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Wood wrote:We really can't say for sure whether this was a "good business decision" or not yet because we don't yet know if people complaining about the book will, in turn, vote with their wallets.
In my opinion, any event that generates as much bad press & negative buzz as it does positive would seem to be a bad business decision.
You want positive, and the detractors to be at worst neutral parties who just skip it.
Whether they vote with their wallets or not, there is an intangible loss of good will that DC has suffered as a result of FC, plus lots of people making the statement (technically incorrect, but I hear it a LOT) that you need a "degree in DC-Universe-ology" to understand the event. Heck, I even heard Blair Butler on G4 Attack of the Show saying this.
In any event, this cannot be a desired result, and a decision that leads to an undesired result was a bad decision. Disastrous decision? Not really. Bad decision? Most assuredly.
Let me rephrase my statement, because I really don't disagree with anything you said.
Whether DC REALIZES THIS WAS A MISTAKE or not remains to be seen, and I think they will only come to that realization if people vote with their wallets.
Wood wrote:
Let me rephrase my statement, because I really don't disagree with anything you said.
Whether DC REALIZES THIS WAS A MISTAKE or not remains to be seen, and I think they will only come to that realization if people vote with their wallets.
I can agree with you on this.
The nuance is whether they realize it was a mistake in the privacy of their own offices. On this, I hope it's a "yes" because if they don't then they are self-delusional
I can fully understand them not making any public staement or admission of this being a mistake.
martheus wrote:
Guys, care to put up an "Idiot's Guide to Final Crisis"??
and make a companion guide in 3D called The DCU for Dummies.
Maybe it's just me, but after coming back into comics after 20 or so years, I look at Final Crisis (and Batman RIP to some degree) and state that if you haven't been reading DC on the regular from Infinite Crisis to Countdown or any other Crisis that DC has had, then you are better off trying to follow an episode of 24 or Lost than tryng to follow this series. This is not a book for new or returning readers to latch onto and right now if it wasn't for Green Lantern and the New Krypton stories catching my attention at this time, I surely would be writing off DC.
Just to be clear, not understanding FC has nothing to do with having a long-term understanding of DC. John & I both have been reading almost every DC book for 20+ years and we didn't understand FC either.
I've said before, understanding FC has more to do with being on the same wavelength as some of Morrison's more obtuse writing than any other single factor.
Whew ok...then I don't feel so bad...now if I can get an idiot's guide to Batman RIP along with my FC guide, I will feel a bit better....LOL
Wood wrote:
Let me rephrase my statement, because I really don't disagree with anything you said.
Whether DC REALIZES THIS WAS A MISTAKE or not remains to be seen, and I think they will only come to that realization if people vote with their wallets.
I can agree with you on this.
The nuance is whether they realize it was a mistake in the privacy of their own offices. On this, I hope it's a "yes" because if they don't then they are self-delusional
I can fully understand them not making any public staement or admission of this being a mistake.
Wood wrote:
Let me rephrase my statement, because I really don't disagree with anything you said.
Whether DC REALIZES THIS WAS A MISTAKE or not remains to be seen, and I think they will only come to that realization if people vote with their wallets.
I can agree with you on this.
The nuance is whether they realize it was a mistake in the privacy of their own offices. On this, I hope it's a "yes" because if they don't then they are self-delusional
I can fully understand them not making any public staement or admission of this being a mistake.
We'll find out this weekend!
What I am interested in seeing is the monthly market share numbers for the next three or four months. To see if FC has hurt DC's sales or not.
I think FC won't have any real negative effects. We might see a small dip but for the first month only. But i'll let John do what he does so well and breakdown the numbers and tell us.
Last edited by Webhead on Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
So here's a discussion question for you guys: Do you think Final Crisis represents the beginning of the end of the Era of Decompression? Here's Morrision's quote from the IGN interview:
we've had the past ten years of creators using comics as a showcase for the fact that they can actually write convincing TV and movie scripts and I just thought – enough!
As the economy and price increases force the comic audience to buy fewer comics, it makes sense that the comics themselves will become more dense again.
The nuance is whether they realize it was a mistake in the privacy of their own offices. On this, I hope it's a "yes" because if they don't then they are self-delusional
I can fully understand them not making any public staement or admission of this being a mistake.
We'll find out this weekend!
What I am interested in seeing is the monthly market share numbers for the next three or four months. To see if FC has hurt DC's sales or not.
I think FC won't have any real negative effects. We might see a small dip but for the first month only. But all let John do what he does so well and breakdown the numbers and tell us.
I'm not sure DC has anywhere to go but up. Marvel had one of its largest market share leads this past month [per the latest Mayo Report] and, at the margin, I expect DC and Marvel will start gaining a bit of incremental share as Diamond's new minimums filter through the system.
