In the entertainment industry, producers speak longingly of the “four-quadrant blockbuster,” a film that appeals equally to boys, girls, men and women. The idea of what constitutes that appeal may be based on flawed age- and gender-based stereotypes, but the market value of a four-quadrant hit is undeniable. That’s partly because hitting four bullseyes at once has always been difficult and has become even more so in today’s generationally- and gender-polarized culture. It turns out that is true in the comics and events side of the business as well.
From comic cons to pop culture cons. Back in 2015 and 2016, I was working with the ticketing platform Eventbrite on a pioneering study of attendance at fan conventions. Exhibitors and programmers, acting on stereotypes about the market that were at least a decade out of date, figured that since American comics appealed to an overwhelmingly male audience, attendance at comic-branded conventions likely reflected that same skew. And then they wondered why their results fell short of expectations.
We know in retrospect that, by 2015, those assumptions had not passed the eye test for years. There were increasing numbers of women and girls coming into fandom, often through comics-adjacent media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or horror-romance novels, or through cosplay, but just as often through manga and comics that had a broader appeal. Women and girls were coming to conventions in larger and larger numbers. They just navigated them differently than the older male audience.
The Eventbrite report relied on real data from the ticketing service across hundreds of events, as well as a detailed survey of more than 2000 attendees. What it found is that convention audiences were nearly at gender parity in terms of attendance. Moreover, the younger the age cohort, the greater percentage of women. Among teens and young adults in 2016, the ratio was close to 65/35 female.
Other data from that survey showed that, contrary to the complaints of some exhibitors, women and girls spent as much or more money at the show as men. They just bought different stuff.
Inevitable tradeoffs. Ten years that feel like a geological era later, we’re seeing some consequences of that market shift. Conventions adapted to reflect their new audience and embraced, in the words of ReedPop showrunner Kristina Rogers, “more of a World’s Fair approach.” And, as with all niche-oriented entertainment from film and music to other kinds of collectibles, there is a tradeoff when pivoting toward a more mainstream audience, especially in venues where space is finite.
One consequence of that tradeoff is a new generational deficit that some, including myself, have noted.
“We seemed to serve every demographic equally save one which was completely absent- teenage boys,” wrote creator Tim Seeley (Godzilla, Hack/Slash, Revival) on Bluesky about last weekend’s C2E2 show in Chicago. “This is notable in that I was selling Inglorious X-Force which was traditionally a teen boy book.”
Seeley noted that led to a drop-off in sales as the more hardcore Friday crowd gave way to casual fans over the weekend.
I don’t have the raw data to back it up, but I observed the same thing at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle in early March, and at other large shows (with the notable exception of NYCC) over the past few years. There is stuff for young boys and girls, for teenage and YA girls, for adult men and women, and for nonbinary fans of all ages, all of whom were well-represented. But the teenage guys? Despite a fair amount of videogame, superhero, wrestling and other dude-oriented content, they were pretty thin on the ground.
Against the grain. The idea of a scarcity of teenage boys at comic conventions seems ludicrous to those of us who grew up in 20th century fan culture, but here we are. And it comes at a weird moment for the comics business, where we’re seeing a generational shift in buying patterns.
After two decades of explosive growth, kids graphic novels appear to be at a market plateau. Manga hasn’t had a big hit in a while. The MCU is at a low ebb. Titles like Saga that brought in a lot of female readers have ended and haven’t been replaced by similar content in the periodicals market.
What’s selling in stores? Absolute DC. Marvel Ultimates. Transformers. DC-Marvel crossovers. While all these books likely have plenty of female readers, they are coded for teen boys, written and drawn in styles that traditionally appeal to teen boys, done largely by male creators. And yet, the fans of this work are not showing up at fan conventions in numbers commensurate with their rising market power.
So where my boys at? Big conventions in the 2010s made deliberate efforts to gain four-quadrant appeal by investing in the newer, faster-growing segments of the audience. They succeeded in locking in both younger and older female attendees, but missed something going on with the other side of the aisle.
Whereas older men held on to the fan and collecting habits they had as kids, the Millennial generation of young male fans didn’t have the same interests or attachments. The strategy of treating Millennial teen guys as “older male collectors in training” no longer worked, but no one noticed because girls and women more than made up the difference in numbers.
Unfortunately, the generational transition from Millennials to Gen Z was accompanied by some really toxic gender discourse in the wider world that has polarized many young men, especially in fandom, against “feminized” spaces. This is the cultural manifestation of a pattern that sociologists have noted in the workplace, academia and elsewhere, stemming from the tendency of men to devalue activities they no longer control.
Whether you buy that theory or not, it is hard to ignore when you have voices claiming to represent adolescent male fandom, or at least adult fans with the mentality of adolescents, actively proclaiming “we don’t want to be part of a fandom that centers content catering to women and girls,” often with a lot less nuance.
Is balance possible? At a time when print periodical comics are making an unlikely comeback among younger readers, it feels like a huge missed opportunity to not have teen boys well represented in the social spaces of fandom. That’s especially true when the current generation of young male fans now seem more likely than their immediate elders to become the kind of hardcore collectors that have kept the hobby economically afloat for decades.
At the same time, you can’t make them more inviting for boys if the cost is giving up hard-won gains for women and girls. It’s a very 2020s dilemma, but solving it could unlock a lot of long-term value for the business.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICv2
