Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings presents a nice overview of the history of comics, in the form of an attempt to categorize the history into more-or-less discrete Ages. The Golden and Silver Ages are fairly well defined (Golden begins in 1939 with the intro of Superman in Action Comics #1; Silver in 1956 with the intro of the modern Flash in Showcase #4); but the history of the medium since then is a bit harder to get a handle on. Henley gets it right, I think, by concentrating less on the creative content, and more on the business and distribution model surrounding the medium.

The current model has (mostly) monthly periodicals distributed (mostly) to specialty shops that also (mostly) deal in games. This first run might not truly be considered a loss-leader -- I don't know if it makes money for the publishers or not -- but the real money materializes when the best of this content is collected into trade paperbacks, which can be marketed to the big-box bookstores and mall outlets, and even general retailers (both real-world and virtual).

Interestingly, Henley misses another link in this chain, as free web-based content may form another, earlier stage in this process. Liberty Meadows, PVP Online, and Dork Tower are all being collected and published in periodical comic format (with some new comic-book-only material); others, such as Jesse Chen's She's a Nightmare, aspire to do the same. If they do well, they may in turn be collected as paperbacks.

If this works, it may develop into a complex multi-tiered commercial ecology with very low barriers to entry (other than sweat equity). Free internet distribution at the entry level, with possible syndication in daily or weekly print publications; monthly or bi-monthly collections distributed to specialty shops at the next level; and trade paperbacks distributed to booksellers at the top of the economic pyramid.

I wonder, too, if a similar economic pyramid may develop for prose offerings as well. The Onion or the vast Lileks empire may prove to be a model for this. (And whatever happened to the warblogger book someone was working on way back when?)

Interesting, and worth watching in the future.