CBR: Tilting at Windmills - Jun 9, 2011

[Jim Turoczy]

My concerns lie with the 52 titles numbered 5 and 6 that will be shipping in January & February, which are usually slow months for comic stores.

[SJNeal]

Hopefully someone has forwarded this article to DC...

[Ultraist]

Releasing 52 number ones in one go is stupid.

DC should be doing this over 3 months, with 18 issues a month [still $50] or even 1 year, with each issue becoming the new feature of the week.

Great idea, horrible execution.

If I were the head of Marvel or DC, I would have Hibbs on speeddial.

I could do a better job of running DC. Cut titles, increase promotion and distribution.

Detective and Action Comics needs to be on every newsagent stand in every country in the west. Kids everywhere should be growing up with this stuff.

Maybe they need to speak to the guy who does the distribution for Archie/ Betty and Veronica, that shit is everywhere.

If Pokemon and Magic and Hockey cards are able to infiltrate department stores and toy stores, I don't see why comics can't find a way back into stores. I thought the Star Wars comics with the two-pack Star Wars toys was a great idea... but the trading cards seem to have it figured out the best.

Once kids get hooked on the story (assuming it's a good story) they'll go looking for the rest of it and can end up in their local comic shop.

At least, that's the way I did it way back when...

[TheDreamingCelestial]

Detective and Action Comics needs to be on every newsagent stand in every country in the west. Kids everywhere should be growing up with this stuff.

uhm.. no..

[JohnnyLiar]

uhm.. no..

good one.
douche.

[ScotsScribbler]

uhh yes, if we're serious about getting kids into comics.

I am not a fan of superhero comics at all, but they're how I got started, and with the movies, they are the biggest tie in to comics possible.

I also just found out that this reset includes Action and Detective Comics.

These two titles should NOT have been reset AT ALL.

They were coming up to #1000, an unprecendented achievement in superhero comics and they are now going back to square 1?

Idiots. Whatever.

[Trey]

Will any of the 52 number 1's have variant covers?

Yes, Deadpool variant covers.

52 number 1's are a lot.

When can you return them though? If I'm a retailer, I'd like to keep issue 1 along with 2,3, or 4, in case someone decides to try a series after word of mouth/reviews builds.

If i'm looking at a rack, I WILL impulse buy a series I did not get from the beginning. Case in point, Cornell's Luthor story in Action Comics.

[QCCBob]

Double post.

[QCCBob]

So, reaction by comic fans is extremely mixed, but the ones who are quitting are being replaced by ones who aren't necessarily commited. In other words, the guy who bought DC books for the last 15, 20, 25 years are leaving to be replaced by people who will pick up an issue or two IF they like it, maybe... The old business axiom, 'It's easier to keep a customer than get a new one' really comes into play here. I've had two 15+ year customers drop DC already. If it worked, why hasn't it helped Marvel's numbers? Outside ads will be a welcome thing, but who are they going to target? These books are aimed at the same group of buyers, shining up the old pig's ear doesn't change it from being a pig's ear. If all that's been holding the millions and millions of potential buyers back is Superman wearing his underwear on the outside, great! But, methinks the problems are a bit deeper than that.

[matthew_lane]

So, reaction by comic fans is extremely mixed, but the ones who are quitting are being replaced by ones who aren't necessarily commited. In other words, the guy who bought DC books for the last 15, 20, 25 years are leaving to be replaced by people who will pick up an issue or two IF they like it, maybe... The old business axiom, 'It's easier to keep a customer than get a new one' really comes into play here. I've had two 15+ year customers drop DC already.

Yep. I really don't see this bringing back any lapsed readers at all. But i do see a fair amount of us long time readers looking at this new DCU & saying, no thank you.

If it worked, why hasn't it helped Marvel's numbers? Outside ads will be a welcome thing, but who are they going to target? These books are aimed at the same group of buyers, shining up the old pig's ear doesn't change it from being a pig's ear. If all that's been holding the millions and millions of potential buyers back is Superman wearing his underwear on the outside, great! But, methinks the problems are a bit deeper than that.

Yeah, i'm think the problem is one that would have been very easy to fix. It goes like this: "We at DC promise that every single book is going to have a consistent writing crew & a consistent editorial overview, so books like Teen Titans wont be producing filler stories for the better part of a year and a half."

See how easy that was DC, thats all you needed, you didn't need to do all this rebooting.

[TheDreamingCelestial]

good one.
douche.

oh, I'm the douche now.. nice..

uhh yes, if we're serious about getting kids into comics.

I am not a fan of superhero comics at all, but they're how I got started, and with the movies, they are the biggest tie in to comics possible.

Dude, I have no problem with superhero comics whatsoever; they are fun as hell.. I was opposing your normative statement that every child should be growing up with Detective and Action comics (in "western countries", however you define that..). Why should they be in every child's hands instead of Ben10, Naruto, Dora, Avatar Aang, SpongeBob, Nemo or whatever else is the hot thing right now? (Not that I have a round about knowledge about the pedagogic qualities of every one of said franchises).

