Although there were fewer comics companies exhibiting than ever before, this year’s New York Comic Con, held October 17–20 at the Javits Center, was brimming with comics news and announcements. And while the show floor was dominated by huge displays from toy and anime companies, comics were infused throughout the show, with several new players hitting the scene, some old beloved brands getting a refresh, and several newcomers emerging from the wings.
NYCC 2024 saw more than 200,000 attendees, per organizer ReedPop, starting on the show’s the first-ever Retailer Day, a pre-fair program that offered a slate of programming aimed at comics shop owners, which was organized by NYCC and sponsored by Kickstarter. Among the announcements made at retailer day: Atom Freeman of Prana: Direct Market Solutions, a comics marketing firm, announced a new deal with Manage Comics, a point-of-sale system for comics shops, to provide data for the industry.
The partnership plans to use customer preorder and subscription information to create a Fan Confidence Rating that will show what comics titles are selling. The database will include 177 shops, some 32,000 unique customers at launch, and, eventually, publishers. Currently, there are few reliable sources of sales information for the entire comics industry, something Freeman said is desperately needed. Data will be available to participating retailers and publishers, and on a limited basis via an upcoming newsletter from Prana.
Freeman later took part in a Q&A session with publishers that also included Oni publisher Hunter Gorinson and Dstlry co-founder Chip Mosher. Retailer concerns ranged from relatively minor (a complaint about the placement of barcodes on covers) to more substantive (an oft-expressed concern about the proliferation of variant covers for comics periodicals). Panelists responded with a common refrain: they wouldn’t make them if retailers didn’t order them. Mosher pointed out that variant covers provide work for artists and that the collector market is there to support them. “The thing that I don’t think a lot of people appreciate is how big the comic book collector community is,” he said. “There are people that wake up every morning figuring out what variants they want to collect.”
Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane delivered a fiery keynote speech about betting on yourself and staying the course. The comics industry has ups and downs for both creators and retailers, he said, offering a simple but powerful piece of advice: “You gotta have the stomach for both of them.”
Comebacks and more
Those ups and down were on display at Thursday’s ICv2 White Paper, where president Milton Griepp delivered industry statistics that showed graphic novel and manga sales slumping, but comics periodicals making a comeback behind new lines from direct market leaders Marvel and DC. Announcements at NYCC anecdotally supported Griepp’s data, with a plethora of new comics titles and almost as many new publishers.
DC made the biggest splash with the announcement that their famed Vertigo Imprint would be returning, led by editor Chris Conroy. Originally launched in 1993, the line was home to daring and thoughtful creator-owned titles before being shut down in 2019. The revival will start with a repackaging of The Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martínez Bueno. And DC’s new Absolute Line will present new versions of legacy characters, and expanded with new titles for Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern.
Marvel, meanwhile, announced new additions to their own line of reboots with Ultimate Wolverine, and a line of compact trade paperbacks. And Comixology, Amazon’s digital comics platform, announced five new titles in their Comixology Originals creator-owned line, with another 17 projects signed and in the pipeline. Dstlry, a recent startup, announced 11 new titles.
If that wasn’t enough, new publishers also keep pouring into the arena. The name of a new publishing company led by industry veterans Filip Sablik, Jamie S. Rich, Jeremy Haun and producer Eric Gitter was finally revealed: Ignition Press (whose initials cleverly spell out “IP.”) Little else was announced, although Sablik noted on a panel that the company had looked at “a list of things in the industry we want to fix, and how many of them we can get to.”
Atlas Comics, a short-lived ‘70s competitor to Marvel and DC, got a revival housed in Walmart’s first ever booth at NYCC, which symbolized the high energy pop culture explosion going on at NYCC. The booth was lavish, including many displays of cool stuff for Collector Con, Walmart’s online sale aimed at licensed merchandise; a studio for live streaming; a recreation of the Teenage Mutant Turtles’ den; and a historical display aimed at showing the history of Atlas characters like The Grim Ghost, which lasted all of four issues. Walmart won’t be selling comics, but they do like the merch.
