by Rudi de Vries
Comics have undergone many changes in the course of time, and the nature and popularity of comics differs enormously by country. Artists play a crucial role in this, of course, as do comic readers. However, publishers are also important: they decide whether or not they will bring comics to the market.
‘Comparative Dynamics in the Comics Industry’
One of the most striking developments in comics in recent decades is how they have evolved from a neglected, often even derided mass medium for children to a cultural artefact valued by adults in many market niches, with the potential to be perceived as legitimate works of literature and art. In a number of countries, this shift has also led to a change in the characteristics of comics publishers.
In order to gain a grip on the impact of publishers’ backgrounds, I made a division into two categories of publishers, which I have adopted from previous research. The first category consists of organisations in an adjacent sector. These are so-called de alios: often general publishers of newspapers, books or magazines, who have also published comics. The other category, de novos, concerns organisations that have focused on the product in question (here: comics) from the moment they were founded.
I collected the names of all comics publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium. In total, this involved almost 1200 publishers. I then checked for each publisher to which whether it was a de alio or a de novo comics publisher. I combined this data with a general outline of changes in the comics world, and with five case studies of French, Dutch and Belgian comics publishers.
Until the 1970s, the alios were by far in the majority, after which the novos emerged, and since the end of the 1980s the novo comic publishers have been in the majority. This runs parallel to changes in comic production: for a long time, the focus was on comic magazines, but since the 1970s this shifted to comic albums. Comic albums form the bulk of the comic supply from the mid-1980s, and the novos in particular have specialized in this.
The comics audience also changed: several segments emerged, including one with a more mature audience, who had higher demands on comics, and preferred comic albums over comic magazines. This led to more attention from the publishers for the content of the comic albums and for the creators.
Conclusions
My general conclusion is that the interaction between the alios and de novos has contributed to a different identity of the comics publishing sector, in which a one-sided focus on the market made way for a practice in which the comics themselves and their creators also received more attention.
An interesting side conclusion is that in certain branches of the cultural industry (including that of comics) it is not necessarily only large organisations that set the tone. My findings show that the policies of the usually small de novos have had consequences for the often much larger de alio comics publishers. These developments show similarities with those in pop music, where in approximately the same period small, independent record companies forced the ‘majors’ in the music industry to pay more attention to creativity-driven forms of pop music, because otherwise much new talent, and also new audiences, would pass them by.
Rudi de Vries: Comparative Dynamics in the Comics Industry; Contrasting Cultures in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 2025. Oxon / New York: Routledge.