Russ Toney of C & C Comics in Saint Albans, West Virginia comments on DC's 'Villains Month' allocations (see "DC Says 3-D Motion Covers Will Be Allocated"):

DC's "Villains Month" has arrived.  52 different one-shots featuring the world's vilest villains, with 3D motion covers.  The first batch has shipped along with a promotion card checklist, three pages of in-house ads in the comics to promote the event on Wednesday September 4th, 2013.
 
The comics have already been allocated weeks before the event started.  Comic shops are not getting their ordered amounts.  Dealers started selling them on eBay before the comics ever shipped once the allocation notice was sent.  Customers were asking for the 3D covers once they discovered they would be hard for their retailer to get or reorder.
 
One of the biggest problems is that the people in charge of publishing comics seem to want to keep things secret and not release a lot of detail ahead of time.
 
Now let us look at the world of sci-fi and comic book movies.  X-Men: Days of Future Past will not be out until next year.  Are things being kept secret?  Are pictures being held secret?  No, director Bryan Singer has gone out of his way to post pictures and basic info about the movie.  Did Peter Jackson keep The Hobbit secret?  No, his posting of clips of the filming and information about the movie keeps his fans excited.  Thor, Man of Steel and most others do this.  The studios and creators and actors know that this increases interest in the movies; it gets the fans excited.  They know their customer base--they know that this will only increase interest and of course ticket sales.
 
But the comic industry does it totally different.  What if DC had sent out the checklist cards months ago high-lighting the event?  What if DC had informed all ahead of time that the covers take longer to produce and because of this the order had to be done and finalized a month or two earlier?  What if customers and dealers knew that the print run would be limited to the original order?  What if the in-house ads had started sooner?
 
What if DC had taken the approach that Peter Jackson, Bryan Singer and the movie studios did?  How many comics would have been sold?  How much would DC have made?  How much would the writers and artists make in increased sales?  How much would retailers make?  How many fans would have gotten the books and not face an allocation by shops who did not receive their full order?
 
This is not just to point a finger at DC, for it seems to happen a lot in the comic industry.  Have the faith in your projects, get the promotional material out to the retailers before the order is due.  Get the checklists out there before the customer turns his order in.  Get the customer excited about the project.  Build interest, and get the readers excited.
 
Receiving checklists the day the first titles arrive, although nice, is weeks if not months late.  The in-house ad featuring the covers is late.  If the people in charge knew the printing would take longer they should have planned better.  They should have worked closer with Diamond and retailers to let them know what was going on.  They could have simply told us the time it takes to print the covers, and that the orders would be needed to be done sooner and the print run would be set at the original order with no reorders available.  And this in turn would let the retailers inform their customers, to stress that they must order in advance.
 
I truly hope that DC and others learn from this event.  But from things that have happened in the past, I feel that this will not happen.
 
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.