Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture

Starred review from June 1, 2012
Approaching his subject as both a business futurist and a longtime comics fan, Salkowitz takes a prismatic view of the comics world from its squirming heart: the bustling, hype-overloaded juggernaut of the San Diego Comic-Con. He ties anecdotal accounts of the craziness that unfolds at the Con over five days in July with ruminations on the current state of the medium. Though he considers and speaks eloquently to the place of literary graphic novels, quirky webcomics, and the sequential-art format as a whole, his crosshairs sit right atop those of Comic-Con: mainstream (superhero) comics and their (for now, anyway) cozy relationship with Hollywood. Here, if you can pay enough attention through the onslaught of noise, unapologetically vocal fans meet rock-star creators; the crumbling direct market meets fledgling digital distribution channels; approachable story lines meet decades of convoluted continuity; reverence for history meets a dire need for change; and, perhaps most important, quaint, low-margin publishing strategies meet blockbuster Hollywood marketing blitzes. It's all about as easy to pinpoint as an electron cloud, but Salkowitz considers the view from every angle and in a final chapter models four possible scenarios for comics in the next decade. If you care at all about comics, this is an essential read (and if you don't, Salkowitz just might win you over). But it's also grab-worthy for anyone interested in the fascinating, conflicted, unfolding future of digital publishing and transmedia entertainment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)