by Brian Hibbs
Hey, Happy New
Year! Made it through another one.
This column I
thought I’d check back in on some stuff we left a little open-ended,
particularly my previous
look at One Year Later and at “52”. Maybe
along the way we can learn a little bit about Event management,
too.
What’s interesting
is that both projects had similar goals – to bring in new readers
to the DC universe in a “ground zero” kind of way, where both new
readers and old readers were in the same place – but the execution,
and results, could not have been more different. Both events are
also essentially joined at the hip – “One Year Later” happened as
a direct result of the “missing year” of 52.
Let’s start with
“One Year Later” (OYL).
After the events
of Infinite Crisis, the DC Universe took a one-year jump
forward. The idea behind OYL was to restart the DCU so that all
readers were on the same page. It seems to me that one of the biggest
problems of Crisis on Infinite Earths (Infinite Crisis
was a sequel of sorts to that title) was that there was no post-event
unity. While many of the characters of the DCU were “rebooted” with
new origins, and a new status quo, it happened over a long period
of time – Superman was rebooted in 1986 with Man of Steel,
while Wonder Woman #1 didn’t see print until 1987. Some characters
(like, oh, say, Hawkman) didn’t have clear restarts, ending up with
incredibly convoluted back stories that tried to reconcile “post-Crisis”
storylines with “pre-Crisis” ones. In short, the “post-Crisis”
DCU was a horrific mess from a continuity point of view (largely
offset by a new leap in quality…. But a lot of it really didn’t
make a lot of sense)
It appears, to
this observer, that DC recognized this problem in the wake of Infinite
Crisis, and set OYL up as a way to try and avoid it – by taking
a one year jump, every character, every title was in the same “tabula
rasa” position, and the “universe” could move forward as one. This
seems pretty rational to me.
Of course, as
always, the devil is in the details.
The thing is,
that every “jumping on” point is equally a “jumping off” point,
and to get jumpers to stay on, you’ve got to offer them something
pretty compelling. Particularly when you’re offering your entire
line of titles as samplers on the buffet – since it is effectively
impossible to tempt someone to pick up an entire 20+ title line
of books, new readers are only going to stick with the strongest
and most exceptional of projects.
And, as I said,
it also becomes a “jumping off” point, where the reader thinks “Well,
I’ve been looking for a reason to drop this title, and I don’t like
this new direction, so buh-bye!”.
There was one
other problem, I think, which is fairly typical in editorial-driven
decisions (as opposed to creator-driven ones) – not everyone’s heart
is in it, not every creative team is up to the “challenge” – and,
so, the actual creative results can run the gamut from exceptional
to train-crash horrific.
So, now we’re
about 9 months after OYL, and I think it’s safe to report (well
for Comix Experience, at least) that OYL ultimately ended up as
an failure. Yes, we got an initial boost, but in most cases the
numbers went very quickly right back to where they were prior to
the stunt, and in the case of about half of the line, considerably
weaker.
That initial boost
was often very significant – we more than doubled books like Aquaman
and Hawkgirl from their pre-OYL figures as we had a tremendous
number of people sampling those titles new creative teams, and new
directions – but it became very clear, very quickly, that none of
this new audience was sticking. Nine months later, virtually every
affected title is now back below its pre-OYL
numbers.
One of the various
metrics I use to track what’s going on in my store is “biffage”
– this is the dollar amount of comics that have come off my racks
that will end up in my dollar boxes or the 25-cent boxes, or even
just given away because no one wants to buy them. Not everything
that comes off the racks will end up in the cheap boxes, of course
– typically we keep a few copies to individually bag & board,
to keep for long-term sales and stock – biffage is the dregs, the
stuff we’re just choking on with no Heimlich in sight.
And, no, I have
no idea of what caused us to name it that, either. Word sounds right
though, don’t it?
Comix Experience’s
biffage for the second half of 2006 nearly doubled from what it
was in the same period of 2005. Now, of course, a goodly percentage
of that came from 2006’s cover price increases, where virtually
every book (from both Marvel and DC) went up in price by 20% from
$2.50 to $2.99. But scouring through the long boxes, it became clear
to me that DC OYL books absolutely dominated my biffage, as the
audience began to stream away.
Certainly, this
problem was compounded by DC not introducing their version of the
FOC (“Final Cutoff Date” – where retailers can lower their
orders just prior to the book going to press) until late in 4th
quarter of 2007. Had FOC been in place at the time of OYL, my biffage
would have been scaled back dramatically (though not fully eliminated)
What happened,
for us at least, was we had a big initial spike on most of the OYL
books, and so we ordered the next batch accordingly strong.
But instead of sticking with the new titles they were sampling,
most of our readers started dropping titles. So, we’re trying to
chase the numbers downwards, but they’re dropping faster than we
can predict or accommodate. You should see how many copies of, say,
Hawkgirl we had clogging up the system, some times barely
selling half of our order after that initial huge spike of interest.
