>>121114372>USAIt was, at the start, the second golden age of comics.
There was a shift in the perception of comic books. In the 80s brand and team dominated the public eye. But since 88', the popular focus shifted toward artist oriented works. The writer-editor returns in full force and sells numbers that weren't seen since the pre CCA days. These guys were basically rockstars and everything they touched sold like hotcakes.
Comics where also popular on TV and cinema again, with a number of movies and animations being quite popular.
At the same time there was an explosion in indie comics. Thanks to the efforts of comix pioneers and 80s upstart indies, there was a healthy (and also artist-oriented) scene of independent comics about a variety of topics.
However all this pivoted on the health of the big two, one which was in a total creative slump and the other in the midst of a complete collapse due to corporate & publishing mismanagement.
Mid decade, two things happened:
* The windows PC and 5th gen consoles hit the market and absolutely demolished the child demographic. They abandoned the scene en masse in favour of the new flashy lights that could activate their imagination. The child market represented a vast majority of comic consumers in the USA.
* Corporate meddling crashed the collector market. The normal flux of collected comics and back issues practically stopped between 95 and 96. This was a big problem for their direct market distribution system that directly affected the big two's income.
This nearly 90% loss of readership destroyed the already weakened big two companies, who where, liked or not, the lifeblood of the industry. Overnight comics simply stopped selling and all the developments of the decade became vilified due to "ruining" comics.
There was however a notable sincerity from the hand of artists, and anyone could see, good or bad, that these creators loved comics.
It was both a terrible and a great decade to read comics.
2/2
