Under The Black Page

By: Ken Banh

Comics have been around for decades, going as far back as the 19th century and possibly even earlier. Such comics such as the Yellow Kid debuted in 1895, but the comics that we know of today broke into the mainstream with the Golden Age of Comics in the 1930s. The spark that ignited this age being the first appearance of the Man of Steel, Superman.

Ever since then, the modern comic book has had many artists working together to create such a complex book. Writers, cover artists, pencillers, inkers, colorists, letters, and editors are all part of the comic creation process and they all have to get the comic before a deadline.

Now imagine putting maximum effort into writing a comic book, creating scripts so the artist can paint a picture of the action. Then the artist proceeds to draw page by page, with the others following suit at a pace that allows them to reach the deadline, only to release it and have it be pirated within the tens of thousands.

This is the problem that plagues comic book creators and the comic industry itself and it can be crippling. Piracy affects nearly every form of paid entertainment, from movies, music, TV shows, video games, and more. Out of all forms of media, why is comic book piracy so serious compared to all the others?

Unlike movies or video games, comic books are in a format that is currently dying. As the world embraces the digital age, print is on a decline as most releases can be found digitally and physical books cost money to produce and ship.

Also, the books themselves are rather a niche genre with an audience size that pales in comparison to other forms of media.

Because of this, the status of a book is dependent on its sales. If a comic fails to gather enough sales, a publisher like Marvel or DC will see that as people being uninterested in the

product and will sensibly, cancel the book. Resulting in the creative team losing their jobs as the series they were working on was shuttered.

A comic being cancelled is something that has personally happened to me as a reader. Back in 2019, a Marvel comic book series called Champions (a run that I loved and followed) was cancelled at issue #10 possibly due to poor sales.

The comic was being pirated heavily as far back as its fourth issue, and at that point the comic was being pirated within the thousands. Those thousands of potential sales could’ve kept the book afloat and less at risk at cancellation, but that was not what happened.

Jim Zub, the writer of the book took to Twitter to state that 20x as many people pirate comic books instead of buying them as they should. For example, recently Marvel has released an extremely popular event centering one of their most popular superhero teams, the X-Men. The events, House of X and Powers of X was a massive success, so Marvel sensibly launched six new X-Men themed titles to capitalize on the book’s popularity. However, pirates were quick to be the best at what they do, and what they do isn’t so legal.

According to Geeks WorldWide, a single pirating site had 53,000 thousand views for New Mutants #1, 37,000, for Fallen Angels #1, 81,000 views, for X-Force #1, X-Men #1 had 160,000 views, Marauders #1 had 105,000 views, and Excalibur #1 had 30,000 views. Which totals at about 466,000 views, and if we assume the cover price of all six books are $4.99, then that would mean that Marvel potentially lost about $2,325,340 in sales from just six of their books.

Now of course, it’s nearly impossible to record exact numbers and every view/download does not equal a lost sale. Piracy itself is a topic that is full of headache inducing complexities. Most evidence aren’t hard fact but rather anecdotal, due to things being near impossible to accurately measure.

The severity of comic book piracy is relatively unknown to the average person outside the comic reading sphere. When asked about how comic piracy scales to the likes of movie piracy, a non comic reader, Tommy Vuu stated that “I think pirating applies more to, probably like the movie industry more than the comic book I’d say.”

Now why do so many comic book readers pirate the very thing that they read? Well, there are many reasons for why people tend to pirate comics rather than buying them.

For starters, pirates and people overall, are drawn to anything that is free. Pirates are further motivated to source books from illegal websites due to the expensive prices of comic books, which many pirates and paying comic readers will agree on.

Now, the average price of a comic book isn’t too expensive on its own, with the usual price being $3.99 to $4.99, with books even dropping to $1.99 as time goes on. However, in order to satiate such a hobby, many buy multiple books on a weekly to monthly basis, which will eventually add up and cause a dent to a person’s wallet. It doesn’t help that over the years, the common citizen’s wages have remained relatively stagnant ever since the 70s.

The comic industry has come up with a solution for the pricing problem by releasing a trade paperback of a series. A trade paperback is a collection of usually 1-5 issues of a comic book series that is cheaper than buying each issue individually. Which leads to a term in the comic community called “trade waiting”, where some people will wait until the trade comes out to buy the books for cheaper.

Since comics are a serialized form of entertainment, people have to know what happens next and sometimes the trades have a long wait time until they are released. The fear of missing out (FOMO) further incentivizes people to pirate since doing so is extremely quick and easy, while also having no immediate repercussions to themselves.

Another reason for why so many people pirate books is the accessibility of said comic books. While there are plenty of brick and mortar stores in the U.S and Canada, some other countries aren’t so lucky. Subscription services such as Marvel Unlimited, assuages the situation with worldwide coverage but other subscription services like DC Universe and Comixology are only available in the U.S

Because of this, people within countries that have difficulty accessing comic books or are unable to afford them due to the countries’ wages usually have to resort to pirating to get their fill.

Some pirates are aware of their actions, which leads to them claiming to pirate the first issue of a release to “sample” it and decide whether or not they want to add it to their pull list when they do legally buy their books. They also claim that doing so gives the creators more exposure and brings in more paying readers in the long run. While this may seem fine at first glance, there are many holes to this reasoning.

Clicking on a pirating website generates revenue and supports the sites through the billions of ads that are littered throughout the site. Effectively keeping them up and running as long

as people keep clicking. Also, pirating can become an addiction simply because, why would you want to go to pay for something that you can easily get for free?

Lastly, one of the more minor reasons for pirating is doing so in protest of a parent company's business practices. Marvel’s parent company, Disney often does some questionable things that brings the ire of certain people. As a result, a small portion of people attempt to spite parent companies in an attempt to hurt them, but in reality they’re actually hurting the creators of the book.

As stated earlier, books live or die on their sales. If a book gets cancelled, the creators behind the books effectively lost a job and will have to find new books to work on. Most comic book creators aren’t swimming in cash so it can be even worse than it already is.

Now how do we stop piracy or more realistically, minimize it? That question is hard to answer as some of the more obvious ways like reducing prices are frankly, risky.

The major complaint of comics being too expensive could be fixed by reducing the prices but that is a dangerous task. If Marvel or DC were to lower their prices by a dollar or two, they would temporarily at a loss of money and would effectively be banking on people buying more comics to offset the drop in price. Such a change will affect indie comics as well as they would also have lower prices to stay alive. By changing the price, the industry will have effectively created a Mexican standoff between publishers.

Okay, if reducing prices won’t work, why won’t the publishers and their parent companies try to take the direct approach and shut down those illegal websites? Problem is, most of those websites are from foregin countries and can therefore bypass legal attempts to shut them down.

There’s not much that can be done about piracy but individually we can help by just not pirating the books. A more direct approach would be to help support a favorite creator by donating to their Patreon, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and other similar websites. For physical comics, sharing between friends and donating to libraries is a great way to spread the love.

Comics books are always an amazing read, and they’re integral to people who want to enjoy a good read while looking at beautiful art. Even recent comics are still influencing the movies that make billions of dollars. With some of them being adapted onto the silver screen.