Life in Comics: The Shape of the Industry - 8/3/2009 5:27:00 PM - Publishers Weekly

This is an interesting viewpoint that I think gets lost in the shuffle of big budget comic movies and over-hyped summer comic events. Click through and give this a read.

In March, the New York Times inaugurated its Graphic Books best seller list, just in time to acknowledge the runaway sales of Watchmen, as the trade paperback reaped the benefits of movie hype. ('Comics have finally joined the mainstream,' wrote George Gene Gustines in the NYT's Arts Beat Blog, perhaps a little self-servingly.)

At Comic-Con, the line for Bryan Lee O'Malley created a lively wall of fans of his graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim, currently in film production with Michael Cera as its lead. O'Malley has been popular for a long time, but news of the movie seems to have pushed that popularity to comics rock stardom. (I admit that I had a twinge of 'I liked Bryan Lee O'Malley before he was cool! Even before Scott Pilgrim!' as I inched my way around this wall.)

But this isn't just another commentary about comics and Hollywood. I've been thinking about it in the context of what Comics Reporter writer Tom Spurgeon recently wrote: 'A successful convention rarely leads to increased industry success because the infrastructure is damaged in fundamental ways....' You can substitute 'convention' for 'comic book movie' in that sentence—or anything at all, really—and it remains just as true.