DC Comics Rebirth

[Prince Namor]

 

Darth Vader #1 LOTS of Incentive variants 264, 399 (Wow! Are there that many readers? They love us!)

Darth Vader #2 Two 1:25’s available 100, 010 (Hey! Where’d all those readers go?)

Darth Vader #3 One 1:25 85, 156 (Maybe introducing a new character in the SW Universe here will pick up sales next issue!)

Darth Vader #4 One 1:25 123, 394 (Yep. Brought us a bunch of new readers right? Right?)

Darth Vader #5 One 1:25 113, 025 (Hey, where’d 10,000 of them go. Oh well, we don’t need incentives anymore… this books is still cookin’)

Darth Vader #6 No Incentive Variants! 107, 739 (Hmm… dropped even more… thank god we have a SDCC exclusive for next issue)

Darth Vader #7 SDCC Variant 114, 349 (Dang, we only jumped 7000…)

Darth Vader #8 No Incentive Variant 98, 994 (Eeek…. how many readers do we have… one more incentive variant for ‘correlation’)

Darth Vader #9 One 1:25 100, 235 (Sales uptick… THIS’ll gain us some readers right?)

Darth Vader #10 No Incentive Variant 94, 372 (Ouch….)

Darth Vader #11 No Incentive Variant 92, 866 (I thought those variants would build readership…WTF…..)

Darth Vader #12 No Incentive Variant 90, 077 (I’m gonna faint… we need a CROSSOVER event!)

Darth Vader #13 All You Want Incentive 113, 448 (Vader Down! Yeah! Building sales! This’ll start an upward trend… right?)

Darth Vader #14 All You Want Incentive 97, 457 (Dang… let’s start thinking about rebooting the whole thing…..)

[Prince Namor]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

Yeah... for me it was Spider-man. They changed him in the 90's. to me it wasn't the same character I grew up with, and I just wasn't interested in simply buying into a 'brand'.

i pick one up now and then. Not really my thing.

 

I still love comics, and I still think it's one of the most unique characters ever created. But as far as I'm concerned it may as well be the clone that's in all of those stories now. Don't even recognize Peter Parker.

[BarryAllen]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

I think this makes sense. I don't know if we can generalize the age group, but I personally feel some of this.

 

It comes down to compelling stories and unfortunately that is easier to do with new(er) characters than ones that have been around (and changing) for decades. This is why Image and Valiant (among others) have such great stories - they are new(ish)! I don't envy what DC and Marvel have to do to keep things "fresh." Long term readers over 30 have had the opportunity to read everything offered in the market on those characters, so making it appealing again is very difficult.

 

My guess is that they are heavily targeting women and younger audiences in an attempt to snag them like they did "us." We will see if it works...if nothing else at least they have the help of movies these days.

[500Club]

While I'm not excited for the renumbering of DCs books, I'll still continue on with most of titles that I was purchasing before the switch. But it the constant relaunching/renumbering by Marvel and DC is breaking the completionist habit that most reader/collectors have.

Exactly. They've destroyed a beautiful recurring revenue model that existed 20 years ago, based on loyal run and character collectors. Back then, if you had full runs, and a book hit a rough patch, you'd probably keep it on your pull list, maintain your run, and wait for better times.

[500Club]

Look, you refuse to address what I have logically laid out as why your arguments are invalid. Then you continue to make the same unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts.

 

What you say has not been true from square one, there isn't anything "there" but your ongoing nonsense. It may sound great to you (or even others), but that doesn't make it accurate.

 

Either do the appropriate analysis to incorporate necessary factors to come to a proper conclusion, or don't.

 

However just posting more the the same drivel isn't proving your point any further or helping the discussion.

OK, go ahead and take the lead.

 

Tell us how, exactly, you see variants improving readership.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Perhaps readership IS growing now....

 

But not from variants.... How can we know?

 

You are right, I cannot prove that variants drive readership. However, you have not proven that they do not. I am sure you will claim otherwise because it is clear through your posts that your opinion is industry fact (you have that in common with a couple others on the boards) versus what it actually is: a population sample of "1." Not useless, but not enough to substantiate your arguments.

