COMIC BOOKS ARE DEAD? SOMEBODY FORGOT TO TELL THE $2.2 BILLION MARKET. 😂
Batman is still selling. Manga is growing. Graphic novels are everywhere. And now AI can help one person do jobs that once required an entire creative team. So what actually makes a comic work—the story, the character, the genre or the pictures?
💥 WAIT? PEOPLE STILL READ COMIC BOOKS?
Apparently they do.
I started looking at the comic-book business because, like a lot of people, I had this mental picture of a comic shop filled with a few hardcore collectors arguing with some ten year olds about whether Batman could beat Superman. 😂
Then I looked at the numbers.
ICv2 estimates that consumers in the United States and Canada spent about $2.2 billion on comics and graphic novels in 2025, setting a new high. Sales through comic shops grew especially fast, with comic sales up about 30% and graphic novels up about 28% in that channel. ICv2
So apparently, comic book fans are not JUST going to the movies to watch the latest Spider-Man or Avengers film on the big screen.
And bookstores aren’t exactly throwing comics into the dumpster either. Circana BookScan data showed graphic-novel unit sales in the book channel increasing another 5% in 2025, putting them about 42% above 2020 levels. Manga returned to growth too, with manga unit sales through the book channel up 8.1% and comic-store manga sales up more than 33%. ICv2
Honestly, I’m what some people would probably call a “dweeb” because I’ve watched a ton of anime. I’m waiting for the final two episodes of Bleach to drop on Hulu, but I’ve never actually bought and read a manga. My nephew has, and he’s 26 years old, so apparently comics aren’t only for kids in middle school. 😂
The reality is, so much for nobody reading comic books anymore. The format changed. The audience changed. The distribution channels changed.
The pictures with words in little balloons apparently survived.
🦸 AND SOME OF THOSE LITTLE BALLOONS BUILT BILLION-DOLLAR CHARACTERS.
Stan Lee is probably the name most ordinary people associate with Marvel Comics.
But even that is a lesson in how comics actually work.
Lee didn’t sit alone in a room and invent the entire Marvel Universe by himself. He worked with enormously important creators including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. and others. Marvel itself describes Lee as a co-creator of characters such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor and the X-Men, with Kirby and Ditko playing foundational creative roles. Marvel
That’s interesting to me because comics have always been this strange marriage between:
- The idea and story
- The character
- The artwork
- The dialogue
- The pacing and panels
- The people who turn all of that into a finished page
One person might write it.
- Another pencils it.
- Another inks it.
- Another colors it.
- Somebody letters it.
- Somebody edits it.
And eventually a kid picks it up and says:
“Cool. Spider-Man.”
😂
All that work disappears behind the character.
🦇 THEN FRANK MILLER GOT HIS HANDS ON BATMAN.
Frank Miller may be an even better example of why the writer matters. The book I’m thinking about is Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
It came out in 1986, and 2026 is its 40th anniversary. Miller wrote and penciled the four-issue series, with Klaus Janson providing inks and Lynn Varley colors. DC credits the work with fundamentally reshaping the modern interpretation of Batman and influencing the broader comics medium. DC
Think about what Miller actually did.
He didn’t invent Batman.
Batman had already been around for nearly fifty years.
He took an existing character and told a different kind of story about him—older, darker, angrier, operating inside a Gotham that felt considerably less like a children’s adventure.
Same Batman.
- Different writer.
- Different visual language.
- Different world.
Different result.
And that gets right to the question I’ve been thinking about:
WHAT ACTUALLY MAKES A GREAT COMIC BOOK GREAT?
Is it the artwork?
The character?
The story?
The genre?
The dialogue?
I think the answer is:
Yes. 😂
But they don’t all do the same job.
✍️ THE CHARACTER GETS YOU IN THE DOOR. THE STORY MAKES YOU CARE.
Spider-Man isn’t simply a red-and-blue costume.
Peter Parker is the reason Spider-Man lasted.
- He had girlfriends.
- Money problems.
- School problems.
- Work problems.
- Guilt.
- Responsibility.
He could climb a building and still have trouble paying the rent.
Marvel itself points to exactly that human dimension as part of Stan Lee’s influence: his heroes dealt with ordinary concerns and recognizable flaws alongside the superhero stuff. Marvel
That’s character.
Batman works for a different reason.
You don’t need somebody to explain his basic story for forty-five minutes.
- Parents murdered.
- Kid becomes obsessed.
- Bat costume.
- Gotham.
- Criminals.
- Joker.
Got it. 😂
That foundation is strong enough that writers have been able to reinterpret Batman for generations.
The character becomes intellectual property.
The stories keep refreshing the property.
And the artwork tells you what version of the property you’ve just entered.
That’s an extraordinarily powerful business model when it works.
🎨 BUT COME ON. IT’S A COMIC BOOK. THE PICTURES MATTER.
Of course they do.
A novel can tell you:
The enormous creature rose behind him as lightning ripped across the sky.