At its core the two characters that are featured in the titles that you propose are defined by extreme determination (obsession) together with a fantasy element of excessive richness, having nearly limitless resources at his desposal just to alienate any sense of identification for one; and being unbelievably powerful and being able to do whatever he wants, but choosing not to do the wrong things because of the great 'family values' he acquired for the other. I don't know why these two narratives are required to be a part of every child's upbringing.

Now if you were suggesting the same thing about, maybe Spider-Man, which is defined by the notion of responsibilty or the consequences of our actions/inactions; or the X-Men, who do the right thing even while facing prejudices and hatred, promoting tolerance; or like Teen Titans, which is about a group of young adults helping each other through their difficulties and forming a close, family like bond.. etc, etc,.. there might have been some good in making those stories a part of as many children as possible. Even than, I would have said it depends on particular stories, or directions, or the content of the issues and such.

So, I know that this has perhaps been a rant diverging from the main discussion in the thread, but I do believe it is a better thing to share than calling a group of people 'idiots', over ones disagrement on a numbering scheme.

[PeterJC]

Oh, OF COURSE THEY CARE -- the Direct Market is a known and stable market that produces a regular and predicitible amount of money. DM stores sell more DC comics per square foot that and B&N could ever hope to, and the installed base of the iPad is too small to even begin to pay for the creative costs of comics production even if there was some sort of insane penetration and retention rate.

If the DM "shut down" tomorrow, DC would be unlikely to be able to claim more than, mm, a third? of the current readership moving to digital, or the newstand. And I think that's being radically optimistic. Comics production could not survive a 2/3 drop in revenue from comics sales.

-B

I don't know... DC Comics, the publishing bit of DC, is small potatoes, revenue-wise. Time Warner doesn't own DC because it makes money off of comic books, it owns DC because it makes money off of its intellectual property. The entire comic book publishing industry is only worth a few hundred million dollars a year; DC/Time Warner will probably book more revenue on the Green Lantern movie (not to mention merchandise) than the entire industry will book on selling comics this year.

There's certainly a value in continuing to publish comics, as it keeps the IP fresh and introduces new ideas that can be milked for actual profits in other media. But DC Comics could easily be a loss leader, and it really wouldn't impact DC that much.

I also think that DC, as an entity, doesn't care a whit about the 'direct market.' The real potential market for selling comics is, as Brian points out, much larger than the actual base of people buying comics now. And you don't have to reach back into comics history when titles used to sell hundreds of thousands of copies (on the newsstand!) to see the evidence. Just look at how many more comics they sell in France or Japan. Heck, just look at how many people go to see Green Lantern this summer. Easily 99% of the people going to see that movie will never have read a Green Lantern comic, and many, many of them will not even know that Green Lantern comics are still being published.

That 99% of the Green Lantern movie audience is *all* potential new comic book customers. IF DC were smart, they'd actually mention Green Lantern comics in the movie trailers. If they were *really* smart, they'd end every trailer with, "Download Green Lantern comics at dccomics.com and the DC app for ios!" Because 99% of that 99% will never, ever set foot in a comic book shop. Not even in one of the nice ones. But a huge proportion of that 99% already buy digital content on their computers and smartphones and tablets.

All of this is why I think the DC relaunch with day-and-date digital releases is really smart. If DC cares to have DC Comics continue to be profitable, they really need to get out of the business of keeping Diamond and the direct market alive. And all those things Brian says about why he's not going to order most of the relaunched titles... they're all moot when you're talking about downloaded comics. There are no ordering costs, no shipping, no inventory, no stocking or guessing how many copies you'll need. Those problems are the retailers', but they are de facto DC's, too, if they cause comic books to go unsold (or unordered when they could have been sold, which is the same thing). Or they would be DC's problem, except for the fact that any book a customer can't get from his 'LCS' is only a click away.

This relaunch might be great for the direct market. It also might kill the direct market, with its notorious fragility. Killing the direct market would hurt the comic book publishing industry, no doubt, although it would recover. But would it hurt DC (and Marvel)? I don't think it really would, because neither of them needs to make money off of comic books. And they've been building alternatives to the direct market - alternatives with a global, instantaneous reach.

[dd2]

That Brian is correct. The argument is laid out and backed with facts from his long experience as a retailer. It should be equally as obvious that WB/DC employs at least a few competent marketers and accountants. They have concluded that this move is in THEIR best interest, rightly or wrongly concluded. That does not mean it has the best interest of the DM in mind as well. If they decide that digital and bookstores generate enough revenue, in a bean counter sense, to nourish the intellectual property, which is WB's first concern, the DM will be allowed the die on the vine

[briest57]

That 99% of the Green Lantern movie audience is *all* potential new comic book customers..

Slight exageration there. I know lots of people who love super hero movies but would never read a comic book. A large section of adults still consider them for kids.

[bluetyson]

I don't know any other business that you can't order from direct.

I do - and funnily enough, they are publishers of printed reading material. Those book things.