US national debt

American comic-book sales and the American national debt, climbing together for two decades. Two stories that grow more elaborate every year, told to readers who keep coming back. Different genres, similar plot structure.

US comic and graphic-novel market revenue grew from about 300 million dollars in 2002 to over 2 billion by 2022 as Marvel and DC graphic-novel runs, manga's mainstream breakthrough, and bookstore-channel expansion lifted the category. The US national debt grew from about 6 trillion dollars in 2002 to over 30 trillion by 2022 as deficit spending compounded through tax cuts, recession responses, and pandemic-era stimulus. Two completely unrelated lines on different scales sharing a window because the same 21 years inflated both private discretionary spending and federal borrowing. The decade was generous to both ledgers.

Long-running stories accumulate complexity. The comic and the treasury both got harder to summarise.