boredsilly

That certainly was it for me. I read a bit, off and on, as a kid, but in middle school I dropped it. I think I read maybe 2 books over those three years. Then in HS I befriended this girl (who is still my best friend to this day) and she was a voracious reader, and that made me want to read. I've been reading ever since.

I think a big problem with reading is it isn't easy. You have to work to get the fun. Not only using your imagination, but your attention span as well. As amazing as TV is, it really is a passive way to be entertained. Reading takes effort, and a lot of kids don't want to do that.

Travis McClain

I do agree price is certainly discouraging and not just for the kid who may be reading the comic, but for the parent who is paying that allowance. A lot of adults still think of comics as a disposable fad to be quickly outgrown and they can't wrap their heads around their kid paying $3-5 an issue, knowing that for every ten issues they don't buy, they could learn to save for a video game. So I suspect that some of the interest dies on the vine as Mom or Dad looks at the intended purchase, shakes their head and says, "Don't waste your money on this, Johnny."

Still, it's worth noting that some of us have shared anecdotal evidence that even when the comics (or books) are outright given to the child, they go unread. Despite some major overlap, I think there's a difference between why kids don't buy comics and why kids won't read.

I got to thinking about the basic media of entertainment. We're told that kids prefer video games, the Internet (particularly social networking), devour TV and movies, and while they fill their iPods with music, they don't believe music should cost anything. Somewhere behind all that is washing dishes by hand and then reading. Or, put another way:

• Video Games/Internet - Audio/Visual, Interactive
• TV/Movies - Audio/Visual, Passive
• Music - Audio, Passive
• Reading - Visual, Demanding

Note that while TV, movies and music are all passive forms of entertainment, kids feel free to do something else while watching or listening. The TV becomes little more than background for much of the time, more or less like a screensaver while they work out what they'd rather do or while they wait for their friends to respond to them online. Reading is the only medium that does not engage the ear and it also does not really invite multitasking. You can have a TV on or listen to music while you read, but for most people it's distracting.

So on the one hand, it appears today's kids are more or less lazy and don't want to have to "work" for their entertainment. On the other hand, I think they're accustomed to processing a lot all at once and reading does not allow for that.

Travis McClain

Earlier tonight I realized that this problem is more expansive than just today's youth. I've had to inform various people recently that the forthcoming John Carter of Mars film is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Barsoom" novels and that November's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is based on a famed John Le Carre novel. Now, I can understand average people not being well versed in decades-old novels, but these conversations were with people who consider themselves quite well informed about films. This means that whatever they were reading about those movies failed to inform them about their literary roots as well.

I was aware of these books for ages, even without reading them myself just because I encountered them in discussions about what I was reading. They turned up in interviews as favorites and influences, or they appeared in write-ups as inspirations for newer works. Apparently, either this no longer happens or there are a lot of people who don't take notice when it does. For the record, these discussions of mine have been with peers roughly my age so they would have grown up reading the same magazines with the same access to interviews and reviews that informed me.

Supermallet

I'm not sure that's necessarily evidence that the issue is pervasive. It's entirely possible that those people simply didn't encounter references to those books. I consider myself very well read and well versed in many elements of culture and even I come across a movie that I didn't know was based on a book.

Travis McClain

I didn't intend it to come across as indisputable evidence, mind you. It's perfectly reasonable to me that the individuals would be unfamiliar with the source materials, but what concerns me is that the current information they're reading doesn't seem to be noting that these things were based on books. So it's not the people I'm conversing with that I find troubling nearly as much as the fact that what they're reading about John Carter of Mars and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy don't seem be making that point.

Travis McClain

So, does anyone else suspect that the shops marking up new issues will prove to be a bad thing? To begin, I'm skeptical about how many of the DC sales are to speculators instead of new readers in the first place. More likely, a slate of #1's evoked a Pavlovian response among people who were either active readers or, like many of us in this forum, used to be active readers. I'd be very surprised to find out that a significant portion of sales were to new, younger readers.

Imagine you've taken your kid into a shop and when you get there, you see an issue whose $2.99 cover price has already made you apprehensive marked up to twice that or more. How much of an effort are you going to make to encourage your kid to get into a hobby where new content is marked up on the day it hits shelves?

fujishig

The marking up thing is the least of their worries, as you said the 2.99 thing is already a pretty high barrier, and the sold out thing is probably even higher. But really, if you wanted to start your kid off with something, I think you go with a collection, because that's really the only way to get a complete story these days with superhero books. You let a kid read JL 1, and maybe he'll love the art and the story, but when he gets to the end is he really going to wait a month for the next one? Is the (non-comic-reading) parent really going to go to the comic store on the day it comes out to pick up issue #2 before it sells out? And if you wait, you can get it collected or, if you go digital anyway, cheaper.

