Much ado has been made about the sales slump comics have had in 2014, and as people are starting to figure out, a big part of that drop has been due to DC’s linewide drop. In fact, DC’s average issue sales have dropped by 13% over the past year, with their market share in dollars slumping to the tune of just under 26% of the market. (Note: all numbers per Comichron)
It has left many pundits wondering what DC can do to turn the tide, with some even (sort of) facetiously suggesting we may see a relaunch again. To me though, the answer is obvious, and we already have seen it: replacing lower tier books with weeklies featuring high profile creators and/or characters.
It was just announced last week that a third weekly series (on top of the already launched “Batman Eternal” and the soon-to-arrive “The New 52: Future’s End”) is coming in October in the form of “Earth 2: World’s End” from creators like Tom Taylor, Paul Levitz, Marguerite Bennett and Tyler Kirkham. That ensures that from October 2014 to March of 2015, 12 issues a month will be coming from three series, all of which come from top creators or already successful parts of their line.
But is this a real solution or a ploy of desperation? And is that move a good or bad thing for the future of DC? We try to find answers to those questions below.
The Current State
Before we look into whether or not all of this is a good idea, let’s look further into where DC is at overall. As stated above, they’re in a bit of a downturn, with their average book’s sales down 13.1% year-to-year and their market share slipping below 26% in terms of overall dollars. That’s not a good start, but when you look closer, you start finding out why things are so bad.
While the more highly rated books at the top have dropped by a higher percentage over the past six months, dipping by just over 19% (much of which comes from recently launched books seeing their numbers normalize), DC’s lower tier has hit distressingly low levels.
According to Comichron, there were three titles in DC’s New 52 that sold less than 10,000 total copies in March (“Stormwatch”, “Batwing”, and the aforementioned “The Movement”), which is a staggeringly low number for sales.
A big reason why is, in DC’s almost maniacal obsession to keep 52 titles on their publishing list at all times, they green lit an array of books that one would look at and openly wonder who their target markets were. I know that there were people who enjoyed “The Movement”, “Katana” and “Larfleeze” (okay, maybe not “Larfleeze”), but outside of a connection to the Green Lantern world for the last book, who was eager to read those books outside of the most diehard of DC fans?
Clearly they haven’t learned that much from their mistakes, as in March they announced the pending arrival of “Forever Man and the Infinity People”, an adaptation of a Jack Kirby concept from the team that adapted previous Kirby concept “O.M.A.C.”…that is until it was one of the very first cancelations in the New 52.
The lower tier of DC’s titles are in complete and utter disarray, and even higher up, very few titles are seeing what we’d call level sales numbers. When you compare the October 2013 and March 2014 sales of all 43 non-annual, regular release, New 52 titles, you find that only 10 of those saw less than a 10% decline over that six month period, with one of those actually increasing in sales (“World’s Finest”, which was likely boosted by a “Batman/Superman” crossover).
DC’s problems aren’t isolated, they’re seen line wide; and only a precious few show any significant hold with their audiences.
Continued belowPoint: Why This Will Work
Here’s the really good news for DC: they can’t do much worse than their lower tier books. The bar has been set pretty low, but it’s clear that most of their solutions for new books are properties that just don’t connect with readers in any really sustainable way.
But we do know that titles featuring Batman and his connected world do sell. And sell very well.
Subtract the lower tier books, add “Eternal”, and that my friends solves the sales decrease problem (in a sense) in one month. DC and the industry’s sales as a whole will normalize in April, gone will be the doom and gloom, and all it took was the comic book equivalent of shooting the Batsignal up into the Gotham sky.
DC has no reason to expect that this book will be anything less than successful for all of those reasons. They also know that they’ve seen significant success with weekly books in the past, especially with their first foray into that department with “52”. That book, written by a who’s who of DC writers at the time in the form of Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns, was a metronome of success, never dropping below 100,000 units shipped for a single issue for an entire year of weekly releases.
And much to DC’s delight, it also proves that who stars in the book doesn’t necessarily matter if a) the book has quality creators and b) it is actually good.
Their second weekly series, “The New 52: Future’s End”, starts on Free Comic Book Day from the stellar (and traditionally commercially successful) writing team of Brian Azzarello, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens and Jeff Lemire, with Ethan Van Sciver handling art duties for the free #0.
