[Comics] Before Watchmen

[Hand of Evil]

You really should look at the sales charts for the last few months. DC has been killing it since they relaunched their books in August.

would be interested to see that vs prior to re-launch.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

would be interested to see that vs prior to re-launch.

It's quite a significant jump:

- DC reported that eight additional titles have surpassed sales of 100,000 copies. It's been rare for the last few years that any comic sells more than 100,000 copies during a sales month. To give context to the achievement, the last time a DC comic sold more than 100,000 copies was in June 2010 with Batman #700, which sold 104,755 copies.

- To give further perspective to the number, DC's top-selling comic this year, Flashpoint #1, did not top 100,000 sold in a month, instead topping out in May at 86,981. DC's second level comic during the event, Green Lantern, which is also its recent top-selling regular title, has been selling in the 70,000-75,000 range for the last year.

- Nine comics with sales above 100,000 copies from one publisher in a month is also rare. According to Newsarama’s research the last time there were nine comic titles selling more than 100,000 copies from one publisher was in May 2007, when Marvel had 11. According to Comichron, 2007 was the high-water mark in yearly sales since 1997, with over 85 million units sold.

DC rebooting their superhero titles (and integrating the Wildstorm Universe) was a stunt, but it's a stunt that definitely worked and continues to work.

 

[Felon]

Justice League #1 sold 361,138 copies, Batman #1 sold 262,379 and Action Comics #1 sold 250,898 copies.

Wow, that's genuinely encouraging! It ain't the millions they used to sell, but it's noteworthy. Bully for them. Are they still selling like that, or was that purely first-issue fever?

 

[megamania]

Exclusive: DC Comics Releases New “Before Watchmen” Details

Sigh seriously.. why?

because the "New 52" will run out of steam soon.

 

[fanboy2000]

Sigh seriously.. why?

Good question.

First, it's DC's business model. They own characters and publish comic books about them. No one questions it when they put out a Zartarra comic.

Second, Watchman was already based on existing characters. DC asked Moore to write a comic based on the Charlton characters. DC objected to them being used in the way Moore was using them, so Moore filed off the serial numbers and DC published the resulting comic.

Moore's not a big fan of the project. Which is weird, because he's written for DC using character's that were owned by them. Superman, Batman, and Swamp Thing where all characters Allen Moore wrote for but didn't create. More recently, he's written characters that aren't owned by anyone in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series.

So it's not like publishing comics based on characters created by other people is somehow unwarranted.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No one questions it when they put out a Zartarra comic.

Well, everyone says "wait, who wanted to read about this jerk?"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wow, that's genuinely encouraging! It ain't the millions they used to sell, but it's noteworthy. Bully for them. Are they still selling like that, or was that purely first-issue fever?

The February 2012 sales chart shows a fair number of books selling above Green Lantern's former high water mark of 70k. Not every book, obviously, but enough that they're clearly making a better profit than they were before.

They lured me back, for one, since there's a continuity reboot on many of the titles, which meant I didn't have to worry about catching up on a lot of the franchises. There's also new titles that intrigued me, since DC explicitly went into areas they've neglected in recent decades, like magic/horror books and war books. (Ironically, the franchise I used to love the most, the LSH, is being written horribly in all its titles, and I dropped them like a set of hot rocks after a few issues.)

 

[jonesy]

More recently, he's written characters that aren't owned by anyone in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series.

Do you mean not owned as in they're no longer anyones copyright, or not owned as in he's making original characters now? He was whining about people using his stuff (even though he gave his rights away), but he has no qualms using characters like Captain Nemo.

 

[fanboy2000]

Do you mean not owned as in they're no longer anyones copyright, or not owned as in he's making original characters now? He was whining about people using his stuff (even though he gave his rights away), but he has no qualms using characters like Captain Nemo.

Not owned as anyones copyright. I don't know if he's creating his own characters now or not, though it wouldn't surprise me if he was.

 

[frankthedm]

Exclusive: DC Comics Releases New “Before Watchmen” Details

Sigh seriously.. why?

I've heard if DC doesn't keep the comic "In Print" in some manner, Alan Moore gets the rights to Watchmen.