Plus, if you get invested in it, say, spending 18 bucks on the first 6 issues and loyally go to the store every month, what happens if the book gets canceled or rebooted or stuck in a crossover? They always say that video games have this high barrier to entry for non-video game players in that if you've never played video games, the controller is a huge obstacle, whereas people that have grown up with them take it for granted and can't understand the appeal of stuff like motion controls or more intuitive ways to control games. Sometimes as comic fans, we just take all this abuse, but the barrier to entry is not only the high prices (relative to other forms of entertainment) or the social pressures or the lack of availability, but a bunch of other things as well.

If there wasn't a need inside of us to read the latest and "greatest," we could spend years just reading and re-reading the best the format has to offer, most (but unfortunately not all) of which have been collected and re-collected and turned into absolutes or omnibuses or what have you. I still say that's where you create a new fan. Give 'em the complete Bone... they don't have to wait for the next issue, they don't have to wonder when it's going to come out or if there's a change in direction or creative team(granted, Bone didn't have those problems anyway), they can read a complete story and get hooked. You know the quality beforehand. Then when it's too late to stave off the addiction let them try the monthly stuff. Or give the DCnU a 6 month lead or so to see which ones are worthwhile, then get 'em digitally.

stingermck

This. In the 52 thread I mentioned I let my girlfriends 10 yo son read JL #1. He liked it, but immediately asked if I had issue 2. I explained the monthly schedule and he was disappointed.

Supermallet

I remember I used to have a subscription to Amazing Spider-Man. I was a huge fan and was happy to have it, because at the time I was too young to go to the comic store by myself. Almost every issue wasn't related to the previous one, though, because they'd finish off storylines in other Spider-Man titles. I was really disappointed and that gave me a strong push towards buying trades only. The month-long wait wasn't a problem, but waiting a month for a single part of a story that forced me to buy other comics to complete was a real turn off.

Ash Ketchum

Once upon a time, trailers made a big deal about the books that movies were based on. The trailer for THE BIG SLEEP (1946) showed Humphrey Bogart, the movie's star, as himself, going into a public library and asking the hot librarian to recommend a tough, hard-boiled novel. She convinces him to borrow "The Big Sleep" and he takes it home and reads it and visualizes scenes from the movie. And this from a novel that was already six years old when the movie was made! And in so many trailers of old for movies based on books, the book would get featured in the trailer and its cover shown and the author mentioned.

I was appalled at the trailer for MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003) because it didn't even mention the popular series of historical novels by Patrick O'Brian that the movie was based on.

Do the trailers for the Harry Potter and Twilight movies even mention the books? Or do they assume the audience already knows about the books and don't need to be told about them?

P.S. Of course, the same is true of trailers for movies based on comic books.

davidh777

My kid really likes Peanuts so I figured she'd eat up Calvin & Hobbes. Not so much--she said she didn't like it as much because they were standalone strips instead of an ongoing storyline.

kgrogers1979

And Peanuts does have an ongoing storyline?

davidh777

Depends on the era, but there are multiple-strip storylines about going to camp, baseball games, etc. I think that's what she was referring to.

Spiderbite

How old is your kid? I was a teenager when C&H came out and loved it from the start but I could see anyone younger than 14 not really getting that strip. The strip has a lot to do with nostalgia as a kid and Calvin usually talks well beyond his years. Hell, I read it now as an adult and catch things I didn't when I read it in my teens.

When I was younger 10 and younger, my favorite strip was The Family Circus which I could relate to the kids much of the time as well as Peanuts. Calvin can be a tough read for a young kid I would think.

My kid (who is about to turn 8) truly hated reading until this past year when he discovered the Super Diaper Baby and Captain Underpants books. Yes, they are crass little books but he latched onto them and found something he actually enjoyed reading by himself and to us. I was shocked as I thought he may never read a book in his life. Now he reads the level 2/3 Star Wars, Lego, Bionicle, etc. books on his own and we read a comic book together every night. (We are currently going thru the McFarlane Spider-Man Omnibus because I knew he would love the artwork.)

Not related but we read the first 10 issues of Spider-Man 2099 and I thought that series was absolutely horrid.

Supermallet

Try The Far Side.

Spiderbite

The Far Side for a kid?

Keith6601

Boom! has just started a Peanuts comic. The 2nd issue was released last week so you could try that for her as she already likes it. It's numerous 2-3 page stories but the same exact humor as the strip.

