Earlier this week, DC announced that they were cancelling six titles in April- including Nightwing, Stormwatch, Suicide Squad and Superman Unchained.
(You can read a news article about the cancellations at Comic Book Resources here: Six DC Series to End in April. Or you can check out the Captain Comics Round Table discussion here: DC Cancels Six Titles)
I don’t usually get worked up about cancellations as I tend to be a pragmatist about these things. Comic books get cancelled, and it's not always someone's fault. Hit records eventually fade from the charts; blockbuster movies are inevitably pulled from theatres; popular TV shows finally have their farewell seasons. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes, a comic book writer is looking for a new challenge and decides to leave. Two and a half years can be a long time to work on the same thing. More often, the sales audience for a book slowly erodes over time and the title is no longer sustainable.
However, with these latest moves, DC looks like they don't know what they're doing.
Of the six titles that are being canceled in April, three happen to have a new writer. I don’t mean that a new writer recently took over and was unable to reverse the normal erosion of sales. I mean that the title has a new writer for the final April issue. Kyle Higgins, who helped launch Nightwing as part of the new 52, is leaving after the March issue. The same thing is happening with Stormwatch and Suicide Squad as Jim Starlin and Matt Kindt leave their respective titles after March. In three different cases, DC is bringing in a new writer for a single final issue. Closers may be common in baseball but they don’t make much sense in comic books.
If DC knew that the titles were in dangerous sales territory, why wouldn’t they cancel them in March when the writers were leaving anyway? Why not let the outgoing writer know that the series is ending so that the person who has already been steering the book can tie up their story the way they want? Alternately, if DC is going to bring in a new writer, why not re-launch the series with a new number one? Why not give the new writers the opportunity to make the titles live instead of asking them to bury a corpse? It looks silly to have someone new come in to write a wrap-up issue on not one, but three separate series. No, not silly. It looks unplanned and unprofessional. Does anyone at DC know what they're doing?
Just as bad, DC is cancelling Superman Unchained. Superman Unchained was part of a high-profile revamp of the Superman line last year by big-name creators Scott Snyder and Jim Lee. It seemed a little early to need a revamp as the new 52 was only about a year and a half old at that point. But DC put a big publicity push behind it- including a Free Comic Book Day issue. Now, Superman Unchained is being canceled after only 9 issues. Scott Snyder and Jim Lee are scheduled to finish the first story arc with that issue and DC is willing to let the title end as they leave.
In most cases, I’d be fine with that. After all, I just advocated for canceling the titles when the creative teams leave with Nightwing and the others. But in this case, it once again looks like poor planning on DC’s part. Couldn’t the Powers That Be foresee that Lee would leave the title sooner rather than later and have a replacement artist lined up? Considering that Jim Lee is one of the Powers That Be, it’s not a farfetched question. Alternately, couldn’t they have simply planned to make Superman Unchained a limited series from the start? A high-profile mini-series could sell just as well as a high-profile new title, and might not shed its readers as quickly if they know there’s a specific end in sight. Instead, the biggest new DC launch of 2013 has been canceled before 2014 has barely gotten out of the gate.
I wasn’t reading any of these titles. I don’t have an emotional investment in them. Again, I tend to be practical about these things. But, as a somewhat neutral observer, DC looks like they don’t know what they’re doing. Their decisions seem kneejerk and haphazard, even if there’s a brilliant plan behind closed doors.
That kind of impression can have an effect on my comic book buying habits. I'm not going to boycott a company because of a few poor management decisions. I don’t buy comic books to make political statements. I read the books I like. But when a company does stupid stuff like this, it makes it harder for them to attract and keep good talent- the kind of talent that makes books I’d be interested in buying. It also makes it harder for me to have confidence in the books they do publish. There are a lot of options out there and it’s impossible for anyone on a budget to read everything. When I’m faced with a choice between buying a somewhat-interesting new DC comic or one by, for example, Image, I’m more likely to buy the Image comic. With Image or Marvel or anybody else, I don’t have to worry that the creative team will be switched between solicitation and publication- as happened recently with DC’s Justice League 3000. But with DC, I have no idea what they’re doing. And, apparently, neither do they.
Replies
I've been convinced that DC is just making everything up (and not in a good way) as they go along for a while now. As much as Marvel's never-ending "events" slide into each other, altering the status quo without ever stopping to explore just what the actual status quo is on any particular week, there's at least a sense that there's some sort thought given to what they're doing. At DC, it always feels like they're not only just throwing stuff at the walls to see what sticks, but instead of waiting to see, they get bored and wander off into a completely different room, so they can throw the same or similar stuff at different walls, and wander off again.
