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DC comics

Started by Smith, 20 April, 2017, 07:25:15 PM

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positronic

Oh, and Mxyzptlk explains it all: Pre-Flashpoint DCU? New52 DCU? One and the same. :o Because he said so, so don't think too hard about it.  :-\ If it seems impossible, it probably has something to do with Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan. Maybe if someone can find one of them they can explain where the Psycho-Pirate's Medusa Mask came from.

Smith

I havent even heard about Nowhere men till now,so I cant judge;but I would say Wildstorm has a bit of an edge there due to (however small) existing fanbase and name recognition.And Warren Ellis.
I dont think anyone expexts a new Planetary.I just want a good book and so far I liked Wild Storm.And I really hope it doesnt get canceled.
Unrelated to that-BRING BACK HITMAN! :)

positronic

Hey, Jim Lee's the co-publisher. That means he gets to publish whatever he wants, regardless of whether or not anyone buys it. The Wild Storm tells you right on the cover how many issues it will run. Compared to most other DC comics it's not so bad, but somehow I doubt whether it will have the kind of impact on readers that The Authority did when Ellis wrote that (to bring it down to a more realistic comparison than Planetary).

Hitman lived on in the form of a couple of recent spinoff miniseries from 2015/2016: All-Star Section Ei8ht, and Six-Pack & Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroz, under Hitman original writer Garth Ennis.

Smith

Well,not every comic can be Watchmen.
I am aware of those,ofc.

positronic

Quote from: Smith on 21 April, 2017, 06:28:27 PM
Well,not every comic can be Watchmen.
I am aware of those,ofc.

Not every year can be 1986, either. Probably only one, so timing might have a lot to do with it. There are a heck of a lot of comics being published, and it's very few years that get a Watchmen, let alone a Dark Knight Returns and a Crisis on Infinite Earths, too.

1986 had a lot of comics published that no one remembers now, and I expect that pattern will continue in 2017, so lacking anything like the aforementioned titles on the horizon, that would be most of them. Maybe even ALL of them.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Smith on 21 April, 2017, 04:09:31 PM
I havent even heard about Nowhere men till now,so I cant judge;

You should read it so you can, and judge it GREAT. A fantastic read blighted by delays alas.

Smith

Okay,its on The List now. :)
@Positronic; Im not sure Im following you at this point.What Im trying to say is: Wild Storm is not Authority or Planetary or Wildcats 3.0 and it doesnt try to be.As its own thing,I think it stands pretty well.And thats the important part.

positronic

Quote from: Smith on 22 April, 2017, 05:28:55 AM
Okay,its on The List now. :)
@Positronic; Im not sure Im following you at this point.What Im trying to say is: Wild Storm is not Authority or Planetary or Wildcats 3.0 and it doesnt try to be.As its own thing,I think it stands pretty well.And thats the important part.

Well, it's like The Authority in that it shares the same author, and that The Authority was a soft reboot of the previous Wildstorm series, Stormwatch. And of course there were a couple of other, more line-wide Wildstorm reboots after that which quickly stalled. That's not including the aborted attempt to merge the Wildstorm characters into the New 52 DCU. All of the WS character-centric titles associated with that turned out to be epic fails that were quickly cancelled, and that fact is still part of most DC readers' awareness.

The Wild Storm is the basis of a new reboot of those same characters. Apart from whatever intrinsic merits the current series may have, the weight of history is putting it into a position of fighting a serious uphill battle for recognition and credibility with readers. Just trying to acknowledge the reality of the market the comic is launching into in 2017. It tends to have a big disadvantage in calling attention to itself in a marketplace overcrowded with revamps and relaunches of other more recognizable characters (or new imprints, like Dark Matter). Content-wise it might be better aligned with the Image Comics reader, but I don't know if it can get their attention either.