 

:shrug:

 

Wrong.

How many ways can I explain it.

 

1) Incentive Variants make up 0% of tpb and digital sales, yet they're growing 1000% faster than regular comics where variants are used to constantly try and get retailers to buy more copies. The purpose for buying a gn/tpb or digital copy is to READ it, It is attracting more READERS, and doing so WITHOUT the use of incentive variants.

 

2) The years in which incentive variants exist as an every month process, we sell less comics than any other decade that has NO incentive variants.

 

3) Marvel and DC continually try and reboot and restart and renumber their universes, more and more often, using incentive variants to coerce retailers into buying more and more product that ends up in $1 boxes. Not conducive to readership. Period.

 

Deny all you want, it's all there.

 

Look, you refuse to address what I have logically laid out as why your arguments are invalid. Then you continue to make the same unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts.

 

What you say has not been true from square one, there isn't anything "there" but your ongoing nonsense. It may sound great to you (or even others), but that doesn't make it accurate.

 

Either do the appropriate analysis to incorporate necessary factors to come to a proper conclusion, or don't.

 

However just posting more the the same drivel isn't proving your point any further or helping the discussion.

And the rebuttal you are making isn't proving anything either honestly. Whether or not anyone thinks variants do or don't prove increased readership the proof is in the pudding. Last relaunches by the big 2 has large print runs of #1's only to have that number drop 50 percent by issue 2 and continued to drop. Now if readership was growing the sales numbers would be there. They are not.

 

I lost count on how many individual variants there were for this last Star Wars #1 same goes for ASM volume 3 and 4. I could go and on and but why bother. If these stories the big 2 are pumping out and so great why is readership decreasing to warrant new #1 jumping onto points. I mean are we all supposed to believe from #1 to #3 a reader would refuse to buy a book because they are lost in the story? Nonsense.

 

Excellent point.

 

And of course the answer is, because it's NOT building readership, but it is giving a temporary spike to sales, which is enhanced even more by incentive variants.

Afterwards it drops, and when the stop using the incentives for an issue, it drops even more. There are your readers at the number left over.

 

As has been said already, and in other places, the appearance of incentives for any particular issue creates a very artificial picture of demand.

 

Example: ASM #666, which had 135k or so copies ordered, according to Diamond.

 

But those numbers include 500 copies of the store variants x 140 or so stores, which equals an additional 70,000 copies of "ASM #666", which Marvel and Diamond can they say "look how many copies we sold!"

 

The reality is, they didn't "sell" 135k copies....they sold about 65-70k copies, and the rest were part of an advertising campaign for stores.

 

This is true up and down the incentive variant spectrum. If a retailer has to order 50 copies of a book he normally only orders 20 copies of, just to get the 1:50, then he/she is going to have 30 copies he/she doesn't need, and will write those off as an advertising expense or what have you. They are NOT selling those extra 30 copies...for, to whom would they be sold? No one. They only sell 20 copies of the book on a regular basis to start with.

 

But it sure makes Marvel and Diamond's numbers look good, right? And Disney is all about the appearance; audit the underlying causes for why certain issues seem to "sell" certain amounts? Pas du tout!

 

As for the "unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts"...remember: this is the same person who said, with a straight face, that it is only opinion that Jack Kirby was working on Challengers of the Unknown #1 in the month or two leading up to the publication of Challengers of the Unknown #1, because there was no demonstrative, verifiable third-party proof that Jack Kirby was, in fact, working on Challengers of the Unknown #1 in the month or two leading up to the publication of Challengers of the Unknown #1.

 

Despite, obviously, basic reason and common sense dictating otherwise. It's all just opinion, and "baseless, unsubstantiated" opinion at that. After all, Kirby could have been working on Challengers of the Unknown #1 in 1942, for all we know, right?

 

That is the mentality presented here.

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

Example: ASM #666, which had 135k or so copies ordered, according to Diamond.

 

But those numbers include 500 copies of the store variants x 140 or so stores, which equals an additional 70,000 copies of "ASM #666", which Marvel and Diamond can they say "look how many copies we sold!"

 

The reality is, they didn't "sell" 135k copies....they sold about 65-70k copies, and the rest were part of an advertising campaign for stores.

 

By the way...there have been people arguing on this board that the reason for the 135k copies ordered...about 70,000 or so more than surrounding issues...was because it was "the prologue of a very popular story, "Spider-Island.""

 

Take away the incentive, and you find out that's not the case at all. You find that it was an average ASM, with average sales, nothing special about it in any way.

 

And yet, there were people arguing vociferously that there was a tremendous spike in sales because it was the first part of that story....not even knowing that that number was completely artificial, based on a one-time event, despite such information being readily available with even cursory searches.

 

That information should cause those people to say "huh. I guess I was wrong. Thanks for the information!"...but it doesn't, because there's no respect for research, analysis, understanding, or experience.

 

That's unfortunate.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

Yes, and a lot of that has to do with the quest for "diversity for the sake of diversity", and challenging that idea means you're a good old fashioned racist.

 

But, of course, that's not true. I don't care who it is, if I'm seeing a film about the character Luke Cage, I want to see a strong, muscular black man playing that role, because that's who the character IS. I don't want to see Simon Helberg play him, because that's not who Luke Cage is.

 

When I see Superman, I expect a muscular, handsome, square-jawed white man play him, because that's who the character is.

 

When I see Bruce Lee, I want to see a lanky, lithe, ASIAN (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) martial arts expert on screen...not Cate Blanchett.

 

When I drive by a McDonald's, I expect to see the stylized M...not the logo for Burger King.

 

Changing everything about a character, but calling them "Wolverine" doesn't build brand loyalty. Quite the opposite.

[Kaboom]

Perhaps readership IS growing now....

 

But not from variants.... How can we know?

 

You are right, I cannot prove that variants drive readership. However, you have not proven that they do not. I am sure you will claim otherwise because it is clear through your posts that your opinion is industry fact (you have that in common with a couple others on the boards) versus what it actually is: a population sample of "1." Not useless, but not enough to substantiate your arguments.

 

:shrug:

 

Wrong.

How many ways can I explain it.

 

1) Incentive Variants make up 0% of tpb and digital sales, yet they're growing 1000% faster than regular comics where variants are used to constantly try and get retailers to buy more copies. The purpose for buying a gn/tpb or digital copy is to READ it, It is attracting more READERS, and doing so WITHOUT the use of incentive variants.

 

2) The years in which incentive variants exist as an every month process, we sell less comics than any other decade that has NO incentive variants.

 

3) Marvel and DC continually try and reboot and restart and renumber their universes, more and more often, using incentive variants to coerce retailers into buying more and more product that ends up in $1 boxes. Not conducive to readership. Period.

 

Deny all you want, it's all there.

 

Look, you refuse to address what I have logically laid out as why your arguments are invalid. Then you continue to make the same unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts.

 

What you say has not been true from square one, there isn't anything "there" but your ongoing nonsense. It may sound great to you (or even others), but that doesn't make it accurate.

 

Either do the appropriate analysis to incorporate necessary factors to come to a proper conclusion, or don't.

 

However just posting more the the same drivel isn't proving your point any further or helping the discussion.

And the rebuttal you are making isn't proving anything either honestly. Whether or not anyone thinks variants do or don't prove increased readership the proof is in the pudding. Last relaunches by the big 2 has large print runs of #1's only to have that number drop 50 percent by issue 2 and continued to drop. Now if readership was growing the sales numbers would be there. They are not.

 

I lost count on how many individual variants there were for this last Star Wars #1 same goes for ASM volume 3 and 4. I could go and on and but why bother. If these stories the big 2 are pumping out are so great why is readership decreasing to warrant new #1 jumping onto points? I mean are we all supposed to believe from #1 to #3 a reader would refuse to buy a book because they are lost in the story? Nonsense.

 

I had a retailer tell me recently that they have to blind order copies of Marvel books, meaning, so far in advance they do not have sales numbers for the first couple of issues. So they order heavy on the first and drastically cut for second and subsequent issues. When the sales figures are able to be calculated, they increase or decrease their orders based on actual sales figures for the books. DC does not do this and as a result does not see sell outs the way Marvel does. I am not trying to interject myself in the argument of whether variants help or hurt readership (I don't buy many variants but the ones I do I don't read, I get a reader copy of the book for that), but just wanted to throw that out there in reference to the huge drop off for Marvel of issue 1 to issue 2. Any retailer want to correct me on this is fine, but this is what I was told.

[natevegas]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

Yes, and a lot of that has to do with the quest for "diversity for the sake of diversity", and challenging that idea means you're a good old fashioned racist.

 

But, of course, that's not true. I don't care who it is, if I'm seeing a film about the character Luke Cage, I want to see a strong, muscular black man playing that role, because that's who the character IS. I don't want to see Simon Helberg play him, because that's not who Luke Cage is.

 

When I see Superman, I expect a muscular, handsome, square-jawed white man play him, because that's who the character is.

 

When I see Bruce Lee, I want to see a lanky, lithe, ASIAN (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) martial arts expert on screen...not Cate Blanchett.

 

When I drive by a McDonald's, I expect to see the stylized M...not the logo for Burger King.

 

Changing everything about a character, but calling them "Wolverine" doesn't build brand loyalty. Quite the opposite.

Well said. The reason for liking a character for the way the character is has been under attack for a while.

 

Next time a little kid in Metropolis yells out help me while trapped in a burning building instead of Superman flying in how about a Old man Logan wearing Superman's outfit swooping in to save the day. The kid would be happy to be saved but if asked later about the experience he'd tell his friends I was saved by a guy who was pretending to be Superman.

[Jaydogrules]

 

Example: ASM #666, which had 135k or so copies ordered, according to Diamond.

 

But those numbers include 500 copies of the store variants x 140 or so stores, which equals an additional 70,000 copies of "ASM #666", which Marvel and Diamond can they say "look how many copies we sold!"

 

The reality is, they didn't "sell" 135k copies....they sold about 65-70k copies, and the rest were part of an advertising campaign for stores.

 

By the way...there have been people arguing on this board that the reason for the 135k copies ordered...about 70,000 or so more than surrounding issues...was because it was "the prologue of a very popular story, "Spider-Island.""

 

Take away the incentive, and you find out that's not the case at all. You find that it was an average ASM, with average sales, nothing special about it in any way.

 

And yet, there were people arguing vociferously that there was a tremendous spike in sales because it was the first part of that story...not even knowing that that number was completely artificial, based on a one-time event, despite such information being readily available with even cursory searches.

 

That information should cause those people to say "huh. I guess I was wrong. Thanks for the information!"...but it doesn't, because there's no respect for research, analysis, understanding, or experience.

 

That's unfortunate.

 

What and where (did) people vociferously say this about the 666 prelude issue to the eventual, ensuing Spider Island storyline (with "Part 1" actually being 667 anyway)?

 

-J.

[Kyle R.]

So.........ladies

 

Let's talk about DC: Rebirth.........

 

 

 

[Kaboom]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

Yeah... for me it was Spider-man. They changed him in the 90's. to me it wasn't the same character I grew up with, and I just wasn't interested in simply buying into a 'brand'.

i pick one up now and then. Not really my thing.

 

I still love comics, and I still think it's one of the most unique characters ever created. But as far as I'm concerned it may as well be the clone that's in all of those stories now. Don't even recognize Peter Parker.

 

To play devil's advocate, someone who has read Superman from the beginning (again, not me just for an example) would not recognize Superman as the character they grew up with, knew, and loved. He was once "faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a bound." He didn't fly or have the power set he has now. In fact, this change was part of DC's argument for defense in the lawsuit filed by Seigel and Schuster's family's lawsuit.

[Thawk]

I've been wondering about Rebirth - I don't think it's a total reboot - though I do suspect Supes gets his classic powers back somehow through the story.