There’s one other
factor in play here, and that’s the ramping up of the competition:
Marvel’s Civil War was on the horizon, and the number of
titles that was going to impact was starting to become clear. The
average person just doesn’t have the budget (or the time, or the
inclination) to support two universes full-line crossovers. (even if OYL wasn’t really a “crossover” at all) – and cuts have to be made.
Another thing
to consider is that burnout had began to
settle in. Between Identity Crisis, the Countdown
to Infinite Crisis, Infinite Crisis itself, and 52/OYL,
we’re talking about nearly 3 years of sustained “Event”-driven stories
in the DC universe. That’s a whole lot of time/comics.
What’s interesting
to me is that the most successful “OYL” launches from DC, at Comix
Experience, have been post-OYL (as a branding exercise), and have
been (seemingly) creatively-driven, rather than editorially-driven.
We’re doing great with JLA & JSA, with Superman
& Action, with Batman & Detective,
and with (to a lesser extent because of lateness) Wonder
Woman. These are all pretty much cases where the idea was to
put a strong “dream team” of creators on a property, rather than
having an external event driving things. That’s the only model that
works to any significant degree over a long haul.
Monday Morning
Quarterbacking is always fun – especially when you have money on
the line like we retailers do – and I’d say that two things were
the most responsible for the relative “failure” of OYL, at least
at Comix Experience.
1) “One Year Later”
doesn’t really mean anything, in and of itself. In fact,
I think it could be argued that the concept forces a certain stasis
upon the affected books. Since we know that 52 is telling
“the story of the missing year”, none of the titles can especially
show you what happened in that time – that’s what 52 is (perceptually)
for. So then the question is: is the plot-hammer itself compelling?
(“Plot hammering”
is pretty much a role-playing term – where the Dungeon Master forces
the Player Characters into roles or directions because that’s what
the plot the DM came up with dictates; regardless of what the PCs
would or should do in those given circumstances. It makes for lousy
RPing [and is almost always a sign of a bad, or inexperienced, DM]
and I’d argue it makes for even worse fiction)
In a lot of ways
it makes the impacted comics about the “mystery”. The thing
is, that’s not really dramatically sustainable.
Once you find out who did kill Laura Palmer, the series is
pretty much over, right?
2) The branding
and emphasis and marketing for the “One Year Later”, as a promotional
tool, was pretty much dropped instantaneously.
Even the OYL bullet fell right off the cover of the DC books by,
what, month 3?
I’m sure this
is a function of the “meaningless” nature of OYL, but what should
have been “this is the year to buy DC Universe comics!” became basically
a one-shot attempt to sell the line.
But as much as
“One Year Later” failed, 52 has succeed
beyond anything that I had thought possible.
At this writing,
we’re past the 2/3rds mark, and I’m astonished at how well it has
kept up its audience. And just how big that audience
is, as well.
A lot of credit
in this success has to be given to DC’s decision to make the first
12 issues returnable – this allowed us to have a much better idea
of what the “floor” and “ceiling” was for 52, with very little
risk.
As I wrote in
my first
column on 52, without returnability, I probably would
have ordered 90 copies of 52 Week 1, and scaled it rapidly
down from there. Instead, my opening bid was 160. In the first week
of sale, alone, I sold 96 copies, and ended up with 128 sold in
the first 13 weeks. Sure, we ended up returning 20-ish copies, after
keeping some for sets and some for backstock, and those returns
cost me $5 – but it also sold me at least 38 more copies than I
guessed (for $95 gross), and allowed me to not be reactive about
demand throughout the course of the series.
At the time of
this writing, 52 looks to be settling into a groove of about
80 copies sold per-issue, and this deep into the project that’s
way above what I thought it would have been. I would have
expected it to be in the 40-50 range – still well above most DC
books, but not in “blockbuster” range.
We did, as I expected,
have a big chunk of unsold copies starting at week 13, when we were
still ordering “blind” (we didn’t yet have enough meaningful cycle
data on mature sales on the book), and getting worse through week
19. Still, at our low point, I managed to keep sell-though at 82%
or above, so it’s no harm, no foul, really.
At the end of
the year’s run, I expect to have, say, 200 or so copies of 52
that will end up as “biffage”, but, relative the 4000 or so copies
I will have sold, that will be just fine.
I’ll tell you
what, though, I don’t think this can be duplicated. And I think
the next weekly book will be looked upon with much suspicion from
the potential audience. 52 was a one-of-a-kind event, and
probably both can’t, and shouldn’t be, attempted again.
But it’s been
a good ride while we’re on it.
I’ll probably
touch on 52 one more time in this column, 3-4 months after
the series concludes, and, at that time, I’ll probably provide a
chart of my actual sales, and we can see how strange the comics
buying customers sometimes is.
**************************
Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience
in San Francisco since
1989. Feel free to e-mail
him with any comments. You can purchase a collection of the
first one hundred Tilting at Windmills (originally
serialized in Comics Retailer magazine) from IDW
Publishing. An index of Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama
can be found right here.
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