Our report on the orders on Batman:  The 10 Cent Adventure (see '10 Cent Batman Boffo') prompted this response from John Tinkess of Another Dimension in Calgary, Alberta, who thought the numbers were way too low.
 
I just finished reading your report on the 'boffo' orders for Batman The 10 Cent Adventure and, while 655,000 is a big number, it was much lower than I expected. I thought this book would easily break a million.

 

My store participated in the 10,000 copy promotion and it looks like, along with the other 15 retailers that took part, we accounted for about 200k copies leaving 450,000 for the other 3000+ stores out there. That's an average of 150 copies per store (a whopping $15 retail).

 

We constantly hear complaints in this industry regarding the lack of promotional efforts from the big publishers and yet here we have DC committing a large amount of resources toward a producing a low cost, entry level comic book and apparently many retailers chose not to support it.

 

At a cost of 4.5 to 5 cents each to retailers this book was virtually free.  With the backing of AOL/Time-Warner, DC was able to provide this book to us well below their cost so that WE could get as many copies as possible into the hands of new readers. Leave them in coffee shops, doctor's offices and anywhere else you can think of. Give them to every kid you see. Sell multiple copies to your customers and get them to do the same.

 

The whole point of this book was to remind people that comic books still exist as well as to introduce them to a new generation. It seems that more than a few people missed the point.