“Earth 2: World’s End” has less of a draw, as its creative team (besides the white hot Tom Taylor) isn’t really filled with big names, but it does have a strong chance of at least drawing the same orders the main “Earth 2” book gets, which is a far greater number than the lower tier tends to draw. Plus, it has alternative versions of the most popular heroes to use as selling points.
It’s worth noting that DC Co-Publisher Dan DiDio has confirmed that this final weekly will run for just six months, with all three series wrapping in March of 2015, alongside the presumed finale of Grant Morrison’s “The Multiversity”. That series, if timely (ha!), should be coming to an end then, meaning four series that could have major ramifications on the future of the DC universe would be wrapping right before April 2015.
DC fans, I’d make sure to circle that month on your calendar for something major.
All three weekly books with their 4 issues (at least) a month release schedule will generate decent-to-huge sales for DC more than likely, all the while replacing many of the lower tier books that have simply not produced. Based off all that, I believe that by October – maybe even sooner – DC will surpass Marvel again in market share.
Continued belowCounter-Point: Why This Might Not Work
All that said, there are a number of reasons why this might not work. While I think it will (at least in the sense that their short-term bottom line will improve), there are a few factors in play that might make this experience ultimately harmful for DC’s long-term prospects.
First, while the concept of fatigue for readers is one that I think is often overstated, it is worth noting that having three simultaneous weeklies is an incredible way to test that theory of mine. After all, when you look at the sales of the previous three weekly series that DC released – “52”, “Countdown” and “Trinity” – you can see how orders decrease with each successive weekly book, and you can see sales dropping on “Trinity” at the end of its run unlike the other two.
Granted, “Trinity” was a pretty big disaster by all accounts, with readers turning on that book as hard as a comic can be turned on, but still, you can see some level of fatigue in those charts.
And those books never ran at the same time, as each started roughly right after the other concluded. Imagine three running at the same time! Even if all three are $2.99 (the first two are), that’s still $36 a month a person would spend on those books alone.
On top of that, comic shops very well might hedge their bets on “Future’s End” given that its cast is almost entirely comprised of members from canceled books, and if “Earth 2: World’s End” sales only match the main book, it’s hardly going to be a dynamo of sales.
They’ll all certainly sell better than books like “The Movement” and “All-Star Western”, though, so odds are, this tactic will work, albeit exclusively for the window each runs in.
Brightest Day or Blackest Night?
This strategy will – in my mind – bolster DC’s sales to the point that they’ll either be ahead of Marvel or at the very least neck-and-neck with them for much of the remainder of the year. While DC likely would say that these stories stem from the ones they’ve been building since the relaunch (and they might have been), it is interesting that those weeklies came right around when they hit their biggest slump since the New 52’s inception.
With all three weeklies ending at the same time, a pretty good case can (and likely will) be made that the markings of another line-wide relaunch – or at least reformatting – is coming in April of 2015, and with that, the potential for a refocusing on line-based weekly series at DC. That is if these series are as successful for DC as I imagine they will be.
But does that potential success come at a cost? A cost of a much more sustainable future for their line than these weeklies could potentially provide?
After all, if DC sees that weeklies provide higher return options than mid-to-lower tier books they would create otherwise, that could lead to that tier disappearing at DC. Right now, it isn’t a big deal, as those books are both forgettable and not selling. But look at Marvel to see the potential those books offer, as “Captain Marvel”, “Hawkeye”, “She-Hulk” and “Ms. Marvel” are amongst the best books at the House of Ideas, and they have small yet passionate fan bases that offer something for both current readers and potential new readers. Is it worth the short-term gains for DC’s bottom line that these weekly books could lead to for the potential of harming the long-term creative future of their publishing line?
I’m not sure. It’s hard to see where the future lies for DC long-term, especially with the timing of each series’ conclusion. Even with very talented creators working on these weeklies, it seems to me that there might be more value in doing what they can to craft books of a better and more fan friendly quality in that mid-to-lower tier. Either way, these potentially fruitful weekly titles underline that DC is who we thought they were: a publisher with their eyes focused on today, regardless of what that might mean for tomorrow.
