Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at this interesting time in comics.It happens every year like clockwork. Somehow we've reached the end of summer without me noticing. All that's left is that final speed dump to September, those final two weeks of August where everyone with sense (and the financial means) seems to disappear, presumably for cooler climes. So although I've written and written about The Big DC Relaunch I'm still a little surprised that it all starts next week.
But before I get to that a few words about the big stack of DC final issues I've been working my way through. It's occurred to me DC has somehow managed to miss one final marketing trick--plastering the covers with "Final Issue!" banners. They were a mixed bag, some provided a summation of the series (Secret Six), or a look at what might have been (Batgirl) but the best of the lot was probably a glimpse of all the adventures we were going to miss out on (Justice League of America). But my favorite was undoubtedly Batman. Maybe by accident they created a nifty little story that is not only an effective little done-in-one but hammers home the point that superheroes should be about helping people. Now that they have seen it in action I can only hope DC is capable of reverse engineering the formula.
I fully expected The New 52 to do respectable initial numbers, lots of reorders, that sort of thing, but I didn't expect to see the initial sell-in of Justice League #1 to break the 200,000 copies barrier (see "Big Numbers for 52 Premieres"). Which beats June's Ultimate Spider-Man #160, a.k.a. "The Death of The Other Spider-Man," supposedly so far the bestselling comic of the year. Having six other New 52 titles break the 100,000 mark isn't small potatoes in today’s market either, though I don't suspect either Sgt. Rock and the Men of War or All-Star Western will be on the list.
The news originally came from a Los Angeles Times piece titled "DC Comics hopes revamped heroes and digital will save the day" and it's well worth your time to click on the link to it. There's lots of new art and video and though it's painful to look at there's a couple of graphs titled "A heroic decline" that shows just how far sales have fallen. It also contains that Dan Didio quote which given the level of denial there was anything wrong I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around:
"The truth is people are leaving anyway, they're just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices," DiDio said. "We didn't want to wake up one day and find we had a bunch of $20 books that 10,000 people are buying."
Because as I've written before whether you like it or not the Relaunch and going digital day and date is a desperate attempt to avoid what's being called in Grant Morrison's recent Rolling Stone interview "the death spiral." And as far as I can see there was nothing else they could do, except maybe accept the inevitable, turn off the lights and save Time-Warner save some money in the short run.
So it's a little surprising that, in spite of still declining circulation numbers and clear evidence of event fatigue we have this outstanding admission from Joe Quesada in his latest installation of Cup O' Joe over at the Newsarama website:
In this current market, readers are looking--first and foremost--for connectivity.
Well, I'll grant you that Fear Itself is without question better done and more successful than DC's Flashpoint (which has been as unnecessary and pointless as it has been unpleasant) but Marvel probably shouldn't see that as a invitation to produce still more Fear Itself. While I've enjoyed the main series quite a bit as usual most of the spin-off titles have also been unnecessary and pointless.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
