DC Universe relaunch in September 2011

[fudd71]

I have ZERO desire to buy digital comics so this is definitely not a case of the way I wish things would be.

This is just the way I think they NEED to be to increase sales and capture new market share.

It's the businessmen sitting at the table doggedly sticking to the untenable $2.99 price point (for digital) that are going to ride the comics business into the ground like Slim Pickins on that bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove......

It's not my job to make a business case to the comics execs. All I'm doing is observing the tendency of people to not spend non-trivial amounts of money on stuff they do not REALLY REALLY want.

Like it or not, comics are not things most people REALLY REALLY want.

They can keep catering to an ever-shrinking niche market with high prices because that audience is already hooked (but, as you observed, people leave every month, so it's shrinking) or try something to win over a new market.

Maybe there are other ways to get a lot of new people to buy digital comics besides attractive pricing, I don't know what they are. We'll see.

I wasn’t saying you personally wanted cheap digital; my argument is in the fact that you think cheap digital or even cheap print will find this huge new audience. My point is I don’t think at any price there is this huge audience of new readers out there. I pray and hope there is, but I have seen nothing to indicate there is. I’m just saying price isn’t the main issue hurting the comic industry. I don’t think the current prices help, but I’m not sure lower prices are the answer. Even at $0.25 a copy do you think 200,000-500,000 people would magically start buying comics? I don’t! I think there are other problems with comics, some in the industry some outside the industry.

To start with I’m not sure how many people want to read anything and any cost. It is a sad state of affairs that so many Americans simply don’t read. Particularly young people, since I don’t assume you think people 45+ are going to start reading comics the assumption has to be that young people will. I volunteer a couple days a week in my local library, the books are free there. And I’m in an upper-middle class part of the city, people don’t read. About 60% of the items checked out are media (DVD’s, Music CDs or books on CD), another 25% are children’s picture books that parents or nannies read to small children, that leaves the adult and young adult book circulation rate at less than 20%. Most of those books that are checked out are checked out by one of two groups I see most often women over 40 and men over 55 neither a huge potential audience for superhero comics. One could also argue that kids are not aware of the library, but that isn’t true either. We have a large number of kids in the library every day, what do they do? Most of them take advantage of our free Wi-Fi and internet terminals. I have talked to them; do you think they are looking up articles, doing research on line? No, they mostly check social media sites, chat and play games. This is not a problem in the comic industry it just seems to be the way it is in our society.

Secondly, even if books were cheap digitally how would people outside the comics’ community know this? The industry does almost no advertising outside the existing community. I don’t blame them, advertising is expensive and I don’t know what the reward on advertising dollars would be. Even this announcement and other big news in the recent past the industry hasn’t advertised, it’s hoped a big media outlet would run with a press-release on a slow new day. Hoping to get a blurb on CNN or in a newspaper is hardly an advertising strategy. It’s the old if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it situation.

Again I hope I’m wrong, I just don’t see these new readers coming out of thin air to buy comics digital or print at any price. Think back to when you started reading comics, did you make an informed economic choice or was it something else that brought you in. Very few of us started reading at an older age; we might have come back at an older age but didn’t start there. A rational economic choice isn’t what brought any of us in, and it won’t bring in anyone else either.

[fudd71]

This is another thing I just don't understand. There is all this Chicken Little talk of the immediate demise of the comics shops if digital comics are 99 cents. Where does this come from?

Print & digital are 2 different things. Ultimately they cater to fundamentally different demographics. It's just that right now we are FORCING the people who want digital to buy print because there is not a decent digital model.

The comic shops (as we know them today) are on a track to be out of business in 5-10 years anyway if something is not done to turn the market around. Add to this that I personally think that comics shops are doing more to impede the growth of the comics medium than any other single thing (though they have been forced to this by the non-returnable direct market model), pulling them out of the middle of at least part of the equation (the digital frontier) will remove their "gatekeeper of what comics the readers are allowed to see" status.

Also, print comics are NOT going away. If 50% of the customers flee to digital, cancel the books that don't sell well enough to sustain themselves, keep the ones where print covers the production cost, and then digital is where the profits roll in.