A comic gets to show you the thing.
The composition matters.
- Facial expressions matter.
- Lighting matters.
- The costume matters.
- Panel size matters.
- Color matters.
How your eye moves across the page matters.
A great comic artist isn’t simply illustrating what the writer already said.
The artist is telling the story too.
That’s why saying “the writing matters more than the artwork” doesn’t really make sense to me.
It’s like asking whether the lyrics or music are more important in a song.
Depends on the song.
But if either one is terrible, you’ve probably noticed. 😂
🤖 AND NOW AI JUST WALKED INTO THE COMIC SHOP.
This is where things are about to get really interesting.
Until recently, suppose I had an idea for a comic book.
I might be able to write.
Great.
Can I draw?
Nope. 😂
Now I need an artist.
- Maybe a penciler.
- Possibly an inker.
- A colorist.
- Lettering.
- Cover art.
- Page layout.
Suddenly my little superhero idea has developed something called – a payroll.
Generative AI doesn’t magically eliminate the need for talent, but it radically changes what one person can attempt.
A writer can already use AI tools to help explore character concepts, costumes, environments, visual references, panel ideas, color treatments, backgrounds and early mockups. A capable human artist can use some of those same tools as part of a larger workflow rather than starting every experiment from a blank page.
That means somebody who once had enough money to write a screenplay in Microsoft Word but nowhere near enough money to produce a visual world may suddenly be able to prototype the world.
That’s a big deal.
✏️ WAIT. DOES THAT MEAN THE ARTIST IS GONE?
Definitely not. I wouldn’t make that assumption.
AI can create a gorgeous picture.
Creating Batman for 22 consecutive pages is a different problem.
The character needs to stay recognizable.
Costume details need to remain consistent.
Locations have geography.
Characters interact.
Action has continuity.
The reader has to know where to look next.
A hand needs to pick up the same object that was sitting on the desk two panels earlier. 😂
Comic storytelling isn’t simply generating twenty-two cool illustrations.
It’s sequential storytelling.
And that’s where human direction becomes extremely important.
Maybe AI eventually gets astonishingly good at all of it.
AI will probably get astonishingly good at all of it. However, trust me when I tell you that I’ve used AI enough to know it still can’t read your mind.
I’ve had to spend a long time arguing with AI to create something. All too often it’s like training a dog that when you tell it to “sit”, it suddenly decides to roll over or go and chase an imaginary rabbit.
There’s a simple reality that most people miss if they haven’t spent a couple of years arguing with AI and it’s who’s really running and directing the AI production studio.
Somebody still has to decide:
- What happens?
- Why should I care?
- What does the character want?
- What’s standing in the way?
- Why should I turn the page?
Those aren’t merely drawing questions.
They’re writing questions.
⚖️ AND THEN COPYRIGHT WALKS INTO THE ROOM.
This part matters if you’re thinking:
“Great. I’ll type a prompt, generate 100 pages and own the next Marvel.”
Not so fast.
The U.S. Copyright Office says a work that contains AI-generated material can still receive copyright protection for its human-authored elements when there is sufficient human creative authorship—such as human-created expression, creative arrangement or meaningful modification. Merely giving an AI prompts generally isn’t enough by itself. U.S. Copyright Office
That’s a fascinating wrinkle for comics.
Suppose you create:
- The original character
- The character’s name and backstory
- The script and dialogue
- The page structure
- The world
- The panel sequence
- Human edits and modifications
…and use AI as one tool in producing portions of the imagery.
That’s a very different authorship situation from typing:
“Make me a 100-page superhero comic.”
and accepting whatever comes out. This Parking Spot that you’re reading is an example of this because I had to supply the idea to AI and it wrote the initial “draft” and then I had to spend a great deal of time writing what I actually wanted to say. It was great for a baseline, but it was a far cry away from what my intent of this long-form advertisement is that I created here.
So AI may lower the production barrier while simultaneously making human authorship and creative direction more important legally, not less.
That’s pretty ironic. 😂
That’s actually pretty good news for people who write and create. The current U.S. copyright framework is still saying something remarkably old-fashioned in the middle of this technological revolution:
THE HUMAN CREATOR STILL MATTERS.
Imagine that.
🧠 SO WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART?
If you’re forcing me to rank the ingredients conceptually—not rank creators or books—I’d describe the jobs like this:
The genre sets the expectation. Horror, superhero, Western, science fiction, romance, crime or manga tells people roughly which door they’re walking through.
The artwork gets attention and creates the experience. A comic is visual. Bad visual storytelling can destroy a good script.
The story makes somebody turn the page. Pretty pictures without something happening eventually become an art book.
And then there’s the big one:
THE CHARACTER IS WHAT YOU CAN BUILD A WORLD AROUND.
That’s why Marvel didn’t become enormous because somebody drew one beautiful Spider-Man panel.
People wanted more Spider-Man.
- More Batman.
- More Wolverine.
- More Superman.
- More Silver Surfer.
