It's the end of the year, the time when all columnists take a moment to pause and reflect on the last twelve months. And for Article 10, that means a look back on the highlights of the year in comics. Unfortunately, there weren't any.

Well, that's that done. And now some music.

Oh, all right, I'll do it properly. But in all seriousness, skimming back over the year's news, I find little or nothing to excite me. In all the time I've been reading comics, this must be the most boring year I can remember.

Not that good things haven't been happening. On the contrary, comics' march into the bookstore continues, and the performance of manga continues to show the way for the future. Manga is here to stay, and the major American players are finally waking up to the prospect of a future where they don't matter. DC has taken an outright move into manga reprint territory with CMX, presumably calculated to get them a foothold in the market. Marvel, on the other hand, have tried producing their own material in digest format, presumably reasoning that a genuine American alternative is more distinctive in that audience than mock-Japanese imitation. It's not an unreasonable theory, but they've had a lot of trouble finding the material to make it work - leading to the Marvel Age imprint undergoing a shake-up over the next couple of months.

'In all the time I've been reading comics, this is the most boring year I can remember.' This is still the big story in the North American market - it's a major shift in the ground rules. However, the initial shock of the new audience emerging has now passed. This is the third year running that I've written about the new manga audience in an Article 10 year-in-review column. It would be a stretch to say that anything particularly stands out as a development in this field; it's just a running theme that will be with us for some time to come.

What else? Well, the final collapse of CrossGen stands out as a major event. Not one that will have surprised anyone, even the diehard fans who spent months telling everyone that funding was just around the corner, because Marc Alessi said so. But the collapse of one of the bigger indie publishers is always a big story. Besides, after watching the company squirm for so long, it was almost a relief to see them put out of their misery. When a company is reduced to posting final issue scripts on message boards and publicly squabbling with its creators over unpaid bills while bleating sanctimoniously about loyalty, it's time to call it a day and end the pain.

In the long run, CrossGen will be nothing more than a footnote in the history of comics - yet another publisher with big ideas that couldn't pull it off. The direct market is an economically strange place - the barriers to entry are huge for new players, simply because most of the audience is so fanatically devoted to the existing franchises. Even Marvel and DC can't launch a new adventure comic successfully to save their lives. What hope does anyone else have? Ultimately, CrossGen ends up as a human interest story, rather than a major industry event - the story, when all is said and done, is how little difference they made.

The direct market is dominated by Marvel and DC, and probably will be until it dies. (I have 2009 in the sweepstake.) Both are locked in a duopoly, comfortably safe from any outside challengers, both happily settled into their roles. This means that both of them spend their core business squabbling with one another about exciting subjects such as who has the most books in the Top 10. Actually, DC has had a very good year in terms of launching successful high-profile titles, even if they still can't get the bulk of their books up into competition with Marvel's mid-table comics. But in the long run, they're just fighting over the deckchair with the best view on the Titanic.

'In the long run, CrossGen will be no more than a footnote in comics' history.' 2004 saw the deeply unpleasant return of the Big Event. IDENTITY CRISIS? Avengers Disassembled? Sins Past? Overhyped crap, the lot of it. DC's touching faith that IDENTITY CRISIS was somehow marketable to mainstream audiences because it happens to be written by Brad Meltzer was wince-inducing. These are direct market products if ever there was one - histrionic, incoherent melodramas sold on their Big Event status rather than the quality of their writing. We'll doubtless get many more of them next year, a prospect that makes me want to stab my eyes out with knitting needles.

Of course, DC don't just do superheroes; they have Vertigo and WildStorm as well. WildStorm is still performing CPR on the lifeless corpse of THE AUTHORITY and hoping to turn back the clock, but did manage to produce EX MACHINA, one of a handful of books that achieved some sort of splash this year on the basis of quality rather than hype. (STREET ANGEL also deserves a mention here.) To their credit, DC also tried something different with DC Focus, which predictably failed dismally. A shame, because HARD TIME is a very good book.

This was Marvel's first year without Bill Jemas. Can we have him back, please?

Strictly speaking, Marvel dispensed with Jemas' services in October 2003, but given the lead-in times for comics, this is the first year that we've seen what happens without him. It's not been hugely encouraging, to put it mildly. The general policy has been to banish anything vaguely different to the Marvel Knights imprint, and otherwise swing back in a conservative direction. So, aside from a renewed fascination for Big Events, we've also got a deluge of X-Men titles on the market (most of which aren't selling), yet more swiftly-cancelled revivals of old C-list hasbeens (IRON FIST, for god's sake), and a general dearth of anything new, imaginative or interesting.

'This was Marvel's first year without Bill Jemas. Can we have him back, please?' Marvel's only significant attempt to launch a new title was ARAÑA, a devastatingly mediocre book that got exactly the reaction it deserved. Their big promotional idea for 2004? Young Guns, in which Marvel hope you might not have heard of some artists who've been around for years. God help us.

To be fair, Marvel are trying to push some new concepts next year, and as I mentioned at the start of this column, they're clearly alive to the need to enter the manga audience. But they're trying to enter that market using their long-established characters, whom that audience have ignored for years. A smart move to offer something American now that the Japanese have reeled them in, or are Marvel just burying their heads in the sand? I suspect the latter, as Marvel still seems to consider itself primarily a licensing entity, determined to prove the value of its established characters.

I remain baffled as to why Marvel don't have a stab at creating any new characters to licence out - which you would have thought would be a better use of money than publishing seventeen X-Men comics for nobody to buy - but apparently such thinking isn't in favour at the moment. A shame, given that Marvel haven't created an enduringly popular superhero with mass appeal in over 20 years.

And if you think 2004 was backwards looking, just wait till 2005. The twentieth anniversary of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (sequel announced). The tenth anniversary of the X-Men's "Age of Apocalypse" storyline (sequel announced). The thirtieth anniversary of GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 (give them time). Yes, if you've ever longed to see superhero comics degenerate into even more of an inwards-looking, self-obsessed circle-jerk than before, this is going to be your year! You want innovation? Well, you're in the wrong place. Go read a book or something.

2004 - the year of steady progress, anticlimax, and rampant mediocrity. Sure to be remembered for years to come as the one between 2003 and 2005. Could have been worse, I suppose. At least I don't have to read Chuck Austen comics any more.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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