Comics and graphic novels have maintained a steadily increasing popularity for decades, all the way back to their use in World War Two for propaganda purposes (Weeanor 2023). Despite this, it appears that comics are not funded enough and publishers are very reluctant to go all in with publishing them. This stigma against comics needs to end because they have never been read by so many people across the world as they are today.

While there may be a crisis with how few people read text-based books, this is not the case for comics, with their easy to absorb, yet complex stories (Ramzee 2024, Smart 2024). Despite the recent wave of digital media, children increasingly continue to grow up reading comics (Grand View Research 2022). There is an increasing demand for comics from adults as well, as 38% of adults in the USA and 28% of American women admitted in 2021 to reading them (Grand View Research 2022). This is because comics can explore universal themes like good versus evil, and be subversive and rebellious (Muriuki 2023). The workload to produce a comic can look like too much from a publisher’s perspective, as an inker, colourist, letterer, penciller and writer need to be hired, which is why risk-taking is needed by publishers in order to sell comics (Ramzee 2024). However, this kind of investment would be worth it, as the global comic book market size in 2021 was valued to be $7.14 billion, and will continue growing by 10.5% each year through to 2030 (Grand View Research 2022). On top of this, sales in 2021 were up by 70% compared to the combined sales of 2018 and 2019 (Grand View Research 2022). This success highlights the popularity of comics, and proves that agents should go on their own educational journey and retailers should put comics to the front of stores to be more inclusive (Knowles, Ramzee 2024).

An advantage of today’s comic book market is that printing is now more accessible than ever, as someone can make a book themselves if they do not find anything that interests them (Muriuki 2023). Despite rapidly changing societal norms, comic books have always evolved with the times and incorporated social justice in their stories (Hallywell 2023). This is important because two thirds of ethnic minorities read comics and Asia Pacific had an enormous share of 55% of the comic market in 2021 (Ramzee 2024, Grand View Research 2022). The importance of reading has arguably never been bigger, as 72% of American adults aged 18 and over in 2020 read a book of some sort, and children become more engaged with reading if they are reading comics (Grand View Research 2022, National Literacy Trust 2024). Understandably, the percentage of people who read comics decreased with age, as 49.7% of 8-to-11-year-olds read comics, while 32.1% of 16-to-18-year-olds read comics (National Literacy Trust 2024). However, the usefulness of comics cannot be denied, with those who do read them rating themselves as ‘very good’ readers (National Literacy Trust 2024).

Comic books have never been more popular and their influence has never been greater, so publishers need to end their reluctance to support them and retailers need to be proud to sell them in their stores.