[FutureFlash]

I've been wondering about Rebirth - I don't think it's a total reboot - though I do suspect Supes gets his classic powers back somehow through the story.

 

Which I can not wait for! Interesting Jurgens said on a Newsarma interview about Lois and Clark at the end, "one word: Rebirth".

 

It would be great to see pre Flashpoint Supes back as the main Superman again. Though I think it is more of a hint that Jon will become the new Superboy.

[FutureFlash]

While I'm not excited for the renumbering of DCs books, I'll still continue on with most of titles that I was purchasing before the switch. But it the constant relaunching/renumbering by Marvel and DC is breaking the completionist habit that most reader/collectors have.

Exactly. They've destroyed a beautiful recurring revenue model that existed 20 years ago, based on loyal run and character collectors. Back then, if you had full runs, and a book hit a rough patch, you'd probably keep it on your pull list, maintain your run, and wait for better times.

 

Of course I'll be dropping books if they change the characters to match the TV/Movie verse versions unless it is a minor tweek. I like that stuff but I don't want the comics to change because of it.

[Prince Namor]

Perhaps readership IS growing now....

 

But not from variants.... How can we know?

 

You are right, I cannot prove that variants drive readership. However, you have not proven that they do not. I am sure you will claim otherwise because it is clear through your posts that your opinion is industry fact (you have that in common with a couple others on the boards) versus what it actually is: a population sample of "1." Not useless, but not enough to substantiate your arguments.

 

:shrug:

 

Wrong.

How many ways can I explain it.

 

1) Incentive Variants make up 0% of tpb and digital sales, yet they're growing 1000% faster than regular comics where variants are used to constantly try and get retailers to buy more copies. The purpose for buying a gn/tpb or digital copy is to READ it, It is attracting more READERS, and doing so WITHOUT the use of incentive variants.

 

2) The years in which incentive variants exist as an every month process, we sell less comics than any other decade that has NO incentive variants.

 

3) Marvel and DC continually try and reboot and restart and renumber their universes, more and more often, using incentive variants to coerce retailers into buying more and more product that ends up in $1 boxes. Not conducive to readership. Period.

 

Deny all you want, it's all there.

 

Look, you refuse to address what I have logically laid out as why your arguments are invalid. Then you continue to make the same unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts.

 

What you say has not been true from square one, there isn't anything "there" but your ongoing nonsense. It may sound great to you (or even others), but that doesn't make it accurate.

 

Either do the appropriate analysis to incorporate necessary factors to come to a proper conclusion, or don't.

 

However just posting more the the same drivel isn't proving your point any further or helping the discussion.

And the rebuttal you are making isn't proving anything either honestly. Whether or not anyone thinks variants do or don't prove increased readership the proof is in the pudding. Last relaunches by the big 2 has large print runs of #1's only to have that number drop 50 percent by issue 2 and continued to drop. Now if readership was growing the sales numbers would be there. They are not.

 

I lost count on how many individual variants there were for this last Star Wars #1 same goes for ASM volume 3 and 4. I could go and on and but why bother. If these stories the big 2 are pumping out are so great why is readership decreasing to warrant new #1 jumping onto points? I mean are we all supposed to believe from #1 to #3 a reader would refuse to buy a book because they are lost in the story? Nonsense.

 

I had a retailer tell me recently that they have to blind order copies of Marvel books, meaning, so far in advance they do not have sales numbers for the first couple of issues. So they order heavy on the first and drastically cut for second and subsequent issues. When the sales figures are able to be calculated, they increase or decrease their orders based on actual sales figures for the books. DC does not do this and as a result does not see sell outs the way Marvel does. I am not trying to interject myself in the argument of whether variants help or hurt readership (I don't buy many variants but the ones I do I don't read, I get a reader copy of the book for that), but just wanted to throw that out there in reference to the huge drop off for Marvel of issue 1 to issue 2. Any retailer want to correct me on this is fine, but this is what I was told.