New partnerships were also prominent at this year’s NYCC: GlobalComix, a rapidly expanding digital comics app, announced that DC Comics will be available on the platform for the first time, as well as a deal with streamer Valkyrae’s Hihi Studios to publish APOLLYON, a fantasy manga. Streamers and other YouTube content creators also made a splash at Bad Egg, the two year old company co-founded by Charlie White, who goes by the name MoistCr1TiKaL. The publisher announced a new graphic novel from LaurenZSide called Going Under set in the world of “internet creepypastas and scary urban legends.” A signing with JackSepticEye (who has 30 million YouTube subscribers) created huge lines.
Traditional book publishers including PRH, MacMillan and Scholastic also had strong floor presences. Scholastic’s booth included photo ops with a Dogman mascot, but anime and manga dominated the feel of the show with giant balloons for famed characters Goku (Dragon Ball) and Luffy (One Piece). And Webtoons were also popular, not only at the large Webtoon booth but with the announcement that The Beginning of the End, a vertical scrolling comic based on the novel by TurtleMe, will be coming to Crunchyroll as an anime.
Even with some of the biggest comics publishers absent (including DC, Dark Horse, Imade, and IDW) a key takeaway of this year’s NYCC is that comics appear be evolving into different forms—and so are the companies. “It’s a community show,” said Chris Carter CEO of GlobalComix when asked if NYCC was still a comics show. “People always ask us, are we a tech company or a comics company? What feels natural to us is that we’re a community company focused on comics, solving problems with tech.”
With so many companies launching, it took more to stand out at this year’s event: At Bad Idea, a publisher known for its unusual stunts, their first NYCC booth included an hour of “sales” each day that consisted of giving away a preview of their upcoming Planet Death comic in a pizza box. Bad Idea VP of Sales and Marketing Siena Fallon, who recently joined the company, said she enjoys the quirky approach. “When I suggested we should try a pizza box, we did a pizza box.”
But amid all of the distractions, attendees were still there to discover comics, said David Dissanayake, VP of Sales and Marketing of Vault Comics. “There are a lot of actual readers here, and they’re buying actual graphic novels. This feels like less of a comics show, but we have definitely had many people who are not big comics readers come over to check things out.”
Fan excitement
Still, the question remains: given all the ups and downs that McFarlane spoke of in his keynote, why are so many publishers getting into comics now?
Bad Idea’s Fallon, a former retailer, said it’s partly a generation of people in the industry who “feel like they’re ready to do their own thing,” as well as the market forces coming out of the pandemic. “There was a ton of investment during the pandemic and a big growth in readership,” Fallon said. “Now I see people attacking different parts of that market, whether they’re focusing on schools and the book trade, or the direct market, or a fusion with manga.”
Scott Karol, President of SP Media, the group behind the Atlas relaunch, placed comics in the big picture.
“Comic book publishing by itself probably isn’t the greatest business in the world. But comics publishing is part of an ecosystem where you have comic books, graphic novels, novels, merchandising, film and television, AR, VR, short form on social media,” he said. “So it’s really part of an ecosystem where we feel comic book publishing is very important.”
Readers, too, are feeling the impact. “Fan excitement is back, and it’s not just one publisher,” said Fallon.
Harvey Awards
The winners of the 2024 Harvey Awards were also announced at NYCC, at a ceremony on October 18. The winners are:
- Book of the Year: Roaming by Jilian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)
- Digital Book of the Year: Friday by Ed Brubaker and Marcos Martin (Panel Syndicate)
- Best Children’s Book: Mexikid by Pedro Martin (Dial)
- Best Young Adult Book: Roaming by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)
- Best Manga: Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui (Yen Press)
- Best International Book: Blacksad Vol. 7 by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (Europe Comics)
- Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel: X-Men ‘97 by Marvel Animation & Disney+, based on X-Men (Marvel)
This article has been updated with further information.
