Inflation hasn't really helped where sales of comic books are concerned. If you want to hook a generation of juveniles so they're still reading them in their forties then you'll have to compete for their pocket money. The ten dollars from raiding the piggy bank is now enough for one new comic and one from the remainder bin. At seventy cents each I could buy ten comics for my seven dollars.
Add in each era's equally enthralling alternative pastimes and it's no wonder the death knell has been sounded prematurely and periodically.
But that doesn't allow for the core fanboys n girls who do their own propagation. I know I've spread the word and left the occasional comic book lying around. If a sample can entrance a new reader then you can expect repeat sales because most series run multi-part stories now. Some series rely on the appeal of the character and the writing and are content to tell single issue stories. The incentive to follow the series is in the more subtle clues to character and background that appear throughout the run.
In the face of cancellation of the book that is top of their Must Have list, the sudden dropping of that beaut indie series they were buying from their local shop, the sense of loss is no less real for being low on the list of priorities for the rest of the populace. So what do they do?
Well, some produce fanfic. 'Fan fiction' may lack the graphics and the professional standard of writing of the official comic it's based on, but for those mourning the disappearance of Cyberella, writing their own accounts of her exploits and sharing them with fellow fans carries much satisfaction. Wherever there are characters that make enough of an impression to attract fans, there will be fanfic. As most are just bashing out something on their keyboard, there aren't necessarily stylistic leaps between comics fanfic and fanfic based on stories or characters in books, movies, and television.
