Revisiting NEW GODS 0

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS MAY 1973

Mister Miracle #15 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part ONE:

Edited February 27 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS MAY 1973

Mister Miracle #15 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Part TWO:

Edited February 27 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS MAY 1973

Mister Miracle #15 (with ADs) The Letters Page - the fans lament the cancellation of New Gods and Forever People

 

 

 

 

Edited February 27 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY 1973

Mister Miracle #16 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

I think the other thing that may have work against Kirby was the bi-monthly nature of his titles. When New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle all went to 25 cents and then on top of that, were bi-monthly.... yes, we got Kirby every month, but those following a specific storyline in one of the books had to wait 60 days...

DC was no stranger to bi-monthly or staggered publishing... even their bigger stars like Batman in his own mag, who come out 10 times a year... but those stories were all one-shots. Marvel had made it's name by creating the endless storyline, soap opera, connected tale and that was made for a monthly release...

Kamandi would come out monthly and be his longest running DC book...

Part ONE:

Edited February 27 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY 1973

Mister Miracle #16 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part TWO:

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY 1973

Mister Miracle #16 - Letters

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #17 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part ONE:

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #17 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part TWO:

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #17 - Letters Page

[Zonker]

This is interesting.  Do we think that they didn't know the end was coming as issue #17 went to the printers?  Or by the "next few months" did they just mean the 2 months until the next issue was to be published?

[Dr. Haydn]

John Pound--letterer of pp. 1-9 (though Mike Royer seems to have done the display lettering and sound effects): was this the same guy that went on to have a modest career in underground comix?

The lettering in the panel below (from the Lambiek Comiclopedia entry for Pound) looks like a close match to me.

Edited March 14 by Dr. Haydn
corrected "comiclopedia"

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS NOVEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #18 (with ADs) - The Final Issue...

Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part ONE:

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS NOVEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #18 (with ADs) - Written, Drawn and Edited by Jack Kirby (lettered and inked by Mike Royer)

Cover by Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer)

Part TWO:

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS NOVEMBER 1973

Mister Miracle #18 - Letters Page

[Prince Namor]

And in particular:

[Dr. Haydn]

On 3/26/2024 at 10:28 PM, Prince Namor said:

And in particular:

During the Silver Age, DC could let the profits from the Superman line (and to a lesser extent, Batman's titles) carry books whose sales were more modest. I wonder what changed by 1973?

[Zonker]

On 3/28/2024 at 12:47 PM, Dr. Haydn said:

During the Silver Age, DC could let the profits from the Superman line (and to a lesser extent, Batman's titles) carry books whose sales were more modest. I wonder what changed by 1973?

We might wonder if what was really subsidizing the business was the illegal price fixing DC's parent company was engaged in, that led them in 1971 to re-brand their entertainment businesses as Warner Communications? 

On July 21, 1967, Kinney National expanded by acquiring National Periodical Publications, more commonly, but not yet officially, called DC Comics

Due to a financial scandal involving price fixing in its parking operations,[7] Kinney National spun off its non-entertainment assets in September 1971 as the National Kinney Corporation, and renamed the remaining Kinney National Company as Warner Communications Inc. on February 10, 1972.

[Prince Namor]

That and the 25 cent price change really kicked them in the butt on sales of the entire line. I know hindsight is 20/20, but here they had a rival publisher who had grown in sales slowly over the course of the last 10 years and the wya they approached it was to add reprints and nearly double the price on all their books? 

Maybe people forget what a bloodletting it was but:

By Summer of 1973/Early 1974

 

Binky - cancelled after 26 years with #82

Falling in Love - cancelled after 18 years with #143

Girls Love (Love Stories) - cancelled after 16 years with #152

Metal Men - cancelled after 10 years with issue #44

Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane - cancelled after 16 years with issue #137

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen- cancelled after 20 years with issue #163  (well, it would become ’Superman Family’)

Strange Adventures - cancelled after 24 years with issue #244

Teen Titans - cancelled after 9 years with issue #44

Green Lantern - cancelled after 13 years with issue #89   

Sugar & Spike - cancelled after 17 years with issue #98   

Swing With Scooter - cancelled after 7 years with issue #36    

Tomahawk - cancelled after 23 years with issue #140     

 

From Beyond the Unknown - cancelled with issue #25

Secrets of Sinister House - cancelled with issue #18

Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion - cancelled with issue #15

DC 100-Page Super Spectacular - cancelled after 12 issues

DC Special with issue #15

Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love after 15 issues

Date with Debbi after 18 issues

Secrets of Sinister House after 18 issues

 

New Gods after 11 issues

Forever People after 11 issues

Mister Miracle after 18 issues

 

Other books that managed to avoid the price increase, cheaply produced with REPRINT material, but STILL got cancelled:

Legion of SuperHeroes - cancelled with issue #4

Secret Origins - cancelled with issue #7

Wanted, the World's Most Dangerous Villains - cancelled with issue #9

with NEW material…

Sword & Sorcery - cancelled with issue #5

Prez - cancelled with issue #4

[Zonker]

On 3/28/2024 at 5:26 PM, Prince Namor said:

That and the 25 cent price change really kicked them in the butt on sales of the entire line. I know hindsight is 20/20, but here they had a rival publisher who had grown in sales slowly over the course of the last 10 years and the wya they approached it was to add reprints and nearly double the price on all their books? 

And yet...

A couple of years later, they tried it again!  The 100 Page Super-Spectaculars were more than double the cover price of a typical Marvel Comic, and mostly reprints.  Lasted a year, and if I recall, further declined sales.

And then...

In 1977, they tried it again!   The Dollar Comic format was also more than double the cost of a typical Marvel.  But this time it was all-new material. This format survived longer, but eventually was also abandoned.  

[Zonker]

On the subject of what was selling in the early 1970s... this article was just reprinted on the 13th Dimension website (originally published in Back Issue Magazine #100).  Not a scientific survey at all, just the anecdotal observations by Bob Rozakis of the summer in 1973 he spent driving the DC Comicmobile, a short-lived experiment to sell comics out in the suburbs of NYC.  Think of it as a focus-group survey, and of course limited to only DCs.   I suspect his clientele skewed a bit younger than typical readers, as he mentions often being mistaken for the neighborhood ice cream truck!

Among his observations:

• Dinosaurs on the covers sold!
• Guys riding motorcycles on the covers sold!
• Giant-anythings on the covers sold!
• For the supernatural-themed comics, girls went for the "scarier" looking covers, while boys preferred the "gross" covers.