Digital comics are around for as long as you want them to be around. Customers can do an easy search to find what they want, and then buy it immediately. They can hyper-link to each other, etc.

Grow the initial market and you open up a long tail of follow-on sales potential.....

My argument here has nothing to do with comic shops, only comic publishers. The gamble I was referring too, was that 50% of existing reader going digital. Let’s assume all print books are $2.99 and 50% of current readers go digital at $0.99. At this point you have taken a third of the money out of the system, if you don’t get those mythical new readers to fill the gap you have cut your profits for no reason. My argument has never been about the LCS it is where these new readers will come from, that lower price point doesn’t guarantee a single new reader. If you don’t get any or enough new readers it will be almost impossible to force the 50% that made the jump to $0.99 digital back to $2.99. At that point you will potentially lose half the audience you already had for no gain.

As far as a digital comic being in print forever goes, that is seemingly irrelevant. A lot of comics are in print seemingly forever with trades, the problem is no one is buying them. As John has pointed out there are a few trade properties that do very well, the “evergreens” as you guys like to call them. That won’t change; the problem is all the rest of the titles. Anything with a real demand is already in constant print; the problem is there isn’t much demand for the rest of the stuff. People not buying downloads after a the few that want them already have them is no different than people not buying trades after the few that want them already have them.

[spid]

oooooooh. It looks like Wildstorm characters ARE going to be part of the reboot.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/01/ ... wildstorm/

Now this is excellent news. Most of what I was getting from DC were Wildstorm books.

[Danscomics]

This is another thing I just don't understand. There is all this Chicken Little talk of the immediate demise of the comics shops if digital comics are 99 cents. Where does this come from?

Personally the idea of 99 cent digital comics doesn't fill me with dread and foreshadow the demise of comic shops, it is the fact that the publishers have no desire to allow the comic shops to sell digital comics for them (especially the big 2). Diamond is working on a system to allow us to sell digital issues to customers, and I am ready to jump on board as soon as they offer it. However, I'm skeptical as to how well it will work because DC and Marvel have opted not to participate. It seems like DC and Marvel (especially Marvel) want to find a way to cut out the middle man and sell digital comics to the masses, which puts comic shops in a bad position.

Let's say 35% of the existing DC readership leaves print comics for digital. For DC that won't matter, but I as a retailer will lose 35% of my regular income. In addition, any new customers they pick up from impulse buys or otherwise online will not affect me. Overall I just see a loss in my customer base. This is what terrifies a lot of retailers. All DC would have to do is create a way for me to sell these digital comics on my site and through my store, either through Diamond's program or directly with retailers. Then a lot of the concerns will disappear no matter what price point they use (at least from those of us that are forward thinking and not stuck in a rut).

[Trev]

They can keep catering to an ever-shrinking niche market with high prices because that audience is already hooked (but, as you observed, people leave every month, so it's shrinking) or try something to win over a new market.

I think this is the fundamental flaw of the Direct Market. Yes, it solved a distribution problem and opened up possibility for significantly more titles, but it also created the niche market that needed to be catered to.

I think fans in my age range (35-40) are probably the youngest to remember the pre Direct Market era. When there was competition for shelf/rack space and not every drugstore/grocery store/7-11 carried the same books.

In that era, comics were something for kids and priced for kids. Yes, adults enjoyed them too, but primarily they were aimed at kids/teens/college age. New blood was constantly flowing in and out of the market.

Seems to me the direct market more or less locked in the existing audience and made it harder to become a new fan. Then over time attrition in the 'locked in' audience was not replaced at near the same rate by new blood. So we end up with higher prices and even more catering in order to keep the business alive and pay creators competitive/living wages.

I think this is a great move by DC and agree with Bob's stance on price. Kid's today won't pay much above 99 cents for something like this. Like it or not, that price point has been established. Any time I see anything digital above $1.99, it makes me pause.

The Direct Market and the Digital Market are almost completely different audiences and shouldn't be seen as competitive -- almost everybody i've seen weigh in on forums say they will continue buying print and in fact have no desire for digital. There is some small overlap, and the Big 2 need to prepare retailers that those folks will flow to digital.

