Downs – "I Traded My Eyes"

I was looking at four, count ’em, four Shadow comics in my pull, but all I could think of was “stomach share.”

I just read a book called “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” and stomach share is an important concept for food companies. Given that A) Wall Street demands increasing profits every 90 days and B) the American population can only eat so much food, stomach share refers to the competition to get market share at the expense of your competitors.

Which brings me back to my four Shadow comics. They were: The Shadow, Shadow Now, Dark Nights (The Shadow meets the Green Hornet!) And The Shadow: Year One.

At first, I was astonished that I now live in a world with four Shadow comics. It’s like they created a comic company just for me! But that quickly gave way to the realization that I spent my whole comix budget on The Shadow. I won’t be taking a chance on anything indie or cool this month.

This is where the comix biz is at these days. Chasing a bigger part of an ever-shrinking pie. Stomach share.