Go, Read: Brian Hibbs On DC’s New 52 Month Two

The retailer and industry advocate Brian Hibbs has an installment of his column up here that discusses a couple of digital comics issues. He comes down against DC going exclusive with its Kindle deal, and comes down super-heavy against Marvel including a free digital copy of a comic book with new issues of a launched series. He's so against the latter, he's not carrying the book at all in his store. He gives his reasons why, but basically he feels that digital copies in a regular comic book represent a clumsy attempt by Marvel to build data on the back of his hard work in a way that could have an adverse effect on his business, and Marvel was dishonorable in trying to sneak this attempt into a comic they had already solicited. Sounds sensible to me, and I like that he addresses the "you're only harming yourself" cry ahead of hearing it, since that has become a really cynical response to any sort of stand by anyone these days.

The real interest in the column, though, comes up top with his analysis of the second month of DC sales in his shop. Hibbs was extremely positive about month one, which I think mitigates against automatically criticizing his sober take on month two with the usual "you're just negative." Hibbs points out (rightly) that even with an influx of new customers joining in the old, any model that counts on people buying comics across an entire line is going to quickly prove itself unsustainable. Hibbs also indicates that at least in his shop, the comics have fallen into established patterns in terms of sales drop-off, with a couple of the critically-lauded series launches being the exception that proves the rule and at least one critically-eviscerated series launch being the example that adds underlines. I appreciate hearing this: I haven't read anything about month two in DC's publishing initiative, and a lot of what came with month one was a lot of bellowing and fist-pumping about the awesomeness of selilng so many comics rather than considered analysis.
 
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