There is nothing quite like popular culture to make you realise just how much the paradigms and tastes of any given period change as time flies by, and comic books are amongst the prime examples. But apart from illustrating how much the medium and its content have changed, looking back over the years also provides substantial insight into how much the industry and its market have changed...
 

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES ...

... NOT TO MENTION MINUS 108,000 COPIES SOLD

FAST REWIND FROM DOCTOR STRANGE #52 TO
DOCTOR STRANGE: FROM THE MARVEL VAULT #1
 

Welcome back to a little bit of digging and excavating amidst the artefacts of the world of comic books - although the character featured here would probably prefer to label this historical dabbling as multi-dimensional time travelling, for after all, Doctor Strange is the Master of the Mystic Arts and the Sorcerer Supreme.

On second thought, the good Doctor may even have a point there, as we start out with a comic book which was published in February 2011 (cover date April 2011) but actually plotted and lined up in 1998.

 



Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 (April 2011)
[click for larger images]

  

The reasons for this rather substantial delay in publication are explained by author Roger Stern in a special introduction entitled Secrets of the Vault!

"Way back in 1998, I was writing a series entitled MARVEL UNIVERSE. It was planned as an ongoing monthly series that would explore the farthest corners of Marvel's vast realities. Unfortunately, the series didn't find its audience and was canceled after just seven issues... even as we were working on this Doctor Strange story.
I had plotted the story - with a welcome assist from fellow scribe Joe Edkin. Said story was penciled by Neil Vokes and subsequently inked by Jay Geldhof (....) and I had just started to rough out the script when I received word that the MARVEL UNIVERSE book would be no more. It's always disappointing when a series is canceled out from under you (...) but it happens: You dust yourself off and move on.
And sometimes there are second chances in the world of comics. As when Tom Brennan recently called and said that Marvel wanted to print our orphan Doctor Strange story. (...) So, I was able to dust off my old print-outs, and script the story... over twelve years after it was originally plotted. And now, at long last, the story can be told!"
(Roger Stern preface in Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1)

The long completed material was seemingly unearthed during preparations for an office move by Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort.

"Over the years, there have been a number of stories that we've commissioned but that were never completed for one reason or another. I and other editors up here have held onto the work that was finished, sometimes for decades, in the hope that eventually we'd be able to see these stories in print," said Brevoort. "And now, with our office-move, these materials are coming to light once again. In addition to this Doctor Strange story, which was originally intended for the Marvel Universe series we published in the late '90s, we've found four or five other tales which deserve to be completed and printed - so we'll be doing just that in the months to come!" (Khouri, 2010)

Penned by Roger Stern and pencilled by Neil Vokes (with inks by Jay Geldhof and colours by Lee Loughridge), Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 presents a tale set in the very early stages of the Sorcerer Supreme's career as Stephen Strange has just returned to New York City (after studying with the Ancient One in Tibet) and is now looking for a new home. He is especially drawn to a property which turns out to be a terrible non-seller for the real estate agent showing Strange around the house, as all kinds of mysterious and even spooky events have scared away any potential buyers.

Naturally, this can't deter the Master of the Mystic Arts who senses that this house on Bleeker Street may just be what he had in mind - a place where the mystical and supernatural come together. He agrees to buy the property and subsequently spends his first night in his new home fighting the demons of the house whilst the reader learns more details about the origin story of Doctor Strange through a series of flashbacks.
 
Conceived as a single issue within a series, the story now stands on its own as a one-shot from Marvel. And although this format is a guarantee for virtually nothing, this little tale about the early life of Doctor Strange works rather well. This is certainly due to the fact that Stern knows the character by heart after serving as author on the vast majority of issues between #27 and #75 of the second volume of Doctor Strange, from 1978 to 1986. Stern's storytelling thus has an authentic "vintage feel" to it and moves very smoothly along established lines whilst still infusing a flash of novelty here and there.
 



Doctor Strange by Neil Vokes (1998/2011, above) and Steve Ditko (1963, right)

   A vital ingredient, however, in making all of this work out is Vokes' art, which harks back at the early pencilling of the original Doctor Strange artist and co-creator Steve Ditko.

The resulting homage creates a surprising but clever additional logic to this little story - not only is it set in the overall plot continuity of the early issues of Strange Tales where the Sorcerer Supreme made his first appearances as of 1963, but also in the visual continiuity of the character in his initial stages - right down to the dark blue and gold gown with magic symbol, his Cape of Non-Levitation, and the somewhat angular appearance of the original Doctor Strange.