More stories involving characters they already cared about.
A great character can survive different artists, writers, costumes, decades, movies, television shows, video games and entire generations of readers.
That’s not merely storytelling.
That’s a serious asset.
💰 STAN LEE WASN’T JUST HELPING CREATE COMIC BOOKS.
This is The Sales Freak part that fascinates me.
Marvel and DC were not ultimately selling paper. The paper was the delivery vehicle. The real value became the characters and stories.
Spider-Man could begin inside a comic book and eventually appear in films, television, toys, games, clothing, theme parks and almost anything else somebody could stick a spider logo on. 😂
That’s what happens when storytelling becomes intellectual property.
Frank Miller demonstrated the other side of it. You don’t necessarily have to invent a character to create enormous value.
Sometimes you take an established character and tell such a compelling new story that you alter how future generations understand the character.
That’s what The Dark Knight Returns did to Batman. DC itself describes its influence as extending far beyond that original four-issue series. DC
WORDS MATTER.
Imagine that.
🤖 NOW IMAGINE THE NEXT STAN LEE DOESN’T NEED A BULLPEN.
That’s where AI changes this business for me. And I know that many writers and artists dislike anything to do with AI, but the reality is it’s not going away anytime soon. It’s like when I was in High School and the math teacher told me that I couldn’t use a calculator, but had to show my long form Algebra on paper. That was fun while it lasted, but times change.
Here’s the reality.
Maybe somewhere right now there’s a 19-year-old with an incredible character in his head who can’t draw, a retired woman with an idea for a Western graphic novel, a veteran who wants to turn something he experienced into fiction, or somebody with a disability who can create at a computer but couldn’t realistically finance and coordinate a traditional comic-production team.
Historically, the distance between “I have an idea” and “Here is the visual version of my idea” could be enormous.
AI is shrinking that distance.
That doesn’t mean the result will be good.
The Internet has already demonstrated that lowering the cost of producing content does not magically make everybody talented.
😂
But it means more people can try.
And whenever the tools become cheaper, you get more creators.
When you get more creators, you get more competition.
And when you get more competition…
Guess what becomes harder?
DISCOVERY.
There’s that word again.
🅿️ WELL, THAT SOUNDS FAMILIAR.
This is exactly the same problem we just found in self-publishing if you want to read that Parking Spot just click on my profile and you’ll see all of my content that I’ve written here at Writers Freak.
Technology makes it easier to produce the thing.
Then everybody produces the thing.
Then somebody has to figure out how to get noticed.
Maybe you’ve created your first comic.
Maybe you’ve only created the first ten pages.
Maybe you’re developing an original character.
Maybe you’re looking for an illustrator.
Maybe you’re an illustrator looking for writers.
Maybe you’re experimenting with AI-assisted comic production and want to show people your workflow.
Maybe you’ve already published issue #1 and nobody knows it exists.
That’s a Writers Freak Parking Spot.
Show the character. Show some sample panels. Tell the origin story.
Explain what you’re trying to build. Embed a trailer or interview.
Link to wherever somebody can buy the comic.
Talk about whether you’re using traditional illustration, AI, or some combination.
Tell people what worked.
Tell people what went hilariously wrong.
😂
Maybe another creator finds you.
Maybe a reader finds you.
Maybe an artist finds you.
Maybe somebody says:
“That character is actually pretty cool.”
That’s how things start.
💥 THE COMIC BOOK ISN’T DEAD.
It’s evolving.
In 2025, North American comics and graphic novels reached an estimated $2.2 billion market, comic shops were experiencing major growth, graphic novels remained strong, and manga was bringing another generation of readers through the door. ICv2
Now AI is lowering another barrier between writers and visual storytelling. Like it or not, it’s the reality of the genre. It’s not any different than other businesses like car dealerships that used to be in your local area and now you can have a car delivered to your front door.
That doesn’t guarantee we’re about to get another Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko or Frank Miller.
It guarantees something simpler:
A lot more people are going to be able to try.
And somewhere inside all of that new material will probably be some incredible characters nobody knows yet.
The hard part will be the same hard part we keep discovering everywhere else.
Creating something is one job.
GETTING SOMEBODY TO CARE ABOUT IT IS ANOTHER.
That’s why comic books belong on Writers Freak.
- They’re pictures.
- They’re art.
- They’re collectibles.
- They’re businesses.
But underneath all of it?
Somebody is still telling a story.
😂
GIVE YOUR CHARACTER ANOTHER PLACE TO LIVE.
A standard Writers Freak Parking Spot is $7 one time. Build a page around your comic, graphic novel, character, artwork or creative project. Add the story, images, supported video, links and whatever somebody needs to understand what you’re building.
No monthly fee. No scheduled renewal. No scheduled expiration.
Seven bucks.
Stan Lee helped build a universe out of words and pictures.
Frank Miller helped redefine an existing icon with a different story.
AI may give the next generation an entirely different set of tools.
The remaining question is the same one it’s always been: