Your Thoughts On Why OK-Selling Superhero Comics Have Stand-Alone Series In Addition To Regular Ones

Here are a few of the fuller responses to my wondering out loud yesterday as to why a series like Kevin Smith's Batman: Cacophony #1 is a stand-alone series instead of streamed into the regular title.

Gardner Linn:

This is a response to your recent post on Batman: Cacophony, and the general phenomenon of character-specific miniseries. Please note I am not a comics historian, nor an economics expert, nor someone with special knowledge of the inner workings of DC (or any other company), merely a reader with opinions (and, as this response might show, more of a fanboy than I care to admit).

In the case of Cacophony, I think the stock answers are, to a large degree, the answers. The two main Batman series -- Batman and Detective -- are both in the middle of extended runs by (relatively) popular writers, and are both currently in the middle of a semi-major storyline ("Batman R.I.P.") that is itself leading to another major storyline(s). I haven't read Cacophony, but from what I understand it literally doesn't fit in the current continuity, and may even contradict certain elements of current Batman continuity. It would seem, then, that if DC wants to have a Kevin Smith Batman book on the stands sooner rather than later, it makes sense to shunt the story off to its own miniseries. (And while I think it's possible that Cacophony would sell more if it was part of the regular Batman series, I think it's doubtful that it's going to cannibalize much of the regular Batman audience, so DC is probably making more money off the character by running the story as a mini. Again, not an economics expert, so anybody with actual figures is welcome to prove me wrong. And of course if you publish too many of these minis over the course of a year, you probably will start to lose exhausted readers.)

Also, Kevin Smith is a draw (though perhaps not as much as he was five or ten years ago), and DC probably feels that his name will lure readers over to a miniseries. And for casual readers who may only be interested in Kevin Smith books, a three-issue miniseries with a big obvious #1 might be less intimidating or confusing than Batman #682-684 or whatever.

Like I said, I'm no historian, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Dark Knight Returns was the beginning of these sorts of things. It's worth noting that while Year One ran in Batman, DKR did not -- it was a separate series. And I think the reason for the difference--and a large part of the reason for the continued preponderance of separate miniseries -- is continuity and canon.

As a flashback, Year One may have literally been out of continuity, but in a larger sense it was in continuity -- it was intended to be the actual canon origin of Batman (please someone who wasn't 8 years old in 1987 correct me if I'm wrong about that being the intent). In contrast, DKR was more of an "imaginary," proto-Elseworlds story, though over time I think it has become, for many readers, an official piece of the Batman canon.

I think for characters or franchises like Batman, there are three levels of stories. There are the "regular" stories, ranging from forgettable one-issue inventory stories to multi-year Grant Morrison runs, that go in the main book. Then there are "special" stories -- special because of the creators involved, or the unique nature of the story told--that run as miniseries (or, occasionally, graphic novels). Then there are the "really special" stories -- the stories that have that unique thing about them, but are also intended to be official canon -- that run in the main book. These are your Year Ones, or the upcoming Neil Gaiman-written "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" which is running in Batman and Detective when it could easily stand as its own thing. Running a story as a miniseries instead of in the main book creates a different set of expectations for the reader; stories in the main book "matter" in a way that miniseries don't. (Though of course publishers want you to think miniseries matter too, in that they want you to spend money on them, but they matter in different ways.)

(The big exceptions to this are in-continuity, crossover-related miniseries like Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four or Final Crisis: Rogue's Revenge, which seem to operate under different rules. Fantastic Four and Spider-Man got their own Secret Invasion minis because they were tied up in their own special creator/continuity situations [Millar/Hitch and "Brand New Day," respectively], whereas, say, Black Panther's SI tie-ins ran in that character's main book. I'd also imagine that Marvel thought FF or Spider-Man could support two books in a way that Black Panther couldn't. As for Rogue's Revenge and other Final Crisis tie-ins, I think it's likely that DC thought giving Rogue's Revenge the Final Crisis imprimatur would draw more readers than running it in the moribund regular Flash book.)

As shared-universe superhero comics have trended toward tight continuity and long-form storytelling and away from "done in one"s and the "every issue is somebody's first" philosophy, I think miniseries like Cacophony have become more popular because they provide a home for stories that don't fit into the grand plan (as we acknowledge that those plans are shaky at best) but may nevertheless garner an audience, or at the very least keep somebody within the company happy. I think it's also possible to make the argument that the publication of such miniseries is a short-sighted attempt to wring as much money as possible out of completists.