  

 
Overall, Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 provides some interesting and fun reading, but the reason why it offers more than just a little food for thought for someone interested in comic books and their history is linked to another comic book featuring Doctor Strange which I just so happened to pick up from my favourite mail order comic shop more or less at the same time - Doctor Strange #52.

I will have to admit that I am rather taken by Marvel's Master of the Mystic Art, although this urge to read his adventures does have a tendency of coming in waves of "on" and "off". The publication of Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 once again set the switch to "on", and because there is no other current material available (at the time of writing), I turned to finding some near mint back issues, and Doctor Strange #52 was amongst my haul.

 

A truly random pick, I could probably not have chosen a more poignant and interesting counterpart to Marvel's one-shot from the vault.

First of all, Doctor Strange #52 was published with a cover date of April 1982 and thus predates Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 by exactly 29 years. However, and this is a far more substantial point of comparison, the author of both comic books is the same - Roger Stern. And yet another point which these two comic books have in common is the appearance of Nightmare, Doctor Strange's oldest adversary who was introduced in the same issue as the good doctor himself (back in Strange Tales #110 in July 1963).

These rather amazing similarities between two individual comic books separated by a time span of 29 years make them the perfect choice for a few comparisons - even more so as the story told in Doctor Strange #52 is all about travelling through space and - you guessed it - time.

In "Life-Times" (pencilled by Marshall Rogers, inked by Terry Austin, coloured by Bob Sharen and edited by Al Milgrom), Doctor Strange and Clea have placed a young writer named Morgana Blessing in hospital after previously travelling back to World War II London and rescuing her from the grasp of Baron Mordo and the Dread Dormammu. Because she is still slowly being drained of her life energy Strange investigates the situation and finds himself in the dream dimension, summoned by Nightmare.

 



Doctor Strange #52 (April 1982)
 
However, this time things are markedly different as his oldest foe actually asks the Sorcerer Supreme for help, explaining that "a shard of Morgana's soul" was reflected back through her past lives. If Strange is unable to restore this situation, humanity will seemingly cease to dream and ultimately be driven to collective madness - whilst destroying Nightmare's realm.
 
  The Master of the Mystic Arts thus travels back in time through "psychic time-tunnels" to find previous reincarnations of Morgana, and whilst he succeeds in doing so both in 15th century Spain and on the Mayan Yucatan peninsula in 800 A.D., he finds that he is always just a tad too late...

Doctor Strange #52 ends with the Sorcerer Supreme pondering the true reasons for his failure... to be continued!

Again, this issue will not make it into the circle of essential Doctor Strange readings. But then maybe that's my biased opinion as I had a real hard time trying to figure out just what exactly a "soul-shard" could possibly be before eventually accepting that I only had a basic grasp of things - you can't argue with comic book science, let alone with comic book mysticism.

The end to this story, however, which is told in Doctor Strange #53, does indeed have an ingenious twist or two on offer as Roger Stern ties the unfolding events into a storyline presented 19 years before by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby... oh I do hope that all of this time shifting isn't making you feel too dizzy!

 
The point of reference is Fantastic Four #19 (October 1963) and the FF's journey back to Ancient Egypt in Dr Doom's time machine and their encounter with Rama-Tut. It turns out that Morgana was actually a handmaiden at the court of Rama-Tut at that point in time. Without the FF becoming aware of his presence, Doctor Strange succeeds in restoring Morgana's soul-shard and finally travels back to his own time period...

However, my previous comparison of two issues of Fantastic Four has shown that the really interesting differences between recent and older comic books is not only to be found in the content pages, with changes in writing styles and artwork preferences, but just as much if not more on those pages which play no part in telling the story. And this is also true for Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 and Doctor Strange #52.

Marvel Comics had grown to be the industry's number one not only because of the content and style of their comic books, but just as importantly due to how editorial communicated with its readership.
 
 

The driving force behind this true house style was, of course, Stan Lee, who - alongside endless promotional copy - also wrote his definitive monthly column "Stan's Soapbox" which he often signed off with his trademark phrase - "Excelsior!".

But in 1982, the soapbox was no more.

First introduced in June 1967, it had effectively appeared for the last time in the December 1980 cover date production run before editor-in-chief Jim Shooter did away with the entire Bullpen Bulletin pages as of January 1981.

