How Demon Slayer Outsold the ENTIRE US Comic Book Enterprise

In the year 2020, something incredible happened. A single manga series outsold the entire U.S. comic book industry. With its engrossing narrative, and absolutely beautiful anime adaptation, it's no surprise this series took the world by storm. We all know what I'm talking about, so let's just say it. This manga is none other than Demon Slayer. Now, my first gut reaction to this news.

Was one of pure disbelief. There's no way this actually happened. But as I dug more and more into the research, what I found out was shocking. This actually did occur. The story was true. Personally, I still have a hard time believing it, but this realization has led me to one very important follow up question. How?.

Well, it turns out that this is kind of a tricky question to answer. Finding the truth is kind of like untangling a mixed up ball of yarn. There are so many interwoven parts at play, that it's difficult to discern what exactly caused this outcome. However, I think I've unraveled the mystery. I believe that there are three key factors.

That contributed to Demon Slayer's meteoric success. First is the pandemic and its impact on the U.S. comic book industry. So let's take a look at everyone's favorite things: numbers, charts, data points, and graphs. In 2020, Demon Slayer reportedly sold 82.345 million copies of its manga. That is an insane amount,especially when you look at America where the comic book industry as a whole sold roughly.

63.2 million copies. Now, a big part of this is because of the pandemic and the interruptions it had on the American supply chain. The printing and distribution industries had major hiccups, but this wasn't the worst part. The biggest impact that the comic book industry felt was in its brick and mortar stores. Think about where comic books are sold. They are often found in specialty stores,.

Novelty stores, or mom and pop shops. As we know, the pandemic absolutely threw a wrench in the machine, and due to state and federal overregulation, small business got absolutely hammered. With a lot of these stores either struggling to stay open or closing completely, comic books became harder and harder to get a hold of. But what's so fascinating about this aspect of the industry.

Is that some comic books were still selling really well. What was thriving in the pandemic were graphic novels. They are a major part of the revenue generated each year in this business, but in this case, the biggest differencebetween comic books and graphic novels was that graphic novels were carried and sold by major book retailer chains. These stores were able to survive the government.

Regulations and had a strong online presence, so even if some of the locations were shut down, they could still do business. Now, it's true that comic book sales were declining a few years previous to the pandemic, and we'll get to that, but the revenue of the industry as a whole was actually increasing year over year. How is that possible?.

Well, the price of comic books had been increasing each year as well. Think of this scenario like you would concert tickets. Sometimes it's more profitable to sell less tickets to a concert while you maintain a higher ticket price, instead of selling out the venue and filling every seat. Also, in 2020, the digital footprint of comic books grew significantly.

Pretty much out of necessity because the brick and mortar stores were being shut down. The comic book industry is still a billion dollar a year machine, so it's not really hurting,but the declining number of comic books sold each year is a little troubling. They declined significantly in 2020, but had been on a downward spiral for years, even before the pandemic.

So what is that about? This surprised me so much because it seems like superhero movies are at an all time high in terms of popularity. Every few months there's a new one coming out. And this brings us to our second key factor, the differences between the American comic book industry, the Japanese manga industry,and their relationships to the American film and Japanese animation industries, respectively.

On the outset,you would probably think that these two systems operate in a similar fashion. For instance, a comic book or manga is created and then down the road it's adapted for the screen and then turned into either a film or an anime. This is true, but there are fundamental differences that change things pretty significantly. The comic book industry has been around.

For a very long time, but superhero films are a pretty new genre in the film industry,at least in terms of being blockbusters. There have been superhero movies for a few decades now. The older Batman movies,Spawn, and Blade are a few examples, but it wasn't until Sony struck gold in 2002 with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man that superhero movies became incredibly lucrative mainstream blockbuster machines.

Marvel tried to catch up releasing commercial failures like two Hulk bombs and two Fantastic Four stinkers. It wasn't until Iron Man came out in 2008 that they finally were able to create a blockbuster of their own, and this launched the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Comic books have always been a niche market, and I think this is why the success of these movies took so long to come to fruition.

It wasn't until these movies became super popular that a more mainstream audience began to pay attention. The film adaptations of these comic books also have decades of material to draw upon, so they kind of ended up making their own stories,and they called this the cinematic universe. Events can take place here in a different way than things transpired in the comic book stories. This can be a good thing, but it can also be confusing.

For instance, let's say you didn't know anything about comic books, but you wanted to read Batman's origin story. Ummm… Where do you start? There is so much material here, it's an almost impossible question to answer. There are different versions, there are multiple iterations, and modernized retellings. Sure, people have strong opinions.

On what the most fundamental Batman origin story would be, but these are still just opinions. What I'm trying to say with this example is that even though the film industry is wildly lucrative, it doesn't really translate directly into more comic book sales like you think it would. The exception to this, funny enough, would probably be adaptations of graphic novels. I can almost guarantee that movies.

Like Watchmen and V for Vendetta would cause an uptick in sales of their respective graphic novels when these movies were released, just in terms of exposure. And the reason for this is that the source material is a single book that you can find and read easily. Comic books in general are much harder to do that with. This is not the case with manga and anime adaptations. Manga is usually released in weekly or monthly.

Anthology magazines and this is a great way to test each story's popularity. When enough chapters are made for a manga, a volume will be made called a tankoban, and this is a collection of chapters. This is probably the most popular version of manga that's on the market. These are the manga books that you always see in stores. Now, when animation studios decide to purchase the rights.

To adapt a manga into an anime, they already have a really good idea as to which stories will be a success,because they can tell how well the manga is doing. Conversely, this system makes it super accessible for audiences that watch anime but don't read manga to get into the source material, if they wanted to. Animation takes a long time to produce,.

