Popverse to shut down at the end of the month

I’d been hearing rumbling about this for a day or so, but then had it confirmed: Popverse, the comics/entertainment news sites owned by ReedPop will shut down at the end of the month. 

I reached out to ReedPop for an official statement (which may very well have run by the time you read this) but the news was corroborated publicly by a BlueSky post by Trent Cannon, saying his column last week would be the final one and everyone has been laid off. 

For two years, I have run Popverse Jump as my little baby at Popverse. All my favorite hot takes on anime and manga (and the occasional side tangent) are there, for all to see. The final one ran yesterday and here it is.

HTTPS://WWW.THEPOPVERSE.COM/TV-PETER-CULLEN-TOONAMI-PROMOS-OPTIMUS-PRIME-ANIME-INFLUENCE-FANDOM

Just to note that it didn’t end because it ran its course or wasn’t successful. It was one of the most successful Member’s First columns we ran. Myself and the rest of the staff were all laid off so… that’s the end.

Popverse shutting down is a big surprise in many ways: it had great traffic and the timing before NYCC (also owned by ReedPop) seems really clueless.

While I don’t know any of the details, it’s less surprising to me when you consider that ReedPop sold off its entire network of gaming magazines to IGN a few years back. Also, having been privy to some of ReedPop’s previous attempts at launching a media site (NDA’d so no details), I’m even less surprised. (I worked for Reed for several years when it owned Publishers Weekly.)

ReedPop is the consumer events division of RX (formerly Reed Exhibitions) which is itself a division of RELX, a big multinational data/analytics company that owns various companies in the science, risk management and legal fields. RX is the world’s biggest event company, putting on some 350 events a year, but all in the B2B sector. 

ReedPop is really its only consumer facing division, a bit of an outlier for the company and Popverse was an outlier to an outlier. That it lasted four and a half years is honestly a testament to its incredibly talented editor in chief, Chris Arrant, who put his all into the site and hired an amazing staff. So my condolences and best wishes to him, Graeme McMillan, Jules Chin Greene and the rest of the writers and videographers. 

Of course, this is also just another log on the bonfire of comics media. I write about that every year but I think I didn’t this year? Well here we go! 

Popverse had everything going for it – a great staff, a well-funded parent company (RELX has a market cap of about $55 BILLION), and a multi-channel plan for monetization. They not only had ads, but subscriptions. You could become a Superfan and get paywalled content, exclusive video from ReedPop events, early access to event tickets and more. They did everything right…except fit into the overall business model of their parent company. 

So by my reckoning, that leaves The Beat, AIPT,Comic Book Club, Comicon, Graphic Policy,ICv2, and (sigh) Blding Cl as daily sites that put out daily comics news with original reporting and content. I don’t mean to leave out Eisner winnings sites The Comics Journal or SKTCHD, but they don’t report news as it happens, instead doing the necessary work of deep dives. In fact just look over on the right and you’ll see a sidebar with all the sites I could find that do comics content on a regular basis like Shelfdust, Solrad and so on. Additions welcome – leave em in the comments. 

That said, print is making a comeback with Comics the Magazine, Bubbles Zine, and Tiffany Babb’s growing media empire. I’m told the kids love zines, and people always like to hold things in their hands. 

CBR and Comicbook.com are still around but mostly top 10 lists and horrible Ai slop these days. When I talk to publicists, the days of getting an exclusive reveal on CBR are long over. 

Needless to say, most comics readers get their news and suggestions from YouTube and TikTok, anyway, and comics are doing fine, so you might ask if the comics publishing industry actually need comics media to sell things. 

I think the answer is no….and yes. “Influencers” talking about hot new comics definitely get the word out, but the vast majority of video content is based on news that gets reported on one of the major sites. 

As a test, just now, I did a search for the Vampirella/Sabrina crossover, a story distinctive and fresh enough that it will show the current trend. The Beat’s own story is the top news result (in my browser anyway), but in an incognito search,  the first result is League of Comic Geeks. This is a vast site that covers pulls lists, collectibles and many other things, but its front page doesn’t even have a “news” section that I can find. NO idea how that works. 

The second result is, of course, Reddit, which is a post linking to the AIPT story on the crossover. Then comes The Beat, That Other Site, and then Dynamite’s own site, then Graphic Policy and then just a mishmash of reddit posts, content aggregators, and smaller sites like Lotusland Comics, which basically runs pr regularly, god bless them. AIPT was on Google’s second page of results, BTW, because they decided a few year sago that 10 results was all you could get on a page so they could explain it to you in AI, instead.

I did a search on YouTube and several videos came up. Then I went to TikTok and got only videos of Sabrina Carpenter with fangs. 

I don’t want to overshadow the end of Popverse, which deserves its own mourning period, with my general thoughts on how all media has basically been deliberately destroyed but you know its true. I’ll save it for later. 

For now, pour one out for Popverse, and send good thoughts to staffers that they find gainful employment. They were an excellent site that took the high road, had good reporting, and added to the industry. It will be missed. 

Meanwhile, don’t forget to subscribe to The Beat’s Patreon, and smash that like button!