 
 
A highly controversial figure at Marvel during virtually all of his nine years as editor-in-chief, Shooter put into effect some great ideas (such as an art return programme and creator royalties) as well as some really bad ones. Abolishing the Bullpen Bulletins was definitely amongst the latter, and the mistake was duly corrected as of January 1982, only three months before Doctor Strange #52. However, major changes were evident as the page featured a completely different tone and mood and replaced Stan's Soapbox with Shooter's "Hype Box". But in spite of all these changes, it was still recognisable as a "Bullpen Bulletin" in the sense of "Hello, this is the editor speaking". None of this survives today as editorial pages are few and far between, and if they are featured, they will very often serve a specific single marketing purpose (quite unlike Stan's plugs for all stuff Marvel). Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 actually features several pages which can be labelled editorial in the sense that they feature creator interviews and informations, but essentially they only served the purpose of advertising the launch of Marvel's Crossgen titles in March 2011.

Maybe it's just me, but the infotainment value of the Bullpen Bulletins (with their content infused with well balanced doses of zany humour, larger than life assessments of banalities and a tongue-in-cheek club atmosphere) seems lost for ever... and the same goes for in-house advertisements.
 
  Whilst the readers of Doctor Strange #52 were presented with the Thing dressed up in Father Christmas gear to advertise subscriptions to Marvel comics (illustrating the gap of three to four months between the cover date and the actual publication date), the in-house ad in Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 zooms in right at the other end of the scale of emotions as it asks the reader to consider if she/he fears tomorrow. Although aimed, of course, at promoting Marvel's 2011 "Fear itself" event, the wording could easily be taken to cover a much wider topic - how about, for instance, any fears you might have regarding the future of printed comic books?  
 
Actually, I'll come back to precisely this question in a short while, so just let that hang on there for a moment or two...

The most revealing and certainly the most important difference between Doctor Strange #52 and Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1, however, is revealed on the letters page. Just like the editorial page, the letters page has become an endangered species within the Marvel Universe as only a few flagship titles such as Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four carry such a fan dedicated page on a regular basis. DC brought them back only to drop them unceremoniously with the launch of the "New 52". Indepedent publishers vary in their policies, but as an example Dynamite dropped a long standing tradition in 2012 and ceased publishing a general combined letters and editorial page which was the same in all of its titles of a given production month.
 
  Okay, one letters page only. Now that's not really a big surprise considering the fact that Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 is a one-shot, but it doesn't really matter either because what I would like to point out here isn't actually the letters page as such, but rather that slightly odd looking boxed print at the bottom of the page which has even been tilted by 90 degrees. Strange stuff on the Strange Mails page indeed.

This strange piece of print actually is the Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation through which the US Postal Service requires every periodical by law to make known its management situation as well as its publication numbers at least once a year.

Looking over all of this data and skipping all the information on who owned Marvel in 1982, the so inclined reader may learn from this rather dry list that Doctor Strange had an average print run of 227,094 copies over the preceding twelve month period. Of these an average of 98,255 copies were actually sold, and 125,921 returned.

That is absolutely amazing - and no, I'm not talking about the average number of copies being returned outnumbering the actually sold copies by a 55,4 % ratio, although that is astonishing (reflecting a bad business model which in the end helped create the direct market).
 
But no - I am actually pointing to the fact that Doctor Strange sold around 100,000 copies on average in 1981 (issue #49, the issue nearest to the filing date of the statement in October 1981, effectively sold 107,000).

Obviously, this number only acquires a real sense of meaning when put into perspective with current sales figures. So how many copies did Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1sell for Marvel? The answer is: 11,248 - a total which placed it at 153rd place in the February 2011 comic book sales according to the Comics Chronicles [1]. The best selling title of that month, by the way, was DC's Green Lantern #62 with a mere 71,517 copies sold.
 
The fact that there has been a huge drop in comic book sales figures over time is nothing new (even though they are on a slight rise again since late 2012), but comparisons with the 1940s - when any issue of Superman sold an average of 1,250,000 copies (Lopes, 2006) - now seem far too much grounded in a remote period of time to provide a real sense of meaning even to the babyboomer generation of comic book readers.

Even pointing to the fact that the best selling popular comic book titles still sold around 300,000 copies in the early 1970s (Mackay, 2007) is too unspecific to leave a real impression. But seeing the sales figures of a secondary and hence bi-monthly Marvel title such as Doctor Strange from early 1982 in comparison to a current one-shot comic book featuring the same character does strike a chord which resounds with the current way comic book afficionados experience the market.

