Rdc asked the question, in yesterday's comment, where will the next generation of readers come from?

I suppose, if there is a bright side of being such a dinky part of the demographic, that we have no where to go but up! My guess is that somewhere around 1% of the population is actively interested in comics. That gives us 99% of the world to conquer!

There is probably 5 - 10% of the population floating around that have read comics in the past, so they are our best bet. Then there is an exceeding small group of adults who are willing to try something new, and who haven't closed their minds to the possibilities of graphic storytelling.

I'm always being asked if the new Spider-man movie has helped sales, or the new Hellboy, or the new Transformers, or whatever movie is in the pipeline (and there seems to be a new movie every month or so.) The answer is -- non-superhero movies help sales in the specific franchise. That is, the 300 helps sales in the 300, and also in Frank Miller's other works, like of the Ronin, Return of the Darknight.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, sold lots of LOEG novels, and some of the other Alan Moore material, Watchmen, From Hell. And so on. Helpful that month, but usually short term.

Superhero movies? Not so much. Hardly at all, in fact. I always point out that if even 1/2 of 1% of the people who went to see the X-Men 2 movie on opening weekend had then bought an X-Men comic of the next month, sales would've doubled in that title. That didn't happen.

So, as has always been the case with comics except during the early 90's bubble years, we get one new customer at a time. If I get one new regular out of the Spider-man movie, and one new customer out of the X-Men movie, and one new customer out of the Daredevil movie, I've increased my subscription base by 3%! See what I mean -- we have no where to go but up!

But that isn't the whole answer, because of course the added credibility of the movies does help our overall business, I think. (Though, I will have more of the public look at the book, "The Art of the 300", which is basically stills and sketches from the movie than will pick up the actual graphic novel with the actual art. So credibility still has a looooonnnnngggg way to go.)

The analogy I'm using is this: If we think of fan interest as the hands of a clock, with 6:00 being zero interest, and 12:00 being buying level interest, we've always hovered at about the 8:00 level. Each customer brings his own level of interest to the store; so most customers may be at 6:00; which would take a miracle to get them to buy, but other customers being at 10:00 and maybe a small push will get them to buy.

Every good comic book movie pushes the clock closer to 12:00. For those that started at 6:00, some of them have moved to 7:00, which means that there is the slightest awareness of graphic novels. And a very few have been pushed from 10:00 or 11:00 all the way to buying. So good comic book movies can't hurt. (Bad movies or T.V. shows can -- I've always thought the Batman T.V. show set the comic credibility clock back to 6:00 for most of the world.)

So I'm hopeful our next generation of readers will come out of the huge pool of 99% of the world that isn't currently reading comics. It's a better bet than believing that kids will suddenly drop their I-pod's and head for the comic store.