Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Mary Alice Wilson's Dark Star Comics in
One of our regular chores at Dark Star is policing the comic books rack--removing series as they end and filing the leftover comics to make room for new ones. The DC section is currently sporting quite a number of holes. There'd be even more if there weren't three Batman mini-series running currently (let's try not to do that any more, OK?). And we're going to need every inch of that space soon - but I'll get to that in a minute.
Meanwhile over on the Marvel shelf there's no space at all; maybe I'm crazy but I get the feeling The Marvel would very much like to fill all those DC slots for us. I mean, they've yet to finish any of the series that spiraled out of the now distantly remembered House of M event (Son of M, Sentinel Squad, 198, etc.) when they're gearing up for not just one event but two.
There's Annihilation which is really several different prologues to the actual Annihilation comic which won't be out for months, and Civil War, which will give us Frontline, several CW related specials plus some new series which will exist solely because of it. They (so far) include Alpha Flight and Heroes for Hire (I especially dislike how the forgettable, almost over Daughters of the Dragon mini-series that was released with such little fanfare retroactively has become 'important' because now it leads into the new Heroes for Hire title).
I'm inclined to think Marvel is over-extending themselves but the truth is fans have embraced a lot of these titles. To me it sure seemed like they were handing out series to every second rate supporting player available (I mean, Super Skrull? Ronan?), but you sure couldn't prove it by the way the first issue of Annihilation Silver Surfer has been selling for us. I wouldn't have thought The Surfer had many fans left after the recent appalling mini-series where he was depicted as a child abducting alien 'gray.'
The reason for all this expansion is obvious; DC's 52 (there's still part of me that wishes this wasn't the actual title, especially since there are good titles like Adventure and Sensation currently being unused, but don't worry; that's just the old fan in me talking). Marvel is apparently hoping that if they throw everything imaginable against the wall (oops, forgot about their impending Western event) it'll be enough to sink DC's battleship. And I've got to admit; DC is putting a lot of their corporate eggs in a particularly rickety basket.
Which isn't to say just because a weekly American comic book has never worked before doesn't mean it won't work now, especially since this attempt is coat-tailed to Infinite Crisis and has a roster of top talents on board. So I'm not really worried about selling 52 #1-4, #4-8 or even #9-12; with some good word of mouth I can see back issues moving off the shelves at a rapid clip. And worst case scenario, hey, they're returnable.
But after that, well...for one thing there's the problem of just displaying all those issues of 52. Experience shows if customers can readily get their hands on a comic before it goes into back issue stock (and goes up in price) there's a much better chance we'll be able to sell it. But after we get beyond that first three month honeymoon period, I'm really not sure what we're going to do with all those comics.
Then there's whether we can assume anyone will want copies of #1-12 six months from now, even when there won't be any collections of 52 (not even some cheap 'instant' ones, which would make a lot of sense) while the series is running. In September, will there be enough customers who'll want back issues of 52 and be willing to pony up $100+ to get caught up with the series to make it worth our while to have them in the store?
Then there's the matter of just how readable each individual issue will be; will a casual reader be able to pick up a copy of #38 on impulse? A lot depends on whether each issue is just a segment of an enormous continued story or there's enough stand-alone material to make it worth their while.
As someone who sells comic books I'm hoping there are enough readers, especially new ones (I'm guessing it's no accident that Civil War #1 is scheduled to be released the week before Free Comic Book Day and 52 #1 the week after) to make each series a success, because, after all, in the battle between the publishing giants there can only be one winner.
We, the retailers.
