I think it falls between two stools. There's either not enough co-ordination to offer a coherent and thought-trough reboot or there's too much interference on individual storylines in individual comics. The path they've chosen appears to incur the negatives of both while not getting all the positives of either.







In 1969 the original X-Men series was cancelled when its sales fell below 70,000 issues per month. Marvel's top-selling properties struggle to do that now. Their third-tier titles have print runs of 10,000. of course, there's the TPB market to factor in now, but those sales are also in the 10-15,000 mark usually.

The sales model is that selling a "flimsy" now should only break even. The TPB is profit. The downside of this is that while you could theoretically break even on a comic selling 20,000 for the first of a six month series declining by 20% sales each issue plus 10,000 TPB collections, that's still only exposed your property to a maximum of 30,000 readers. Next time only a percentage of them will pick up the sequel. It's a very short-term sales and marketing strategy.

What this means is that every comic now is planned to fail. For the ongoing titles there are then new "jumping on points" that will spike sales through hot new creators signing up or through "event issues". For the smaller titles its about retaining as much of the declining sales base after #1 as possible to reach the planned cancellation point.










My understanding is that DC are pricing their online editions at the same cost as their paper editions, presumably under the impression that e-versions are "more valuable" in today's marketplace and can therefore be positioned at that proce point. After three months the back issues will be available at $1 less than published cover price.

This seems to be a serious misunderstanding of the e-marketplace. It means that, for example, a reader can choose between e-buying I, Vampire #3 or e-buying my Robin Hood novel and having enough change for a packet of gum. Let me tell you, at the moment my sales are winning.

And given the amount of music and video e-piracy going on, comics piracy is a given. In fact its actually much easier, given that a video file might be 3gB and a folder containing EVERY single comic published in a calendar month might be around 100mB. A single issue is around 15mB.

When the consumer's perception is that the price of a product is a rip-off it becomes much easier for many consumers to justify stealing the product. Comics readers faced with easy download of illegal copies have method, motive, and opportunity.

I'm not saying this is okay. Just now there's a website in China that's probably selling more copies of my books than the legitimate one that actually pays me royalties on sales, but there's nothing at all I can do about it. But I am saying that it is inevitable that this stuff will happen, and neither DC nor Marvel appear to have factored that into their e-marketing aspirations.