What I meant was that 1986 turned out to be a pivotal time in the history of the comic book industry (for a lot of reasons), and those moments just aren't duplicatable-to-order or even subject to predictability. The 2017 comic book marketplace is a very tough market to compete in.

positronic

This might just be hubris on Jim Lee's part, to insist on keeping putting those characters out there. Right now the smarter strategy might have been to let them lie dormant for a few more years, letting bad memories of recently-aborted reboots fade, and pick a time when there was more stability with DC's main universe to roll out a new reboot of the Wildstorm universe. Right now most of the market attention seems to be focused on DCU Rebirth.

Smith

According to Diamond,Wild Storm #2 sold around 34-35k.Which is well into average numbers,so obviously,your theory doesnt work.

positronic

#25
Quote from: Smith on 22 April, 2017, 06:18:24 AM
According to Diamond,Wild Storm #2 sold around 34-35k.Which is well into average numbers,so obviously,your theory doesnt work.

No theory can account for the first few issue sales. It must be remembered that the numbers you see represent the number of copies purchased by retailers, not consumers. Diamond Comics might be able to sell early issues to retailers, but until actual retail sales are accounted by those retailers, it won't impact their preorders for the title. It remains to be seen whether or not readers who purchased the book with stick with it for the entire run, drop off, or increase by word-of-mouth. Will it create buzz? Additional variant covers tend to not reflect actual readership, so there's an additional fluctuation from apparent numbers reported by Diamond Comics, since few collectors will buy additional copies of variants over the course of the entire run of a longer limited series. Let's see where the sales are at by issue #5 or 6.

A good example of what I'm talking about might be Marvel's Miracleman, which was initially anticipated as a good seller by retailers and had multiple variant covers for early issues, but not only didn't sell at expected levels from the start, but experienced significant dropoff in actual retail sales after a few months.

Smith

Thanks for explaining what I already know.
Point is,its not doing as terrible as you claimed.

Old Tankie

I thought it was normal for sales to drop after the  first issue.

positronic

Quote from: Smith on 22 April, 2017, 09:26:47 AM
Thanks for explaining what I already know.
Point is,its not doing as terrible as you claimed.

Well, not for Diamond or DC, at this point, because all of the sales are based on what retailers anticipated they could sell to their customers. Most comic sales reflect a downward (not upward) trend in ordering patterns after the first 2 issues, because retailers first had to place their preorders for #2 before they received issue #1 to sell. Actual retailer ordering patterns could be affected as soon as the week after issue #1 goes on sale, but there's an additional period where orders could still be based on the faith or hope a retailer himself placed in the title, depending on how he felt himself after reading the first issue. If he still has plenty of copies of the first two issues, he may still order higher on issues #3 or 4 than what he sold on the first two issues, based on a hope that in-store displays/promotion and one-on-one recommendations might get customers to purchase some of his unsold copies of issues #1 and 2 (assuming the retailer liked it, and is giving his honest opinion to customers in recommending it). By issue #5 or 6, however, the retailer's orders should be getting very close to the number of copies he's actually selling, through economic necessity and based on his actual retail sales numbers. Few titles actually experience an upward trend in sales after the first few issues have gone on sale, and while DC may have made some money in the short term if a retailer overanticipated his actual customer demand, that state of affairs can't possibly last past the first 4 or 5 issues if a retailer wants to stay profitable. Now, it may be possible that retailers actually did accurately gauge customer demand for the title on those first couple of issues, but there's really no statistics available to tell us if that is or isn't the case. On average a title from a large publisher would be more likely to be over-ordered than under-ordered, where for smaller publishers it might be more like a 50/50 guess or tend towards under-orders on titles that flew under a retailer's radar that later generated positive buzz and customer demand.

positronic

#29
I worked at a couple of comic shops, so I've seen how these things actually work in the stores. No sales numbers reported by Diamond Comics for first and second issues of a new title can possibly accurately reflect actual retail sales, because at the time those orders were placed, no retail customers could have actually read the first issue yet, so sales numbers on those issues reported by Diamond just reflect what the marketing convinced retailers to believe the potential sales might be.