The Future of Future
Rather late in the day, Future announced in April, 2003 that it had hired Jason Hughes as Sales and Marketing Manager, but despite this, and continual, but slow-moving interest from Hollywood, after just six issues each of Metallix and Freemind, a mere three of Deathmask and not one of Future's fourth-title — The Peacekeeper - having seen print, the company decided it had to "redirect efforts into a more profitable market," and stopped soliciting individual issues.
Citing "rising art & editorial costs," Layton notes that such "costs are simply not aligned to the percentage of sales in the comics industry." Therefore, in August, 2003 (after a brief hiatus - Deathmask and Freemind's last issues were dated May; Metallix #6 was June), Future Comics announced that it would be concentrating not on the declining direct (comics) market, but on the mass (books) market, and following publishers such as CrossGen in focusing its efforts on trade paperbacks and graphic novel-releases.
Reiterating Future's groundbreaking nature:
- "In a statement posted on the Comics Continuum website, Future Comics president and Editor-in-Chief Bob Layton said, "It has become rather obvious that consumer tastes are gravitating towards the trade paperback format. While the direct market continues to decline, mass market interest in the genre is on the increase. Europe and Japan have embraced this format for decades and statistics clearly show that the U.S. is heading in the same direction." "
Layton cited "statistics clearly show the U.S. is now heading in the same direction" with a predicted sales growth of 30% in 2004, and noting that in contrast, the costs of producing a monthly comic continued to rise.
Presciently, in light of subsequent more numerous shifts away from monthly comics towards collections, Philip Schweier, writing at ComicBookBin noted in September that Future's move was a bold one, but that a move away from comics one-time "cousins" (magazines)' monthly periodicity, "at this time may be only a quick-fix for current problems within the comics industry." Writing that "such a move would seem more viable since... a trade paperback has a much longer shelf life ," mass market and bookselling logic seemed to also (as did Schweier) tacitly supports Future's move, but it was not to be. Ironically paralleling the similarly timed arc of equally short-lived publisher CrossGen towards "a mass market format", Future's move came "far too late in the game to prevent the company from drowning in debt," with new investors and funding unavailable to back up the decision to produce a mass market product.
Future Comics was wound up in 2004, after only two and a half years.
Read more about this topic: Future Comics
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values.... Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)