Eventually the direct market will go the way of the record store. Far far fewer outlets and those that exist catering almost exclusively to collectors and comicophiles (for lack of a better word). Fighting it is pointless and probably does more harm to the future health of comics.

Remember, the direct market didn't always exist and was created to solve a business problem. New and different business problems need new and different solutions.

[BobBretall]

I wasn’t saying you personally wanted cheap digital; my argument is in the fact that you think cheap digital or even cheap print will find this huge new audience. My point is I don’t think at any price there is this huge audience of new readers out there. I pray and hope there is, but I have seen nothing to indicate there is. I’m just saying price isn’t the main issue hurting the comic industry. I don’t think the current prices help, but I’m not sure lower prices are the answer. Even at $0.25 a copy do you think 200,000-500,000 people would magically start buying comics? I don’t! I think there are other problems with comics, some in the industry some outside the industry.

Here is where my wishful thinking comes in.

Will people "magically" want comics because they are available digital? Certainly not.

Something will have to be done to market them to people, but having the sale available a click away as opposed to making someone physically drive someplace where the item they want may or may not be in stock is a huge benefit.

As John has said on the Mayo report:
* High prices will lower sales but lowering prices will not raise them

That said lower prices will not magically raise EXISTING readership. I do believe they will remove a barrier to entry when doing OTHER THINGS to try to cultivate a new readership.

Digital is a game changer. It gives access to a new audience. This new audience is not going to fall into anyone's lap just because the product is being offered. Publishers are going to need to WORK HARD to gain a foothold with new readers, BUT they will be fighting an uphill battle to gain those new readers with the ridiculous pricing model that exists today that works only on the current (small) addicted fan base.

As far as a digital comic being in print forever goes, that is seemingly irrelevant. A lot of comics are in print seemingly forever with trades, the problem is no one is buying them.

Here is another argument that I don't think applies to digital. I see comics in trade lots of places, and what do I see? A lot of books spines on a shelf (if I physically go to the place where they are sold). and it's a giant pain to browse through them and make a decision about something new unless I go looking for something in specific.

This is another place digital has print beat. Type in a few keywords on what I like & get presented with a selection of candidate things I might like. Couple of clicks & I see art, reviews, maybe I'm able to read a few sample pages. Printed trades being "in print forever" is irrelevant given that it takes effort to get to where they are and find what you want.

As above, JUST making these digital will not magically bring new readers. This needs to be coupled with smart marketing.


The other side of the coin is that NOTHING can be done to increase sales because the mass audience fundamentally do not want to read (or at least don't want to read comics), in which case the comics industry is doomed to become an (even more) marginalized niche market with people buying & selling small things over the internet anyway, because the way things are going the LCS model will not be able to survive for the long haul with the ever shrinking readership.

As an aside, both my sons have friends who don't read comics and have never been in a comics shop BUT they read plenty of free web-comics and stuff they find for free on the web. I don't think they would ever consider buying a digital comic for $2.99. NEVER EVER. I'm not sure they could be made to pay 99 cents either, but it would be a much easier sale than $2.99.

NOTE: This has become not so much the DC relaunch thread as the "debate over digital comics thread". Given my personal feelings about digital, I never thought I was going to be the one arguing the case FOR digital.

[Trev]

I wasn’t saying you personally wanted cheap digital; my argument is in the fact that you think cheap digital or even cheap print will find this huge new audience. My point is I don’t think at any price there is this huge audience of new readers out there. I pray and hope there is, but I have seen nothing to indicate there is. I’m just saying price isn’t the main issue hurting the comic industry. I don’t think the current prices help, but I’m not sure lower prices are the answer. Even at $0.25 a copy do you think 200,000-500,000 people would magically start buying comics? I don’t! I think there are other problems with comics, some in the industry some outside the industry.

Here is where my wishful thinking comes in.

Will people "magically" want comics because they are available digital? Certainly not.

Something will have to be done to market them to people, but having the sale available a click away as opposed to making someone physically drive someplace where the item they want may or may not be in stock is a huge benefit.

As John has said on the Mayo report:
* High prices will lower sales but lowering prices will not raise them

That said lower prices will not magically raise EXISTING readership. I do believe they will remove a barrier to entry when doing OTHER THINGS to try to cultivate a new readership.

