For the next two weeks of Multiversity 101, I’m going to take a look at DC’s New 52 and their success to date. It’s been an interesting six months for DC, as they opened huge and have since seen their sales drop significantly as buzz about the New 52 died down and people started talking about new logos and Before Watchmen.
This week, I’m going to talk about my thoughts on what has worked and what hasn’t, both from an objective (how many books I’m buying now compared to before the relaunch and in month one) and subjective (thoughts on overall quality) standpoint. Next week I’ll be back with some look at estimated sales numbers, but you can worry about then.
Check out my thoughts after the jump.
The Pull List: Now vs. Then vs. Then Again
Here’s the good news: at the time of relaunch, I was only buying one DC proper comic monthly, and that was Scott Snyder, Jock and Francesco Francavilla’s “Detective Comics,” which was actually over. So jumping from that to purchasing the nineteen titles I was the first month of relaunch is one heck of a win for DC, and speaks volumes about the buzz they succeeded in creating with this whole venture.
That’s the good news. This is the slightly more troubling news. Check out the chart below.
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| Total comics bought by issue number |
That’s the path of my purchasing habits for the DC books. Now you’ll note that between #1 and #4, the number stayed relatively flat before dropping precipitously after that. There’s good reason. My local shop – Bosco’s in Anchorage, Alaska – created a loyalty program of sorts for those buying the new DC books. If you buy the first three issues, you get the fourth for free. Anything that made it past issue two was locked in, even if that third issue was a god awful mess. So that delayed the inevitable decline.
The only problem is, as you can see, between issue #1 and March’s #7 issues, my total will have dropped from nineteen purchased issues to six. That’s a six month total decrease of nearly 68.5%, a substantial (some would say catastrophic) amount by any account.
The six books that remain are a hodgepodge, blending the tried and true (Snyder/Capullo’s “Batman” and Azzarello/Chiang’s “Wonder Woman) to the predictably good (Blackman/Williams III/Reeder’s “Batwoman” and Manapul/Buccellato’s “The Flash) to even the unexpected (Snyder/Paquette’s “Swamp Thing” and Fialkov/Sorrentino’s “I, Vampire”).
For myself as a reader of a significant amount of comics, the upswing in DC comic intake has been short-lived at best.
But why?
So the question remains: why has my laundry list of titles dwindled so dramatically, so fast?
It’s pretty simple, really. The majority of the books I started with have existed in one of three camps: outright bad (I’m looking at you “Grifter” and “Stormwatch”), frustratingly mediocre (et tu, “Blue Beetle?”) and the dreaded “good but ultimately forgettable” category (sorry “All-Star Western” and “Demon Knights”).
It’s really easy to start dropping books on the fly when the quality just isn’t there. To me, the most frustrating thing about it is that these problems are so textbook comic books.
Look at “Blue Beetle” for example. This is a book that features a young, relatable hero with an outside of comics tie from the “Batman: Brave and the Bold” cartoon. If anyone theoretically could be a breakout hit with younger audiences, this would be it.
So what do we get? A mediocre retread of another Jaime Reyes series that just so happened to be great (the Giffen/Hamner and particularly Rogers/Albuquerque work), that features little personality and paint-by-numbers superhero storytelling. Basically, the ultimate play-it-safe move. Don’t be inventive, do be innocuous, but certainly never stand out.
Continued belowI think that’s the biggest problem with the DCnU as a whole. It seems to spend so much time trying to tell focus group friendly stories that the company thinks everyone wants to read that they end up pleasing no one in particular. It’s a spectacular failure in terms of creating resonant comic book storytelling from the start across the board.
Silver Linings
It’s blatantly obvious that DC’s relaunch has been imperfect at best as we look back on it, over a half year later.
However, the fact of the matter is that I was a, more or less, lapsed reader before all of this. Now, I am at six books coming home with me – compared to one before – and nearly none of those books are ones that I ever would have considered before. A moody vampire story from two lesser known creators? Something, in theory, stemming from “Brightest Day?” A freaking BARRY ALLEN Flash comic (I’m a die hard Wally West/Bart Allen guy)?
But all three of those books have been wonderfully illustrated and expertly told. They feel like they are trying something a little bit different, and for me, that’s a breath of fresh air.
The thing that kills me is that DC had the opportunity to start anew, telling comic stories that felt fresh and different and – simply put – good for once. They managed to do that in some cases, but in a lot of ways, that just makes their failures stand out all the more.
