The DCnU reboot/relaunch certainly led to a massive uptick in comic sales and DC sales as a whole. Comic sales were robust, DC ruled to comic landscape, and comics were suddenly being promoted in mainstream media.
But could that momentum be maintained? Could the bloom stay on the rose? Or would entropy set in?
Well sales from November are interesting to peruse. As always, ICv2 does a great job breaking things down. Here is a link to their site and sales tables: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/21712.html
While DC continued to lead the market, the lead over Marvel has shrunk. Certainly, there are some thing about the DCnU that worry me. The changes in creative teams feels like there was a lack of foresight, a lack of the big picture long term in these books. DC is already talking about cancelling some books ... cancelling after 3 issues of sales, without allowing a book to find its market ... seems like too quick a trigger finger.
As for Supergirl #3, sales dropped pretty dramatically. The issue sold about 10K less than the prior! That's a 17% loss. What could have driven that many people away. And it is a shame because I thought the third issue was the best of the book so far, less decompressed and with more moments revealing who this Kara is.
Of course, you need to put these things in perspective. If a year ago you asked me if I would be happy with Supergirl selling 45K, I would of course say yes. But I don't know what to think about this ... and I don't want to overthink it. A drop of 20% this early can't be considered a good thing.
Hopefully we won't see a further freefall.
5 comments:
I think the reason is that a lot of DC aliens (fans) left because they prefer the universe that was the DC Comic universe that was the DC Comic universe before Flashpoint.
Logging off,
Dr. Thinker
While DC got a HUGE boost with the "new" and lapsed fans coming back. They lost many of their "old" fans base. Many of the new fans don't have the tolerance to read a long decompressed story especially a first story arc. What Johnson and Green should have done (in my own opinion)was move the story quickly along not spend a whole issue on just one prolonged fight scene after another where we hardly learn a thing about the person, no...alien... after all J&G talked about Kara as a alien from the get go and only recently did they start to change their tune about it.
Two issues into it and still hardly much was learned about her. I wouldn't be surprised if the new and lapsed fans dropped it because while the fight scenes were good and the art was great the story and character development was lacking especially the first two issues. The persons personality in the story has to grab the readers attention from the get go, you can have the best fight scenes in the world but if the story between each fight is lacking many people will walk away from it no matter what the format.
So I would not be surprised to find out, the new and lasped fans are walking away from it so soon. Afterall I plan to walk away from Supergirl after the 4th issue and wiat for the trade books on it to come out and wait for my public library to get it. I will read it then.
Maybe between the release of the first trade book maybe the new Supergirl will be finishing up her first month in the DCnU by then and she has fought every hero in the DCnU too. Does it tell you what I think about this new version of kara and how long I am willing to wait for the trade to come out to read Supergirl again?
The sky is not falling. With few exception, these drops are pretty much across the board amidst the DCnU. It's normalization, not a rebuke.
Now the real debate topic is whether to continue Hawk & Dive since Sterling Gates has been forced off to make Rob Liefeld the permanent writer...
I like the third issue best as well but the drop is due to the second issue.
If DC was trying to draw readers from the 80s and earlier back into the fold, they should have considered the number of pages they are selling. Those readers come from time when comics were 30+ pages and a whole story or multiple stories could be told within one issue. They aren't getting that now.
The change in creative teams so early on is troubling.
Was it on this forum that I read Didio talking about how the new DC Universe was conceived about a year or so ago? If that's the case, it's troubling as well. You could maybe expect so little foresight going into a summer event- not the future of the entire DC Universe. I think the Monitor was popping up in various books years before COIE even started.
Thanks for the comments. I agree that some of the fall might be old readers who have not been taken in by the new DCU. Others might be prospecters gathering #1s and then walking away.
I also agree that the decompressed nature of the first two issues might have scared some people away as well. Hopefully good word of mouth and quality stories bring people back.
As for the Gates-less Hawk and Dove, I will give Liefeld some issues to keep me involved. But we'll see.
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