There is no hotter product in pop culture than the super heroes of Marvel Comics. They are the driving force behind four blockbuster movies this year (including the top two in the global box office, the $ 3.6 billion Disney tandem of Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War) and on television they are featured in 10 live-action series spread between ABC, Fox, Netflix, FX, Hulu and Freeform – plus five more animated franchises

Do not expect a break during commercials, where Marvel's creations are the costumed pitchmen for Ford, Geico, Infiniti and Rocket Mortgage

There is one area, however, where Marvel's heroes do not rise to new heights, one in which they struggle to find new fans. In a twisted twist, it's in their original medium, in the pages of Marvel Comics.

Marvel's comics, which introduced the world to such characters as the Avengers, Spider-Man, X-Men, Deadpool and Venom, are still the brand to beat in his sector. Over the past decade, Marvel has earned first place in its annual competition for market share with rivals like DC Comics, Image and Dark Horse.

But the picture is less rosy when Marvel is competing with his own past. Today's comics sell a tenth of what Marvel expected in the 1960s and 1970s when comics were cheaper than treats and just as easy to find in newspaper kiosks, markets and pharmacies in the country.

The only shelves they reach are the 2,500 comic book stores doing business in the United States and Canada – and even that number is declining because the stores (including Meltdown Comics, the Sunset Boulevard emblem of 25 years) lose "

The challenge is even more important: for young consumers, could any comic book compare itself to video games, smartphones and video games? Pixar movies?

All Monthly Comics from Marvel, DC and Other Publishers reach readers through Diamond Comics Distributors based in Maryland, who reported that in 2017, single-issue sales were in more than 10 percent decline, while graphic novels (which reprint the most popular story of several numbers) s in the "trade paperback" format sold in bookstores) were down more than 9%.

This weekend, New York-based Marvel Comics brings its best creative talent to Comic-Con International in San Diego, the largest pop cultural convention in the world. Fans will hear about major new publishing directions for Captain America and the Fantastic Four and plans for the company's 80th anniversary celebration in 2019.

Marvel will be thrilled with any celebration after a bumpy year in which she has endured a minor retail revolt (following ordering policies on high-demand publications) and sparked a cultural debate (when a leader blamed diversity efforts for sales setbacks).

The year has ended on a happier note with CB Cebulski in chief, a move hailed widely as a good step towards boosting a brand that in recent years has been vague in his editorial vision amid defections of talent.

The presentations will put Marvel's editors in front of passionate fans. (many of them dressed in tights) who, like the followers of "Star Wars", turn between sycophancy or fury but are never apathetic.

Marvel's readership was dubbed "True Believers" in the 1960s, when the publisher presented itself as "The House of Ideas" and boasted of a legendary staff (led by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and John Buscema). They introduced a level of melodrama, humor and triumphant cosmic mythology that immediately reinvented the stoic superhero model that had been set up in the FDR era by Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman at DC Comics

. in those 1960s, comic strip numbers conquered a larger and older audience than previous superhero movies; In a 1965 survey of university campuses conducted by Esquire, Spider-Man and Hulk joined Che Guevara and Bob Dylan in a ranking of favorite countercultural icons. Marvel in the 1960s energized the entire cartoon industry by conquering a more adult audience but now (with a fan base of 30 years), the publisher's readership is getting older.

They often have little in common with current film scripts such as Disney's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" or television shows such as "Legion", "Daredevil", "Punisher" or "Jessica Jones" . "

Curious on-screen heroes who manage to find a comic book store might not recognize the heroes they find in their homonymous comics. (In the case of Netflix's "Luke Cage", the same character who deserves his own TV series was not popular enough to stick to his own monthly cartoon.) At Comic-Con, Marvel's TV Shows will pack fans into panel presentations with stars, but they will be separate and unrelated to the panels for comic readers. (Marvel film stars and filmmakers will not attend the San Diego show this year at all, which demonstrates their status as a commercial dynamo that no longer needs promotional opportunities. Comic-Con.)

According to Heidi MacDonald, editor of The Beat, a cartoon industry blog

"with Marvel Comics, they are definitely down compared to what's going on. they were five years ago, even though the movies have become huge. " I said. "But during this period, they've also been # 1 in the live market for something like 99 percent of the time, so their point of view is," If it's not broken, do not do not fix it. "

" Films and, to a lesser extent, TV shows have made Marvel a household brand and when you have a movie that is closely related to a specific story – like (the movie Fox) & "Logan", which was based on the graphic novel "Old Man Logan" – there is definitely an interest for this title – but when you see the power of the brand outside the band The question that people ask themselves is: "Do they do as much as possible?" "

Few people in Hollywood have more history than Michael Uslan. who started writing comics in the 1970s and used this expertise as executive producer on Tim Burton's "Batman", the 1989 hit that launched a new generation of superhero movies. Uslan remembers that Marvel Comics 'top directors gave him a sumptuous meal in Manhattan after the film caught fans' attention in all comics and gave Marvel a big boost in sales

to comics, but that's not the case now, "said Uslan." The biggest comic books now have little or no impact on comic book sales. Movies do not save comics; they replace them. So now I really worry about comics. Any means of entertainment that can not connect with the new generations, does not it have a foot in the grave? "

Uslan and most long-time observers agree that Marvel's future looks much smaller than its past … But it's not a worldview shared by Dan Buckley , the president of the edition for Marvel Entertainment and a veteran of the industry that responds to the chorus of the prophets of doom with a little laugh of survivor

"I managed the disappearance of the band comic. book business since 1991, "said Buckley." That's all that everyone has been talking about – how will it end. I find it fascinating that there is some cynicism in the beast. I have been fighting this for a very long time. "

The truth, he says, is that" it's a pretty fabulous affair. "

Buckley cites history and experience to support this view. Marvel is a company that went bankrupt, a disastrous start to Hollywood (remember "Howard the Duck" in the 1980s?) And a certain death in the Reagan era when "funny books" lost their best Chances of reaching young Americans When magazines and retailers released comics from department stores in the 1980s, the industry was saved by devoting themselves to the "hobby market," as Buckley calls him, adding that "the hobby sector is a wonderful business."

The superhero comic is (like jazz, baseball and hip-hop) a unique American creation but it is a foreign object for most young people today.

There is little endr oits where kids might even stumble upon it – Marvel's monthly numbers are not sold at Target, Barnes & Noble or even 7-11, where over the past few weeks you could have found Marvel Deadpool's favorite character on every Slurpee machine in America but nowhere on the magazine rack. In the movie theaters, Fox's Deadpool 2 is the biggest R-rated film in 2018 – but would his comics sell like popcorn if they were available in the lobby?

In private, some creators see themselves as R & D departments. Disney (who bought Marvel for $ 9 billion in 2009) and Warner Bros (who owns DC Comics) and judges the value of their content as property intellectual, not like an publishing company.

DC Comics challenges the status quo with a just-announced Wal-Mart Partnership. The retail giant will sell four monthly anthologies of comic strips of 100 different pages (mix of reprints with new and exclusive content) that will not be sold to comic book stores. The movement was greeted by complaints from the comic book community and by the curious interest of rival publishers, making it a topic of interest for Comic-Con.

Technology helped somewhat in the form of digital comics. scene, the comic book versions have been a poor success at best. Even here, once again, the requested product is mainly adapted to the sensibilities of long-time collectors, not beginners.

When Marvel entered the digital game in 2007, a Times reporter asked Buckley what was the main company challenge. "We have no more natural contact point for children," he said. Recalled from the quote by the same reporter, Buckley admitted that not much has changed in the last decade. "I was right when I said it and, you know, I would be right if I said it again."

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