I don't think that FC is going to cause DC to lose sales in the coming months. I don't think a significant # of fans are abandoning DC because of it, but there are not lots of new fans coming to DC because of it either.
In fact, with Flash: Rebirth & Blackest Night coming up, I expect DC to do pretty good in 2009.
What DC really lost because of the inaccessible FC event was an opportunity to GAIN real market share right then in the past 6 months on the strength of a solid event series. FC being what FC was is what allowed Marvel to kick DC's (bleep) these past several months.
Any other collateral damage from FC will most likely come the next time DC tries a big event (with someone other than Geoff Johns or a similarly gifted writer at the helm), especially if it comes on the heels of one of the patented "cryptic DC marketing campaigns".
I think there is a very real possibility that DC will lose readers because of Final Crisis. There have already been reports from some retailers that they have had a number of customers drop a number of DC titles as a result of Final Crisis.
Will this be a big enough thing to register on the charts? Hard to say. Maybe. Maybe not.
In either case, I do think Final Crisis has hurt DC. It got the notion that "DC continuity is impossible to understand" into a lot of peoples heads. While I disagree with that, a lot more people seem to think it than did before Final Crisis.
And keep in mind that it is possible for DC to lose readers and still increase its market share. It all depends on how everyone else does in a given month what percent of the top 300 DC accounts for. The new order threshold will help DC in that respect.
While some people loves Final Crisis, a number of people didn't. There has been a fairly vocal and negative buzz about the series in places. It really polarized the readers with those that "got it" sometimes being fairly rude to those that didn't. (Not here, of course, but on a few of the other websites I've been reading.) That can't be a good thing for DC.
My feeling is that Final Crisis did not position the DC Universe titles well and will not result in a sudden upswing in sales across the board like Infinite Crisis and One Year Later did. And that is unfortunate.
If you really want to know how confident DC was in Final Crisis. Look at how many spin off titles or even mini series came out of it. Infinite Crisis and even One Year Later had spin off titles.
Marvel has done this with House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk , and now Secret Invasion.
Now I am guessing the average life of these spin off is somewhere from 6 months to a year. Blue Beetle is just now being canceled. It was lucky in that it lasted 3 years I am guessing.
Skyhawke wrote:If you really want to know how confident DC was in Final Crisis. Look at how many spin off titles or even mini series came out of it. Infinite Crisis and even One Year Later had spin off titles.
Marvel has done this with House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk , and now Secret Invasion.
Now I am guessing the average life of these spin off is somewhere from 6 months to a year. Blue Beetle is just now being canceled. It was lucky in that it lasted 3 years I am guessing.
I don't really see that as any indicator of the level of confidence that DC did or didn't have in Final Crisis. I see it more of a reflection of how there wasn't really any titles to spin out of it.
JohnMayo wrote:
I don't really see that as any indicator of the level of confidence that DC did or didn't have in Final Crisis. I see it more of a reflection of how there wasn't really any titles to spin out of it.
Theoretically, they could have spun off a "new" New Gods series, at a minimum.......
Or even a "bar in Japan with weird super guys you don't give a crap about" series......
JohnMayo wrote:
I don't really see that as any indicator of the level of confidence that DC did or didn't have in Final Crisis. I see it more of a reflection of how there wasn't really any titles to spin out of it.
Theoretically, they could have spun off a "new" New Gods series, at a minimum.......
Or even a "bar in Japan with weird super guys you don't give a crap about" series......
Or a new Anthro series.........
Fair enough.
A Fifth World title of some sort could have spun out of this. Given the focus on the New Gods in the series, this did seem fairly likely despite the fact that New Gods have had a hard time supporting a title over the past few decades.
I don't really think that an Anthro series would have worked given the retcon down to a grunting level of language for Anthro that Morrison did in Final Crisis.
A Super Young Team series or some other series set in Japan dealing with monster fighting could have been cool. Even moreso if Super (Useless) Young Team wasn't in it.
A case could be made that a Spanish language Iman series could have spun out of Final Crisis.
Or maybe an anthology comic featuring random scenes with random characters. Kind of like a new version of the DC Challenge in which the readers have to "solve" each issue by turning it into a coherent story somehow...
Grant Morrison just writing a New Gods series would of been interesting. It would of given him his own private playground to work in and continue with these interesting ideas he came up with.
A Japanese team fighting monsters would of been interesting as well.
Skyhawke wrote:Grant Morrison just writing a New Gods series would of been interesting. It would of given him his own private playground to work in and continue with these interesting ideas he came up with.
A Japanese team fighting monsters would of been interesting as well.
Both of these topics have been address by Morrison in some of his post-Final Crisis interviews.
, and now Secret Invasion.