Go, Read: Bob Wayne at Newsarama

The comics news site Newsarama has a well-done, lengthy interview with Bob Wayne on the DC adjustment of its titles' storylines called "One Year Later" because of an across-the-line storyline jump coming off their cosmic slam-bang series of the past couple of years. Some of what's said is in response to the sentiment of this piece by retailer Brian Hibbs. Hibbs seems to see the fact that so many titles falling under this promotion going back to print is a sign that DC punted getting its books out there where people could sample them during this big change. The general response to Hibbs' assertion, if I'm getting it right, is that comics retailers under-ordered the various series and that the increased demand broke out of historical patterns that DC uses to make sure extra copies are available.

Because DC's people won't talk in numbers, a lot of what you're getting is specific examples and percentages and very strong assertions, none of which I think are particularly useful in making an informed decision about what happened. Newsarama does a nice job in pointing out that the overall line effect seemed relatively modest, which although the point isn't pressed really mitigates against the idea that this was an out-of-control, huge event outstripping DC's ability to take a reasonable risk. I would also imagine the consumer doesn't care at what point the pipeline is broken; they just want to read comic books and only understand that a book is either there for them to buy or isn't. If it really was retailer aphasia when it came to reading their customer base, DC should be interested in fixing that, too. That's one thing about the modern comics distribution system -- it's pretty clear who the effective agents of change are, because they're all up in front of the big catalog.

So while I really don't recommend these non-number argument pieces, I'd say this article proves extremely useful in tracking DC's attitude towards their line recalibration, including the very strong assertion made by Wayne and Dan Didio that this was not meant to bring in new readers. If that's true, then this might be one of those points they really miss a PR guru because that "jumping-on-point" message was certainly out there.
 
posted 2:17 am PST | Permalink
 

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