Digital is a game changer. It gives access to a new audience. This new audience is not going to fall into anyone's lap just because the product is being offered. Publishers are going to need to WORK HARD to gain a foothold with new readers, BUT they will be fighting an uphill battle to gain those new readers with the ridiculous pricing model that exists today that works only on the current (small) addicted fan base.

As far as a digital comic being in print forever goes, that is seemingly irrelevant. A lot of comics are in print seemingly forever with trades, the problem is no one is buying them.

Here is another argument that I don't think applies to digital. I see comics in trade lots of places, and what do I see? A lot of books spines on a shelf (if I physically go to the place where they are sold). and it's a giant pain to browse through them and make a decision about something new unless I go looking for something in specific.

This is another place digital has print beat. Type in a few keywords on what I like & get presented with a selection of candidate things I might like. Couple of clicks & I see art, reviews, maybe I'm able to read a few sample pages. Printed trades being "in print forever" is irrelevant given that it takes effort to get to where they are and find what you want.

As above, JUST making these digital will not magically bring new readers. This needs to be coupled with smart marketing.

The other side of the coin is that NOTHING can be done to increase sales because the mass audience fundamentally do not want to read (or at least don't want to read comics), in which case the comics industry is doomed to become an (even more) marginalized niche market with people buying & selling small things over the internet anyway, because the way things are going the LCS model will not be able to survive for the long haul with the ever shrinking readership.

As an aside, both my sons have friends who don't read comics and have never been in a comics shop BUT they read plenty of free web-comics and stuff they find for free on the web. I don't think they would ever consider buying a digital comic for $2.99. NEVER EVER. I'm not sure they could be made to pay 99 cents either, but it would be a much easier sale than $2.99.

NOTE: This has become not so much the DC relaunch thread as the "debate over digital comics thread". Given my personal feelings about digital, I never thought I was going to be the one arguing the case FOR digital.

I can say that I know a few people who have the comixology app and buy books on it who would almost definitely NOT be classified as comics fans in the way we think about it.

Bob is right, 99 cents is an impulse buy for people who have such devices.

18.65m iphones and 4.69m ipads sold just in Apple's Q211: http://macdailynews.com/2011/04/20/unst ... ts-street/

based on John's market data, the direct market is AT MOST 500k. And that is VERY generous.

Seems to me much better odds of success in digital, even at 1/3 to 1/4 the price per unit.

[jonah]

And slowly my interest is returning to the relaunch. Well, actually quickly. I've seen where a new Nightwing book is being launched. I'm a fan and thought more than 1 batman was a bad idea from the word go. Hoping for little or no costume redesign. Also want to see if they 'de-age' grayson a bit. Playing the part of Batman he felt older and appeared 'thicker' to fit the role.

And Legion Lost as a title ... big legion fan boy but this seems to be dipping into the nostalgia pool pretty quick. Title certainly isn't descriptive for new readers.

So I'm taking the path of disheartenment, anger, and now to curiosity. Damn you DC, you're succeeding without trying.

[BobBretall]

And slowly my interest is returning to the relaunch. Well, actually quickly. I've seen where a new Nightwing book is being launched. I'm a fan and thought more than 1 batman was a bad idea from the word go. Hoping for little or no costume redesign. Also want to see if they 'de-age' grayson a bit. Playing the part of Batman he felt older and appeared 'thicker' to fit the role.

And Legion Lost as a title ... big legion fan boy but this seems to be dipping into the nostalgia pool pretty quick. Title certainly isn't descriptive for new readers.

So I'm taking the path of disheartenment, anger, and now to curiosity. Damn you DC, you're succeeding without trying.

I'm REALLY REALLY looking forward to June 13th (when the full solicits are supposed to hit the web).

I'm really curious about what "makes the cut".

