I remember reading somewhere that many, if not all, webtoons reach a far wider audience than any DC and Marvel periodical would do which would explain why they adopted the vertical scrolling cartoon format to keep up with their competitors. Even if not all webtoons are this commercially successful and accessible, they still get more of an audience than DC and Marvel magazines would. I could also say the same things about newspaper cartoons, now helped by that they’re just as online as the newspapers they come from. Websites like Vanguardngr, The Guardian.ng, Philippine Star and Philippine Inquirer all put their newspaper cartoons online for free, how cool is that?
It’s also been said elsewhere that normal people might be more comics literate than what they’re given credit for, though the only reason it doesn’t seem to be this way is because they read different kinds of comics. Or rather cartoons as these are commonly called, these could be Doonesbury, Cathy or Dilbert. Even then, they still have a wider audience than any one of the X-Men comics do even if they don’t have a blockbuster movie series. Yet they’re the kinds of comics, the kinds of cartoons more people commonly consume or encounter in some form or another. They’re far more accessible than any X-Men comic book and writer would’ve dreamt of, that speaks volumes about their ability to appeal to the masses.
To make matters worse, even with all the free pirated copies around online, DC and Marvel still struggle to appeal to outsiders and casual readers. It’s not just about the retcons and the reboots, but the fact that a good number of their later comics (save for the YA imprints) are heavily steeped in lore and fan pandering. You have people who think that Nightwing has a nice butt, so you have later DC writers catering to this fascination. The only problem is Nightwing’s only appealing to those who’re either Nightwing fans or dedicated DC fans, there are more women who get off to romance novels than they do with Nightwing comics.
Another problem, perhaps the biggest problem, would be priority and even with all the piracy and webcomics around not a lot of people prioritise DC and Marvel that much on their reading list. If they have any at all, they’d even read something else altogether. They may not even read comics at all at a given time, which says a lot about DC and Marvel’s struggles to make their comics actually accessible to nonfans. It’s really easier for them to preach to the choir than it is to gain a larger audience, let alone an audience who wouldn’t commit themselves to DC and Marvel lore that much.
While the advantage of lore involves playing around familiar things and motifs, the disadvantage’s that you have to know these first. I could say similar things about fan pandering where fans come up with ideas not found in the actual story, until these finally make their way to the latter and it puts off everybody else. I guess when it comes to what makes a comic book or cartoon accessible, these involve being actually and readily accessible, little to no fan pandering and very light on lore (or non-lore oriented really). Many newspaper cartoons fulfill this very criteria very well, many recent DC and Marvel magazines fail this.
Let’s not also forget they’re inaccessible if because it can be this hard to find stories featuring a character you like as Tigra is with me. As a casual comics reader, I feel DC and Marvel have so much difficulty getting more readers aren’t just a matter of accessibility and lore but because it can be this hard to find one’s favourite character at all. Especially if they don’t have their own cartoon strip or magazine for long, to the point where it’s really easy to give up on them. It gets worse if the world they come from is vast and heavy on lore that it makes it harder to find them if you wanted to at all though they do show up unexpectedly.
Even then, the way it’s set up makes it harder for casual readers like myself to keep up with them.
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