Employing reasonable means and time of research I found myself unable to find any specific data regarding comic book sales from 1982, which could put those 100,000 copies of Doctor Strange sold on average into real perspective, but as already mentioned this figure of 100,000 could not have been anywhere near as impressive as it would be today - otherwise the title would obviously not have been published on a bi-monthly schedule only.

Looking at the public information source for these sale figures - the various printed statements of ownership and circulation - reveals that Doctor Strange continued its six digit sales in 1982/83 (Doctor Strange #59 in June 1983 reports an average paid circulation total of 119,651 copies per issue over the preceding twelve months) before dropping to 68,800 (Doctor Strange #65, June 1984). However, in September 1984 (Doctor Strange #71) the average paid circulation for this title had once again risen to 121,574 copies.

The Master of the Mystic Arts more or less hovered within that range of sold copies from the late 1980s to the early 1990s with his title Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme (which was first released in November 1988 ,following the cancellation of Doctor Strange in February 1987) as the figures ran from an average of 65,800 copies (Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #19, July 1990) to 109,514 copies (Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #51, March 1993). Sales then plunged to 23,861 (Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #85, January 1996), but that was just six months ahead of the cancellation of the title and ten months ahead of Marvel filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The end of Sorcerer Supreme in July 1996 would turn out to be the beginning of a lengthy absence of any Doctor Strange title from the Marvel Universe, and the good Doctor would not return to a feature title of his own until the four issue mini-series Doctor Strange: The Flight of Bones in 1999. Sales figures for these four issues ranged from 47,700 (#1) to 32,500 (#4) according to Comics Chronicles (www.comichron.com).

 
 
Five years later, the Sorcer Supreme featured in another mini-series, simply titled Strange and spread out by writer J.M. Straczynski over six issues, which sold from 59,974 copies (#1) to 35,842 copies (#6).

Subsequent mini-series sold increasingly smaller numbers of copies, as Doctor Strange: The Oath (five issues, 2006-2007) sold between 40,280 and 25,665 copies and the sales for Strange (four issues, 2009-2010) ranged from 23,362 to 14,393 copies. Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault #1 would thus seem to represent a new all-time low with its 11,248 sold copies, but in fact the one-shot Mystic Hands of Doctor Strange from 2010 dipped even further with a mere 10,148 copies sold.

Now it must be noted, of course, that any proper analysis of comic book sales figures requires a great deal of market knowledge and an even greater chunk of caution. As I do not lay claim to the first and the latter would defeat the object of any kind of ramblings such as these, the happenstance comparison of two issues of a Doctor Strange title simply provides some anecdotal insight regarding the question of the (fairly drastic) drop in comic book sales over recent years.
 



Comic Box #70 (May/June 2011)

   The matter is - of course - widely discussed on the internet, and many different explanations (and indeed remedies) are offered for the perceived fact that American comic books have been reduced to a niche market - a result, as some researchers claim, of an aging fanbase and few young newcomers to the media combined with limited cross-cultural appeal (Macky, 2007).

The discussion can easily be complicated further by pointing to the fact that whilst comic sales have also dropped in Japan and France, the most popular Mangas nevertheless still sell a couple of million copies and the French comics market still holds a 12 percent share of the overall book market (Wuepper, 2011). That, however, doesn't really make the American market situation appear any better at all, and a commentary on this in the French magazine Comic Box back in 2011 ran under the heading La grande peur - the big scare.

"Comic book sales in the US have been in a free fall for months. Except on rare occasions (such as, for example, the death of a Marvel hero) the American comic book market now seems to run well below the mark of 100,000 copies which, up until recently, was the regular mark which separated titles at the top of the pile from the rest (...) clearly this is something to worry about (...) Right now, DC seems to fare better than Marvel. At the end of the day, it could turn out that DC's choice to lower its prices does have an effect after all as its publications become more affordable whilst numerous Marvel titles remain at $ 3.99, even if it's just a fill-in." (Editorial "Ventes aux USA: La grande peur", in Comic Box #70, May/June 2011 [personal translation])
 
Sales have gone up again since then, but the question remains of what precisely is happening as comic books feed into mayor success movies yet fail to reach even just a nice fraction of that audience. One important aspect may come to light by looking at the Mighty Marvel Checklist from April 1982. This feature, which goes back to the inception of the Bullpen Bulletins in the early 1960s, was one of those editorial tidbits which really were quite essential to Stan Lee's concept of presenting Marvel as though it were a club for insiders (N. N., 2003). The checklist afforded the reader a glimpse of what was on offer, but it also provided him with a real sense for the variety to be found in the range of comics published by Marvel. Even in 1982, that feeling was still there.