 

All publisher's are basically the same in this and usually have quite a drop off after the first issue, though because of the incentive madness, Marvel's drop off is greater, because the initial orders are over inflated (because of incentive variants). Though i suspect Dynamite has had some major drop off's on #2's, because they'll do some multiple variants as well.

 

Right now we can see Sales numbers for books shipped in December (but ordered in October).

As an example, I know how Batman #47 did, Batman #48 is on my shelves, and I just placed my January order for books released in March, that included Batman #50.

This may sound like blind ordering, but really, store's should order based upon, what they have for subscription sales + what they can sell off the shelves + what they do or don't need extra of for a short window of time. How #47 did in the top 300 isn't all that important to my over all ordering, yet at the same time, being aware of what a break out hit MMPR #0 was, is critical to know.

 

The only real criticism of the Direct Market I have in general is unreturnability.

[drotto]

I guess I have the odd LCS that does not change his orders based on variants. He knows what he can sell, and is unlikely to have more than 2 or 3 issues left over after release day. It is also rare to see anything beyond a 1:25 incentive variant in his store, and you only see these with issues I know he sells a lot of. In addition, his variants are usually sold at cover price. He does actually do frequent re-orders on issues that have sold out.

 

A second LCS I got to occasionally, appears to have a larger clientele. He has variants in spades and he marks them up. But, he seems to play the incentive game, and has multiple copies of books well after initial release. He also has no issue selling variants, and on the rare occasion I do want a special cover, it is either already gone or saved for a regular costumer.

[Kaboom]

Perhaps readership IS growing now....

 

But not from variants.... How can we know?

 

You are right, I cannot prove that variants drive readership. However, you have not proven that they do not. I am sure you will claim otherwise because it is clear through your posts that your opinion is industry fact (you have that in common with a couple others on the boards) versus what it actually is: a population sample of "1." Not useless, but not enough to substantiate your arguments.

 

:shrug:

 

Wrong.

How many ways can I explain it.

 

1) Incentive Variants make up 0% of tpb and digital sales, yet they're growing 1000% faster than regular comics where variants are used to constantly try and get retailers to buy more copies. The purpose for buying a gn/tpb or digital copy is to READ it, It is attracting more READERS, and doing so WITHOUT the use of incentive variants.

 

2) The years in which incentive variants exist as an every month process, we sell less comics than any other decade that has NO incentive variants.

 

3) Marvel and DC continually try and reboot and restart and renumber their universes, more and more often, using incentive variants to coerce retailers into buying more and more product that ends up in $1 boxes. Not conducive to readership. Period.

 

Deny all you want, it's all there.

 

Look, you refuse to address what I have logically laid out as why your arguments are invalid. Then you continue to make the same unsubstantiated, invalid, logical fallacy ridden arguments peppered with your personal opinion passed off as industry facts.

 

What you say has not been true from square one, there isn't anything "there" but your ongoing nonsense. It may sound great to you (or even others), but that doesn't make it accurate.

 

Either do the appropriate analysis to incorporate necessary factors to come to a proper conclusion, or don't.

 

However just posting more the the same drivel isn't proving your point any further or helping the discussion.

And the rebuttal you are making isn't proving anything either honestly. Whether or not anyone thinks variants do or don't prove increased readership the proof is in the pudding. Last relaunches by the big 2 has large print runs of #1's only to have that number drop 50 percent by issue 2 and continued to drop. Now if readership was growing the sales numbers would be there. They are not.

 

I lost count on how many individual variants there were for this last Star Wars #1 same goes for ASM volume 3 and 4. I could go and on and but why bother. If these stories the big 2 are pumping out are so great why is readership decreasing to warrant new #1 jumping onto points? I mean are we all supposed to believe from #1 to #3 a reader would refuse to buy a book because they are lost in the story? Nonsense.

 

I had a retailer tell me recently that they have to blind order copies of Marvel books, meaning, so far in advance they do not have sales numbers for the first couple of issues. So they order heavy on the first and drastically cut for second and subsequent issues. When the sales figures are able to be calculated, they increase or decrease their orders based on actual sales figures for the books. DC does not do this and as a result does not see sell outs the way Marvel does. I am not trying to interject myself in the argument of whether variants help or hurt readership (I don't buy many variants but the ones I do I don't read, I get a reader copy of the book for that), but just wanted to throw that out there in reference to the huge drop off for Marvel of issue 1 to issue 2. Any retailer want to correct me on this is fine, but this is what I was told.