[BobBretall]

From DC's The Source:
http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/02 ... w-justice/


Justice League: Geoff Johns & Jim Lee
Wonder Woman: Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang
Aquaman: Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis
Flash: Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul
Fury of Firestorm: Ethan Van Sciver/Gail Simone writing, art by Yildiray Cinar
Hawkman: Tony Daniel and Philip Tan
Green Arrow: JT Krul and Dan Jurgens (Maybe Dan Jurgen can make a GA title stick)
Justice League International: Dan Jurgens and Aaron Lopresti
Mister Terrific: Eric Wallace and Roger Robinson (this is a really interesting choice of character to give a slot to)
Captain Atom: JT Krul and Freddie Williams II
DC Universe Presents: Paul Jenkins and Bernard Chang doing the first story (featuring Deadman) in this title with multi-story arcs of different characters

11 down.....41 to go.....

[Paul Nolan]

two for me please....

FIRESTORM
MR TERRIFIC

[yensid4disney]

Think I will try

Justice League - Johns and Lee
Firestorm
Aquaman
Captain Atom

Hmm, this could get a little expensive really quick.

[GABE!]

I'll do

Justice League...well until it runs behind or until Jim Lee has to be replaced.
FireStorm
JLI- I really liked JL Generation Lost
Wonder Woman- I'll follow anything Azzerello does
Flash

[fudd71]

NOTE: This has become not so much the DC relaunch thread as the "debate over digital comics thread". Given my personal feelings about digital, I never thought I was going to be the one arguing the case FOR digital.

On a similar note as someone who has dropped all of my Marvel titles due to a variety of factors price being a big part of it and the thing that finally got me to drop the last 7, I never thought I would be the guy defending higher prices either.

Moving on to a few of my thoughts about the re-launch itself.

I am somewhere between cautiously optimistic and scared to death. After having listened to the Podcast you guys did about the subject, I find I tend to have a lot of the same hopes John expressed. I am a fan an always have been of serialized fiction, looking at my book shelves full of ongoing novel stories that is easy to see (few examples: the Dexter books by Lindsay, the Harry Bosch books by Connelly, the Jack Reacher books by Child, the Temperance Brennan books by Reichs and so on). Somewhere along the way comics got away from serialized stories, at least in the single issue format. Serials can have cliffhangers and be part of an ongoing story, but they still have to have something that resembles a complete story. Most modern comics have completely failed in grasping this concept. I know the term “done in one” seems to be synonymous with a meaningless low grade story; this is not what I am talking about. I would love to see comics go back to the story telling style of the Bronze Age. To be fair this is the type of storytelling that brought most of us into the medium. I think a lot of the price point issues would also go away if we got a real complete story in each issue. A lot of the price point argument I think has more to do with value than hard price. The fact that comic issues have gone from $0.60 - $3.99 since I started reading is inflation and most of us understand that and are OK with it. One of the real problems is the price of a comic story has gone from $0.60 - $15.96, that is not inflation, that is insanity.

I find it interesting that after the kneejerk “we hate the idea of change” reaction we saw in the first few hours most people seem to have warmed up to the idea. I think a lot of that is until we actually see anything; it can be whatever we want it to be. With the rare exception of a very small number of people that think everything is perfect the way it is. Almost all of us fans talk about what changes we think would make the universe, story or industry better. With the vague wording of minor to major changes in some back stories and appearances, at this point we can all feel that DC is finally going to do exactly what we think they should have years ago. For each and every one of us that is of course something different. The truth is until we actually see these issues we have no idea what will truly be done. Chances are we will all see something we like and something we hate but until those book come out who knows. I stated what my wishes were earlier, will I see them, who knows. What I am fairly certain of is that whatever it we each want, most of us won’t see that happen exactly as we hope. On that note I’m trying to keep my expectations down. I’ll will read all the first issues and go from there. I will most likely like some things and not like others, I think at the end of the day that will be the reaction of most fans. I think the one thing no fan wants is for this to be some kind of joke or stunt that will all be forgotten in a short period of time. Whatever happens I think most DC fans will take it pretty well and roll with the punches. If this turn out to be a stunt, hoax, dream, alternate reality and anything of the kind cheat not only may DC never recover but the whole industry could suffer. As a group comics fans are already pretty cynical, something like that could push many over the edge.

[fudd71]

I will try all of these issues out, but I must say on a base level I am less interested in Firestrom, Mr. Terrific, and Captain Atom than the rest of them.