The checklist also suggested a certain stability with regard to titles available, with many of them clocking in at high two digit or even three digit issue numbers. Naturally, this never ever precluded the cancellation of a title, but just as importantly the range of titles prsesented in the April 1982 checklist was still manageable, i.e. you could still see the forest for the trees.

 



The famous Mighty Marvel Checklist from Doctor Strange #52 (April 1982)

   Today, however, an irritatingly large chunk of this perceived stability in comic book titles is gone right from the outset as a plethora of one-shots and mini-series (sometimes for one and the same character) are constantly nibbling away at the stability of the range of characters and titles, and cancellations and reboots seem to come and go at a regular pace.

"The Big M [Marvel] had a habit of canceling and/or restarting its cult favorite series this past year [2010]." (Zalben, 2010)

On the other hand, established monthly titles are set up in storytelling frameworks which allow for easy transfer to trade paperbacks (meaning story arcs which usually need to cover five to six issues, no matter how thin the underlying plot may be). This, however, is still naught compared to the scourge of the "event", which can and will play havoc with regular characters and storylines.

Based on the commercially motivated hope rather than an empirically proven fact that comic book readers will buy each and every title of an "event" if it happens to touch their regular reading diet, these crossover arcs are now regular features on the agendas of the two market leaders - so much so that Bongo Comics could even made a spoof of them in their 2002/03 Futurama/Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis. Just how much of an impact such "events" can have is illustrated by the fact that DC announced the cancellation of several titles in conjunction with their 2011 Flashpoint crossover.

"[DC] confirms that several DC titles were cancelled because of the upcoming Flashpoint tie-ins. [Dan Didio:] 'There’s a lot of changes in the lineup, and a lot of books were cancelled because we had minis coming in to tie into ‘Flashpoint,’ and we didn’t want to overextend the line' (...) Also, DC is cancelling Flash with issue #12, but even a casual fan knows a Flash title will be back after the Flash-centric Flashpoint event (...) On the other hand [DC] indicates that (...) the main Flashpoint book (...) is accessible while the tie-ins flesh out how some characters got to where they got (...) So, the tie-ins aren’t integral to the main Flashpoint narrative. That’s the double-edged sword of an accessible main event book in tough economic times." (Babos, 2011)
 
Admittedly, this kind of manoeuvre - which, with all due respect to the people in charge at DC, seems to border on absurdity more than anything else as readers are told that current titles will be cancelled for tie-ins which don't even have any real importance for the main "event" title - is not the rule, but both Marvel and DC are constantly sending out signals to the readership which can sometimes be really hard to decipher. In the days of the "DC Implosion" in 1978 the sudden cancellation of more than two dozen ongoing series was a linear move by DC. Today, however, new monthly titles are being advertised whilst others are being cancelled at the very same time - it's easy come easy go to the simultaneous utterings of hellos and goodbyes.

As a result, the volatility of today's comic book titles is to a certain extent created by the publishers themselves. As a reaction, potential readers shy away from a title which they feel or suspect will be doomed after a couple of issues anyway. A good example was Marvel's Doctor Voodoo - Avenger of the Supernatural, which was launched in late 2009 on the promotional note that its main character, Jericho Drumm (a.k.a. Brother Voodoo), was now the new Sorcerer Supreme. However, Marvel's 2009 trail of "express cancellations" (Warren, 2010) cast a huge shadow of doubt on the series right from the start - and sure enough, the book was cancelled after a mere 5 issues.

The fact that sales figures for Doctor Voodoo dropped from 23,314 for the first issue to 12,154 copies for the fifth would seem to be the plausible explanation for the title's cancellation, and in this specific case this can be assumed to be true. However, the publisher generated volatility has even overturned this golden rule. Over the past few years, Daredevil had been a title with wide critcial acclaim and, although not a blockbuster, proved a solid book for Marvel with an average of around 40,000 copies sold month after month.

 
This, however, didn't stop Marvel from axing the character in the aftermath of the 2010 Shadowland event (did I just mention how much "events" can mess up regular comic book titles...?) by replacing Daredevil in his own book with Black Panther, who then became The Man without Fear. The result? Black Panther - The Man without Fear #513 (continuing the issue count from Daredevil) sold 33,124 copies in December 2010 (compared to 40,317 for Daredevil #512) whilst the number of sold copies for subsequent issues with Black Panther dropped to 27,474 in January 2011 and 24,556 in February 2011 (again, all these figures come from comichron.com). In the world of tennis, such a move would be referred to as an unforced error, and it's not just Marvel who's playing.

