Discussion Main / MagazineDecay

Hey, I found this image of two GQ covers on SLR Lounge that I feel illustrates the trope perfectly. Here's the link:

https://www.slrlounge.com/then-now-a-comparison-of-magazine-covers-over-the-last-century/

Should we forward it to the guys at Image Pickin' and see what they think?

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Duplicate Trope, started by IndirectActiveTransport on Jan 15th 2015 at 6:46:45 AM

Deleted these examples, since all of them are examples of Growing the Beard and the disappearance of Early-Installment Weirdness.

• DC Comics' The Brave and the Bold began as a historical adventure anthology featuring knights, viking princes, Roman gladiators, etc. After two dozen issues, it switched to being a tryout title for new characters and teams (most famously the Justice League Of America). Then, after a couple dozen issues of that, it switched to being the Alternate Company Equivalent of (or predecessor to, if you prefer) Marvel Team-Up.
• Undoubtedly the biggest comics examples are those of Detective Comics and Action Comics, which went from anthologies to focusing exclusively on their most popular features, Batman and Superman respectively.
  • Action Comics tried going back to an anthology series when it went weekly following its 600th issue in the late 1980s, but this concept didn't last a full year (42 issues) before it reverted to a regular Superman comic.
  • From 1991-2004, Superman's name dominated the cover logo of nearly every issue of Action Comics (aside from the occasional Supergirl issue or Action #1 homage). Detective Comics has vacillated much more, with Batman's name dominating the cover logo as early as 1968 (with the Batman logo side-by-side with "Detective Comics" beforehand). The New52 relaunch has settled on putting the heroes' names in smaller text above the nominal titles, so that the words "Detective" and "Action" are again the most prominent words.
• A good portion of the Silver Age Marvel heroes started in other books. Tales of Suspense, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish became books for Iron Man, Thor, Doctor Strange and the Incredible Hulk, respectively. None of these are running anymore, although Strange Tales has been converted to an indie anthology mini-series.
  • Journey Into Mystery has been restored twice - the first while Thor was in the Heroes Reborn world, where the book featured other characters from the Marvel Universe; the second when Thor moved to a new series, with Journey focusing on Thor's supporting cast, and now currently starring Sif.

• Averted by Gamefan, which only had one botched scoring in its long run, they apologized for it, and then they died out due to oversaturation prior to the internet, though when they began adding an anime section there were fears of this. (Which turned out unfounded, the editor personally wanted them in to drum up sales of anime he liked/warn people about those he found terrible) As costs grew so did the amount of ads, but they tried their damnedest not to lose pages to the ads. Also they had a comic series which starred the avatars of the reviewers, which caused cries of this when it ended, as it put a handful of game refs in sequential order with what they were reviewing. Nifty idea.

Seems like it could do with some editing from someone more familiar with the subject. Either that or clarification as right now it reads like "I liked the changes therefore it isn't decay." Which isn't how it works.

I don't want to add it to the main page as I'm not sure if it counts, but I notice Computer Shopper isn't here. Back in The '90s, it was the place to look for computer parts, and the magazine was (as noted on The Other Wiki) the size of the phone book. The last time I saw one in print, which was years ago, it was about the size of, oh, TIME or BusinessWeek.

PiQ, which retained a number of NTUSA's staff, would have lasted longer (I remember reviews of PiQ were reasonably positive), except for the parent company's collapse just a few months later.

I'm skeptical. PiQ's last issue was July 2008. ADV announced it was gone in September 2009, over a year later. Moreover, ADV didn't really die in the same sense that CPM or Geneon did—the four companies that it became are owned and run by the same people as ADV and this was just a legal trick.