knew if there would be a comic book industry at the time (although sales were certainly strong enough to indicate that everything would be fine.) And third, I knew beyond question that I’d never be able to follow up on it because, hëll, there was no flipping way that I was going to be writing the column ten years down the road. Fifty-two weeks a year, year in, year out?

In any case, to the astonishment of not a few, most of all myself, I’m still here. CBG is still here. The column is still here. And we are now rolling into the far-future year of 2002. We know where we are. I thought it would be interesting and instructive to compare that to where we thought we’d be. As John Lennon said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. And he should know, because look what happened to him.

So let’s set the Wayback machine to the dim past of 1992 wherein we posed questions that got the following results. The whole number represents the total respondents, the percentage the total percent of all votes tallied.

Ten years from now…

 

The Number 1 Comic book company will be:

Marvel                                                   95                                43.38%

DC                                                        39                                17.81%

Valiant                                                   23                                10.50%

Doesn’t Exist Yet                                   20                                9.13%

Image                                                    13                                5.94%

Dark Horse                                            11                                5.02%

Malibu                                                   2                                 0.91%

Tundra                                                   2                                 0.91%

 

Single votes were also record for, among others, Fantagraphics, Blue Sky Blue, Archie, and a merger of Marvel and DC.

No one actually said what is closest to the truth, and that answer is: Too close to call. Depending upon whether you’re talking unit sales versus dollar sales, depending upon what specialty projects might be coming out that month, the truth seems to be that Marvel and DC each have about thirty percent of the marketplace, with one dominating for a time before slipping and the other stepping in. Image is third, followed by Dark Horse. Valiant, Tundra and Malibu have closed up shop. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the force on the market place that is most deserving of stepping into the “Doesn’t exist yet” slot would have to be CrossGen, the only company in existence that has raised the bar of what defines “collecting.” When most of us say that we collect certain writers or artists, we’re referring to the comics they produce. The management at CrossGen collects the actual writers and artists, whisking them down to Florida where they are hermetically sealed inside clear offices made entirely of mylar, with doors that are closed not by locks, but instead by pieces of tape. I hear it’s pretty cool, actually.

The following companies will no longer exist:

Image                                                        136                              62.10%

Valiant                                                        74                               33.79%

Dark Horse                                                  32                               14.61%

DC                                                              21                               9.59%

Marvel                                                         12                               5.48%

Innovation                                                    9                                4.11%

Now                                                            7                                3.20%

Comico                                                       6                                2.74%

Eclipse                                                        6                                2.74%

Fantagraphics                                              5                                2.28%

Malibu                                                         3                                1.37%

Disney                                                        2                                0.91%

Archie                                                         2                                0.91%

Personality                                                  2                                0.91%

Except for a couple of questions that had only two choices, this was the only question in the entire poll that such a sizable percentage of people agreed upon. The most many of the questions garnered was a plurality. Yet the largest majority of readers in this poll agreed that Image would not make it to the new century. And they were big, fat, thumping wrong, which should—if nothing else—serve as a cautionary note to anyone who turns to the audience for guidance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Granted, the Image that exists now is very different from the Image that existed then. Only one creator in the entire launch group, Erik Larsen, has continued producing his own comic year in, year out for a decade. The rest have either halted publication, turned the creative reins over to others, or have been drummed out of Image by peers who once sang their praises. But, hey, the bottom line is, Image is still around, and that’s a hëll of an achievement. Especially when one considers the carnage below them. Valiant died after a valiant effort, Innovation wasn’t innovative enough to avoid collapse (while owing me money, I might add), Now is then, Comico is Comic Go, Eclipse has gone dark, it wasn’t a day at the beach for Malibu, Disney was a Mickey Mouse outfit, and I, for one, haven’t had a Personality in years.

The Top Selling comic book will be

Doesn’t Exist Yet                                                   94                                42.92%

X-Men                                                                   26                                11.87%

Spider-Man                                                           19                                8.68%

Superman                                                             11                                5.02%

Batman                                                                 11                                 5.02%

Next Men                                                               7                                  3.20%

Spawn                                                                    4                                 1.38%

Harbinger                                                                2                                0.91%

Legion of Super-Heroes                                            2                                0.91%

Cerebus                                                                  2                                0.91%

Hulk                                                                       2                                 0.91%

Lobo                                                                       2                                 0.91%

Single votes were also cast for, among others, New Warriors, Nestrobber, Jughead, Sandman, Doom Patrol, and Captain America.

Well, kids, the majority may have fumbled the ball with question 2, but here the plurality was correct. The current top-selling book is the then-non-existent Frank Miller’s DK2 (that is to say, the comic book did not then exist. Frank did.) Right up there was another then-non-existent book, the origin of Wolverine with the incredibly clever title of Origin. Now if we’re talking straight up monthly titles, then impressively enough, X-Men continues to hold sway even after ten years. “Uncanny” indeed, which would show the far-reaching sales impact that the work of Chris Claremont had upon Marvel sales in general and X-Men in particular. He took a low-rent bi-monthly title and turned it into a power house that not only sells in two different incarnations (X-Men, Uncanny X-Men) but also helped elevate interest in a runty character with claws and turn him into a Marvel mainstay. Thank God Marvel, to this day, continues out of gratitude to treat Claremont like gold, huh?

More next week, including the amazingly prescient “Which heroes will die and be replaced?” and the somewhat sad predictions about certain comics personnel.

(Peter David can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)