"The demise of "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" seems odd (...) considering the apparent popularity of the Cartoon Network animated series and the planned release in September of the video game. Then again, "Super Friends"‘ connection to a Mattel toy line didn’t save that comic from the ax." (Melrose, 2010)

So, this is where we come back to Marvel's 2011 in-house ads - do you fear tomorrow? Will traditional monthly comic books go down, or will they survive?

The answer, in all probability, is: no, they will survive. Not because the Sorcerer Supreme will come up with a magic spell whereby "the monthly" will be saved in the Name of the Eternal Vishanti and thanks to the Hosts of the Hoary Hoggoth, the Twelve Moons of Munnopor, the Seven Rings of Raggadorr and the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. The survival of the monthly comic book will be founded in the fact that in the age of information and information technology, established content is hardly ever replaced by new technology - in spite of what numerous cultural pessimists have kept telling people for decades. Movies didn't disappear because of television, and they weren't killed by the advent of LaserDiscs, VHS, DVD or bluray either, in spite of many "experts" predicting precisely that to happen.

 
 
Maybe the monthly comic book will, however, change its medium - from paper to digital. This will depend on the consumers and the devices available, but just as much on the publishers. If the end of the monthly comic book should ever come, it will no doubt be due to a persisting lack of quality content which will have made readers go looking for other, better means of entertainment. If, however, publishers can raise the average rate of good comic books over the percentage of mediocre or downright bad comics, then nothing is to be feared, because then the good news will be that comic books are still, overall, a dynamic medium - as can, in fact, be learned from the Mighty Marvel Checklist found in Doctor Strange #52 in April 1982, with its announcement of Marvel Graphic Novel #1 - or, as Marvel put it, "the beginning of a new era in pictorial storytelling".

Well, I suggest you check back here in twenty years or so to see how all of this has worked out. Alternatively - should you lack the patience required for this appointment - you could ask Doctor Strange to quickly pop ahead to 2030 and, by the Hoasts of the Hoary Hoggoth, have a look round the comic book scene...
 
NOTES
 
[1] The Comics Chronicles, www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-02.html
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BABOS John (2011) "Geoff Johns: Flashpoint tie-ins fun, but not key / Dan Didio: DC Titles", in Comics Nexus, available online and accessed 11 April 2011 at insidepulse.com/2011/04/04/geoff-johns-flashpoint-tie-ins-fun-but-not-key-dan-didio-dc-titles-cancelled-for-tie-ins/

KHOURI Andy (2010) Marvel Unearths Lost 'Doctor Strange' One-Shot by Roger Stern and Neil Vokes, available online at www.comicsalliance.com/2010/11/04/doctor-strange-from-the-marvel-vault-one-shot-roger-stern-neil-vokes/#ixzz1HKXR3kGw

LOPES P. (2006) "Culture and stigma: Popular culture and the case of comic books", in Sociological Forum (27, 387-414)

MACKAY Brad (2007) "Hero deficit: Comic books in decline", in The Toronto Star, 18 March edition, available online and accessed 4 April 2011 at www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/193167

MELROSE Kevin (2010) Bring out your dead: DC Comics cancels two more all-ages titles, in Comic Book Resources, available online and accessed 11 April 2011 at robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/07/bring-out-your-dead-dc-comics-cancels-two-more-all-ages-titles/

N.N. (2003) Stan Lee Interview, contained as extra feature on the double disk DVD release of the movie Daredevil (personal transcript)

WARREN Kirk (2010) "Marvel's express cancellations", in The Weekly Crisis, availble online and accessed 12 April 2011 at www.weeklycrisis.com/2010/01/marvels-express-cancellations.htm

WUEPPER Gesche (2011) "Comics geraten in die Krise", in Saarbruecker Zeitung, 29 January edition, available online and accessed 6 April 2011 at www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/sz-berichte/wirtschaft/Comics-geraten-in-die-Krise;art2819,3611087

ZALBEN Alex (2010) "11 comic books we'll miss in 2011", in MTV Geek, 28 December edition, available online and accessed 11 April 2011 at geek-news.mtv.com/2010/12/28/11-comic-books-well-miss-in-2011/
 
 

first published on the web 26 April 2011
reposted 20 February 2014

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