I agree.
However, before this happened things STARTED going downhill for the business before the speculator boom. Sales apparently started descreasing when things started getting darker.
Then along came the speculators who created a false boom to the business then dropped it like a hot potato when they realized they didn't get instant riches.
Most stores were catering to these idiots & when they suddenly disappeared, many stores closed down.

Manga sure sets a good example, IMO. Quality stuff.

I felt the same way at the time. However, in retrospect, it would appear to have been a HUGE mistake.

That's for sure. Even JB touched on this in Action Comics, when he depicted Big Barda is less than savory circumnstances. I enjoyed it at the time, but once again, in retrospect, it was a HUGE mistake.

It would seem to me that you (and other detractors) have had this theory in mind for quite so time & have it so ingrained into what's left of your brain stem(s), that no amount of wordage on my part will enable you to escape this delusion, so...

And you & your hate-filled buddies will never realize that you are apparently so blinded by this nonsensical obsession of exaggerations.
This apparent escape into a fantasy realm in which you can gather together & actually hate on someone is the truly bizarre thing & the fact that this CAN happen constantly is very disturbing.
How can someone PREFER to be so negative about an individual. So much so that all logic gets thrown out the window in favor of exaggerations, innuendoes, & lies (back again!).
You use the word "laughingstock". What you fail to realize (and probably never will) is that the vast majority of the ones doing the laughing are basing their "opinions" on the afformentioned "exaggerations, innuendoes, & lies".
Mountains out of molehills. It makes things so much easier to hate, I guess.

Wow. Nothing over-the-top from the hate-parade, right?

Internet psychoanalysis from the likes of you & your hate-filled buddies. What more could anyone ask for?

Of course they had. What you are (purposefully?) failing to realize is that Watchmen (and the after-effects), IMO, hastened the downfall.
Of course, I admit it's definitely speculation on my part, but as keeps jumping out of what's left of my brain, with the knowledge of retrospection, the market may not be where it is today if things didn't get so dark.

In the entire history of Comicon, Paul, what percentage of your just under 1,000 posts do you think have nothing at all to do with John Byrne? Do you think you've made a whopping 1% of posts that are not Byrne-related? Half that?

As a followup, what role do you think you play here other than Byrne Bullet-Taker? In your mind, what contributions do you think you make to the Comicon community beyond taking on hate-filled bashers and correcting wrongs perpetrated against Byrne?

The comic sales question is a bit more complicated than that. The late 50s early 60s are probably the real end of the Golden Age of comic sales, where books like BATMAN and SUPERMAN might sell 500,000 copies a month. Then Marvel came on the scene but oddly enough, Marvel didn't really outsell DC. From their very start, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN or FANTASTIC FOUR never equalled the sales of DC's flagship characters. What happened is that DC sales started to drop in the mid to late 60s and kept on dropping until the mid 80s, while Marvel books declined some in the early to mid 70s but started to recover and by the mid 80s were selling better than they had since the 60s. Then in the mid 80s, DC halted their sales implosion (because of CRISIS or something else) and actually increased sales somewhat, but still remained far behind Marvel sales wise. That continued until the early 90s and the speculator boom/bust, when everthing went to heck. This is all based on sales figures from THE STANDARD CATALOG OF COMIC BOOKS.

So, while you can look at comic sales and see declining numbers over the years, it's not quite that simple.

Mike

It always seemed to me that the darkening started much earlier, and that folks like Byrne and Claremont were right there at the forefront of it. Dark Phoenix saga? Days of Future Past? Annihilus torturing Alicia? Sue Richards losing her child? Guardian's death? The Mutant Massacre? God Loves, Man Kills? Miller's Daredevil and Ronin? Terra in the Teen Titans? It's a long slippery slope.

And Byrne didn't exactly refuse to take part in the darkening after Watchmen and Dark Knight came out, either. His Next Men was incredibly dark, as was his OMAC. West Coast Avengers was pretty dark as well. Heck, he even had Superman kill. (To be fair, he did do some lighter projects as well, when given the opportunity, like Captain America/Batman and Generations.)

I guess I'd take his hindsight more seriously, if he also regretted his own dark stories and their contribution to the trend. If Watchmen should never have been written because of what it inspired others to do, so too, should his West Coast Avengers have never been written for what it inspired Bendis to do.

LOL! This really gave me a lift today. Thanks. (Tho I think if we're blaming AWC for Bendis, we also have to acknowledge the influence of the "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" 80s animated series (Firestar, anywone?)...