My sons loves The Far Side and he just turned 9. I think kids enjoy the funniness of the pictures more than the caption. He's asked what a couple mean that he didn't understand but he usually laughs and shows us while explaining in the picture why it's funny.

davidh777

A trailer has a very limited time in which to make an impression. If a source book is huge, then I can see making the effort to mention it, or if it's a brand-new movie franchise, but seriously, how much of your Russell Crowe-going movie audience is going to know who O'Brian is? They're going to sell it much better as a Crowe-starring adventure pic. Heck, I don't even recall the Hunger Games trailer mentioning that book.

On the other hand, if you're aiming at a book-club crowd, it makes total sense to mention the source for The Help or anything by Nicholas Sparks.

Eleven, so yeah, maybe it's too early. I read it later too. Then again, I'm still surprised by people who don't realize Hobbes is stuffed.

I did pick up the first issue since it was only a buck and left it in an accessible location. She said she read it but it didn't appear to make much of an impression. She does read Scooby-Doo and some other stuff, while her older sister has read some Archie and The Babysitters' Club (a GN adaptation of the novels--good stuff for tweens, and I've read a few of them myself ). Oh, and Wimpy Kid, which kind of counts.

I get excited when they dig the Barks/Rosa Uncle Scrooge oeuvre.

fujishig

I think what stood out to me about C&H as a kid was how beautiful the artwork was, at least compared to other strips of it's time.

When I read Brian Hibb's latest Tilting at Windmills (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=36900) analyzing the Bookscan numbers for 2011, one thing that stood out to me was that the top 3 graphic novels were all things I had never heard of and would probably never be seen at a comic shop:
Dork Diaries (158k)
Big Nate From the Top (84k)
The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future (39k)
Maus (36k)
Walking Dead Compendium 1 (35k)

Now these are only bookscan numbers, but the first DC title is Watchmen at 21k and the first Marvel is that Castle graphic novel at under 10k. There's a ton of manga in there, Scott Pilgrim, Bone, etc. But I guess my point was that there are books like Captain Underpants and Ook and Gluk that would totally go under our radar but would appeal to kids, and while some wouldn't necessarily be comics, they come close as a hybrid.

Me, I'm happy that Bone was released, in color, by Scholastic. I should have my wife order a set for her classroom.

BobO'Link

My kids were read to regularly when small. We started before they could crawl with "baby" type books and kept it up until after they were old enough to read for themselves. Story time was a regular bed time event. My grand kids have been given the same treatment. They *all* love books and love to read. That said, my son purchased a few comics when he was younger (early - mid 90s) but the *cost* kept him away even then. If *I* picked them up he'd read everything in the store and read most of what I brought home. My grand kids are the same. Cost is the factor which keeps them away. Of course I pick up titles for them on a regular basis, but they spend their allowance on cards, toys, games, etc. and *not* comics. Both grand kids who are old enough for the comic store *love* to go in and look around, but they purchase *only* when I provide the funds because the books are just too expensive. To quote my son when he was about 10: "They cost too much, Dad, plus I can just read them when you buy them". No, he did not make up for that when he left home and does not read comics any longer (yes, he's still an avid reader - just not comics because they are still "too expensive"). I've even begun to question why I purchase comics for the same reason. For what I typically spend in a week at the comic store for *less than ONE hour* of reading time I can pick up a hard cover and get days or weeks of reading. While I love the medium it's hard to justify the expense. Just imagine the perspective from the kids with their more limited comic budget. Even if a comic is re-read several times the expense still is difficult to justify.

So... "What to Do About Kids Not Wanting to Read?":

First, wisely chose your "core, gateway" books and
1. Lower the cost - Price them $1 or less per issue. If this means a return to newsprint, then so be it.
2. Make the books more friendly to "new" type readers.
3. Put spin-racks back in grocery stores *and* places like WM (yeah, they have comics but they're somewhat hidden in the very small book area). Put them at the checkouts.
4. Tell your story in a *single* issue. If you *need* more than one issue make this a infrequent practice, *not* the norm.
5. End the practice of the "summer crossover event".
6. Make them more kid-friendly.
7. Return the reference to prior events in editor notes

For your more "serious/teen/adult" oriented books, the ones the kids graduate to when they are ready, there are several more things to do to *keep* those readers:

Lower the cost - $2 should be "normal" for more mature fare with $3 being the exception - mainly self-published stuff as those guys don't have the resources of the big publishers. I'm constantly amazed at the quality of those type books which *still* sell for roughly the same as those from Marvel and DC.
Stop telling the *same* 20 stories over and over and over
Stop changing origin stories
Stop "fixing" your universe
Stop "relaunching" your universe
When you kill a character *do not bring them back - EVER*
If you *do* violate the above have enough respect for your readers to set the story *before* the death and make this clear in the first panel
Stop bouncing "creators" from book to book
Put out books *on time* - if someone can't do timely work, get rid of them

I'm sure I could come up with *lots* more but that's all the rant I have in me at the time...