 

All publisher's are basically the same in this and usually have quite a drop off after the first issue, though because of the incentive madness, Marvel's drop off is greater, because the initial orders are over inflated (because of incentive variants). Though i suspect Dynamite has had some major drop off's on #2's, because they'll do some multiple variants as well.

 

Right now we can see Sales numbers for books shipped in December (but ordered in October).

As an example, I know how Batman #47 did, Batman #48 is on my shelves, and I just placed my January order for books released in March, that included Batman #50.

This may sound like blind ordering, but really, store's should order based upon, what they have for subscription sales + what they can sell off the shelves + what they do or don't need extra of for a short window of time. How #47 did in the top 300 isn't all that important to my over all ordering, yet at the same time, being aware of what a break out hit MMPR #0 was, is critical to know.

 

The only real criticism of the Direct Market I have in general is unreturnability.

 

Cool Chuck, thanks for the response. I see that you must be a retailer. What I was told was for Marvel it could be as many as 6 or 7 issues in the future before you see sales data. Any truth, partial truth to that statement?

 

[Prince Namor]

Honestly the muddying of the water is exactly what DC & Marvel are doing. Decades ago epic characters (Supes, Batman, Spider-man, Hulk, etc) were introduced. Over next few decades they became ingrained and popular to comic book readers. Nostalgia is very important. These characters were unique. Unique is the key word here. The fans love these characters : 616 One Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America etc. Each publisher envied the other over said characters and continued to try to make new ones that would stick. Some did many didn't. Now lets fast forward to today shall we.

 

Multiple Spider-man's, Caps, Wolverines in continuity etc have damaged the uniqueness of the originals. Older readers and when I said older I mean 30 plus have little desire to continue reading about characters in name only. This isn't just my opinion I hear it from a core group of friends all the time. Publishers are blaming the internet for loss of readership of physical books but the real loss is the uniqueness of the brand.

 

I'll leave with this why would a person read a comic book about a character they love only to see that character is not one of a kind anymore but worse has multiple clones of what made that character unique in the first place.

 

Yeah... for me it was Spider-man. They changed him in the 90's. to me it wasn't the same character I grew up with, and I just wasn't interested in simply buying into a 'brand'.

i pick one up now and then. Not really my thing.

 

I still love comics, and I still think it's one of the most unique characters ever created. But as far as I'm concerned it may as well be the clone that's in all of those stories now. Don't even recognize Peter Parker.

 

To play devil's advocate, someone who has read Superman from the beginning (again, not me just for an example) would not recognize Superman as the character they grew up with, knew, and loved. He was once "faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a bound." He didn't fly or have the power set he has now. In fact, this change was part of DC's argument for defense in the lawsuit filed by Seigel and Schuster's family's lawsuit.

 

True.

But in general, it doesn't even mean someone who's read the character since 1937, if anyone is around still who did, but rather, the people who read it during the 60's (the resurgence of comics and birth of the hobby), the 70's (the expansion and growth of the hobby), and 80's (the explosion of independent publisher's), where a trend of characterization, particularly at Marvel. gave the heroes specific personality's.

 

The character's in super hero books these days, even at Marvel tend to be very one dimensional. Death is a gimmick. Relationships have all the complexity of an MTV soap opera. It's just not a very good read to those of us spoiled by a more interesting time. That's not say it isn't good to some who read it now, it may be - the expectations' may be lower - yet as I see Marvel and DC struggle to make regular titles grow, and struggle to sell new tpb's, while Image continues to consistently bring new non-superhero books in and sell tpb collections at a greater rate, I can't help but see the difference in the quality of writing as the reason. It's certainly not from the size of each others ad budget's, or place in the Preview's catalog.

Not to say all Image is good and all Marvel is bad, there is good and bad in both, but overall.