I don't think the TV analogy holds up too well, however. For one thing, TV doesn't have a situation analogous to Batman/Detective or Superman/Action, where two different simultaneous series feature the same characters. The CSI and Law & Order franchises are more akin to the various titles in the X-Men franchise, each sharing a similar premise but with largely different casts. More importantly, it's much more cost-effective for DC to publish a couple of simultaneous Batman series than it is for NBC to air, say, two ER series every week. You don't have to pay Batman any extra money to appear in another series, and there are no limits on his time. You do, however, have to pay Maura Tierney more money to play her ER character on another show, and she is bound by the laws of time and space. If a network has a hit show, it's going to squeeze as much money as it can out of it -- so if NBC thought it could get higher ratings for less money by creating ER Tuesdays, they would. In fact, they did, with the recent Thursday editions of Saturday Night Live, which I believe have been NBC's highest-rated scripted shows this season. And they were going to do it with Heroes: Origins, until the writers strike scuttled it. (And then of course there are the occasional show-related TV-movies, like last year's Battlestar Galactica: Razor, or the upcoming 24: Redemption, which serve much the same function as Batman miniseries, except both of those examples aired/will air between seasons of the parent show.) I think the only thing keeping networks from exploiting their hits the way DC exploits Batman is not that they think it's a stupid idea, but that it's financially and logistically nearly impossible to produce two different shows with the same cast every week.

Jeez. If you made it this far, sorry for rambling. I think my main point is that a greater reliance on/adherence to continuity has given rise to more and more miniseries like Cacophony.

Tom Bondurant:

Just a few thoughts on the above-referenced post....

-- This is admittedly a nitpick, but Batman: Year One was actually in-continuity. It was the equivalent of John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries or George Perez's revamped Wonder Woman origin, but the thinking was that Batman didn't need as radical a makeover. It resulted basically in minor changes to supporting characters: Barbara Gordon had to become Jim Gordon's adopted daughter (because the Gordons' first child being born was a "B:Y1" plot point) and Alfred was the Wayne Family's butler, as opposed to being someone who showed up (in both the Golden and Silver Ages) after Dick Grayson moved in. Accordingly, it was appropriate subject matter for the Batman title, just as "Year Two" (in Detective) and "Year Three" (back in Batman) were.

-- That said, for years I have wondered why DC has a specific Batman anthology like Legends of the Dark Knight or the current Confidential, and still thinks it necessary to publish separate Batman miniseries. JLA Classified was publishing upwards of eighteen issues a year just to burn off its inventory. If the Kevin Smith thing (which I am passing on, since I heard how bad it was) is designed to reach a particular audience, why on earth isn't DC trying to sucker that audience into buying a regular Batman title? (Maybe I answered my own question with the JLA Classified example....)

-- I agree completely with the TV comparison. I would extend it further to supporting-character ongoing series like Robin and Nightwing. Not every supporting character can stand on his own. (However, I think Lois Lane is an exception, especially these days.)

-- The increasing ratio of miniseries to regular series bugged me so much over the summer that I did a series of Grumpy Old Fan posts on it:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Admittedly, it's more of an overview than anything else, but basically I think DC is pinning its hopes for expansion on miniseries. They're arguably better suited to being collected, and there's not as much commitment as with an ongoing series.

-- As for your specific question, though, I don't know precisely when DC started to go so miniseries-happy. Certainly the numbers have shot up during the DiDio years, but I haven't looked back much farther than 2001.

Nat Gertler:

I'm going to have to try to send in comments more when I agree with things, so it doesn't just sound like I'm disagreeing with things. But here I am, disagreeing with things.

The switch to add-on miniseries is not some growth of the last 20 years. When Batman: Year One ran, it surprised people that it was not a separate miniseries, and some saw it as an aggressive move on DC's part to build the audience for the regular series. DC had done stand-alone Batman limited runs before, not only with the different format of The Dark Knight Returns, but in standard comics format like The Untold Legend of the Batman, or the Batman Special one-shot. At around the same time that they were doing their Batman reboot within the series, John Byrne was doing his Superman reboot as the Man Of Steel miniseries.

As for why TV doesn't do such things: You're asking that the same week that A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! will air, featuring the same character from The Colbert Report but run with a separate time and title. Now we could have a discussion of whether Battlestar Galactica: Razor was more like Batman: Son of the Demon than it was like Untold Legend of the Batman, and whether Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That? was really more Detective Comics, but then I think the varsity jocks would be legally required to beat us up and take our lunch money.

My Response: Thanks, guys. I was more looking for information than staking out a position, so I don't think it's necessary for me to argue against anything that's just been said, but I did want to clarify a few things.

I do understand that television utilizes stand-alone mini-series and holidays specials and bridge mini-series with divergent content featuring popular shows. What I'm talking about is more specifically stand-alone mini-series that could with only superficial changes be woven into a regular series on titles that aren't big hits -- or even run as an event within that title. And while I understand the ability to make money or to capture market share is an achievable goal under these conditions with that strategy, I'm questioning whether or not it points out something that's broken in the market. Also, by continuity I meant the more general sense of it continuing a storyline, not whether or not it was canonical, which is my bad. Overlapping series is a different issue, although I'm not sure that's not also ultimately a dysfunctional aspect of the market as forged by the big mainstream companies.

In general I worry about the mainstream companies reducing their investment in a Direct Market based on an appraisal of that market's health that comes while they're doing things that help make it, over the long term, slightly sick. It seems crazy to me that our best established and most well-funded industry members are frequently among the least thoughtful and engaged with the long-term health of certain markets, and equally crazy that comics actors will treat every market except the homegrown one with deference and delicacy.
 
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