So if you're waiting on your favorite show to come back out and you want to know what happens in the story, you can immediately jump into the manga and find out. And you always know exactly where to start: Volume one, chapter one. And this interplay would help explain the massive success that we see with Demon Slayer. The manga was definitely popular, it sold well and was already successful, but it wasn't until.

Ufotable's anime adaptation came out that Demon Slayer's popularity blasted off into the stratosphere. I think there are a few reasons for this, and granted, this is pretty much conjecture on my part, but anime has become much more mainstream in recent years, especially in the West. After this popularity came the popularity of manga. People realized that they could find out what happens in their favorite anime series.

And would read ahead to see how the story unfolds. The way these two parts of the industry interweave means that if one part is successful, the other has a much higher chanceof being a success as well. It doesn't really work this way in the West, which is sad because superhero films are at an all time high in terms of popularity and commercial success. Spider-Man No Way Home, Black Panther, and Avengers: Endgame all made over $1,000,000,000 each in worldwide gross income.

And still you don't really see a noticeable increase in comic book sales. But there is one major exception… MORBIUS. I mean, this movie just smashed all the box office records. We're talking trillions of dollars in revenue, brand deals, merchandise, countless awards and accolades, over 200% on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie sold over a Morbillion tickets.

I mean, all of my Morb-heads know, we were in that theater Morbin’ out, and when Jared Leto finally said, “It's Morbin’ Time”, I got chills down my spine. I don't think I'll ever experience anything quite like this ever again. But anyways, there is one final thing that contributed to the perfect storm of Demon Slayer outselling the entire US comic book industry,.

And that's the culture of the US as a whole. If you saw the thumbnail of this video, you probably have a good idea of what I'm talking about. Let's talk about woke culture. This all started a few years ago. Remember the graph that showed the past few years, even before the pandemic, that comic book sales had been in decline? Well, I believe that the present culture.

Would be one of the biggest reasons why. Let's define some terms. When I say woke culture, what do I mean by that? I am referring to this as a shorthand for a left wing political ideology that focuses on social justice and identity politics. Comic books have always had something to say about politics, but things recently got ramped up super hard before the story was the most important part of the comic.

In woke culture, everything takes a backseat to the almighty identity politics. This usually rears its head as “representation”, making characters minorities just for the sake of being a minority. Race, gender, sexual preference, disabilities, age, mental illnesses, the more boxes you check, the better, because you are representing smaller and smaller minority groups.

I don't have a problem with representation, my problem is that this political ideology usually assumes that just because you are a minority, you have automatically experienced oppression. This has always seemed dumb to me. But besides my feelings on the matter, there are two major problems with this application in storytelling. The first is that it is a profoundly uninteresting way.

To create characters. The second would be a conundrum you run into. You are trying to lift up these minorities by showing them off, giving them the spotlight,and trying to make them look cool. Well, now you've got a problem, because anything that would actually make them interesting, like moral flaws, character flaws, interpersonal issues, weaknesses, past trauma.

That shapes them into who they are is usually omitted because that would reflect poorly on the minority that you're trying to represent positively. So, rather than focus on making an interesting story that the character fits within and interacts well with, the focus is oftentimes solely on the character, and the story falls by the wayside. This inevitably leads to one thing. It's the killer of any serious political movement:.

CRINGE. It's how you end up with characters like, and I promise I'm not making this up, Snowflake and Safespace. They were revealed in Marvel'sThe New Warriors back in 2020, so it's kind of old news, but it's still funny to me. We always hear about how Hollywood is out of ideas, but it kind of seems like the comic book industry is too. That's why in these new editions, it's not really about the story of what's happening.

It's more just Superman, but gay. Iceman, but gay. Harley Quinn, but gay. Aquaman, but gay. Robin, but ga- Well, that’s pretty much the same. So make it, uhhh… Kitty Pryde, but gay. Wonder Woman, but gay. Batwoman, but gay.

Morbius, but gay. Joker. But Pre-… Preg-nant. Pregnant? Whoa, wait, wait. Wait, is this… Is this real? Yeah, it came out recently.

Oh-ho. Oh, boy. Hopefully that illustrates my point. Again, I have no problem with artists and writers wanting to make comics for everyone. Representation does matter. It's important and good to have characters from all walks of life and points of view, but not at the expense of the story, which is what often happens.

If representation is your only appealing hook, it's no wonder you aren't selling as many comics as you used to. I don't want it to seem like I'm just bashing these creators and their stories. That's not my intent. I think that they were trying to do a good thing when they created these comics. But some of these trends that I've noticed just seem like virtue signaling.

Oh, and if you want something that's really woke, let me share this. I have no doubt in my mind that the artists and writers who make these comics genuinely care about putting underrepresented people into the spotlight, but the studios and executives absolutely do not. This is the interesting business side of things. The more public outrage that these comics can drum up,.

The more free publicity they get. They don't care about representation. They care about selling comics, getting clicks, and ad revenue. To an extent, I did the same thing with this thumbnail. I thought it might elicit an emotional responsefrom some of you, and maybe it did, or maybe it didn't. Anyways guys, to my knowledge, those are all of the biggest factorsthat led to Demon Slayer.

Absolutely destroying and outselling the entire U.S. comic book industry. Well, maybe not the entire industry. After all, we still have Morbius. A huge shout out to the patronswho made this video possible. Javi G and Elias Axonov, you guys are absolute kings. If you would like to vote on content ideas, get early access to videos, or see your name in the credits,.

Consider checking out the Patreon page. Thank you so much for watching. I’m Drew Malou, and I will see you storytellers in the next video.

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