I have always suspected that the amount of oversight DC faces from Warner Bros. is their primary weakness. Warner needs fodder for its larger divisions, and when DC "wastes" talent on Superman Unchained I bet they get the thumbscrews turning. The same thing happens when DC tries something new -- it gets a very limited span of time to prove itself. When it fails Warner demands another Batman book out of them.
And we can always use more Batman stories, can't we?
Lumbering Jack (M'odd-R8-Tr) said:
Well, it is supply and demand in action. DC's audience has consistently shown they don't want something new. They say they do, but they never support it. The last Sword of Sorcery series had three things going for it people grouse about comics lacking: non-superhero, female lead, female creator. It went out there almost completely ignored (I liked it myself). Marvel's latest Defenders series is all female, and it has been cancelled already. I think the people who really do support those kind of series go outside of the Big Two to find them.
I do agree that WB's oversight over DC probably hinders them a lot more than we realize, no matter what kind of public spin they may put on it.
While the "merits" of restarting the entire DC Universe with The New 52 is an ongoing debate, I want to add that I'm wondering about DC's current pricing policy too.
Every new title this winter (to date) has been released at $3.99 with the only "extras" for the money being a slightly thicker cover stock and 2 additional story/art pages.
The $2.99 titles currently have 20 story/art pages.
The older $3.99 comics have/had either a 20 page lead and an 8 page back up or a 28 page overall story.
Even all the standard cover editions of the comics released during "Villains Month" (issue 23 point whatever) were $3.99!
In these trying economic times, I'm afraid that it might reach the point where (*gasp!*) I have to give up comic books completely! And that's saying something considering I have been reading them since 1974, back when they were 20 CENTS for 20 pages of story and art!
By the way, does the impending cancellation of Nightwing mean that Dick Grayson does NOT survive Forever Evil?
That is going to be the "normal" price for new comics more and more. Every title from Boom!, Dynamite, and IDW is that price and has been for a while. I don't know if Marvel still does it, but I know for a while every new series from Marvel had their first issue @$3.99, because in my IMO they knew that is the biggest seller of a series. Then you would see subsequent issues @$2.99.
Maybe, but I doubt it. I would guess more of a rebooted new series sooner or later. It was #32 in sales for November which puts it well ahead of a bunch of series that are still ongoing. It is the same case as Batman: The Dark Knight (which ranked #37 the same month) which I *am* sad to see go, because I really liked what Gregg Hurwitz was doing with it.
Comic books get cancelled, and it's not always someone's fault. Hit records eventually fade from the charts; blockbuster movies are inevitably pulled from theatres; popular TV shows finally have their farewell seasons. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes, a comic book writer is looking for a new challenge and decides to leave.
I think one difference is that records and TV shows don't have to be pre-ordered by their eventual consumers. Movies DO have to be pre-ordered in a sense by the theaters. They have to decide (sight unseen) which movies to order, how many screens, and for how many weeks before any consumers have seen them, or even seen previews. The non-returnable comic store market dictates that stores must take risks by ordering copies they can't sell and can't return. Not too many stores can afford to waste money on product their customers won't (or probably won't) support. Of course, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it's not on the shelf no one will see it. There are titles my local store owner (who has become a close friend) will only order copies for the one or two customers who ordered them. If I were him I think I would order a couple extra on most of these for the shelf, but I'm not him. As for farewell seasons on TV shows, this only seems to apply to shows which have been on for awhile. It is also with an eye to DVD sales.
Of the six titles that are being canceled in April, three happen to have a new writer. I don’t mean that a new writer recently took over and was unable to reverse the normal erosion of sales. I mean that the title has a new writer for the final April issue.
I wonder if they have a contract with the creators who are leaving that is for a specified number of comics or length of time? If so, are these same creators starting up a new title which they will also leave?
If DC knew that the titles were in dangerous sales territory, why wouldn’t they cancel them in March when the writers were leaving anyway?
At the risk of sounding cynical, is it possible that the substituted writer-or-artist gets less money than the one replaced? Meanwhile, the price on the comic didn't go down, and the pre-orders don't go down that fast.
I have always assumed that comics from the independents (such as IDW, BOOM!, etc;) have been $3.99 from the companies' start, with 22 story/art pages and mostly traditional cover stock, because those publishers don't have the corporation support of "The Big Two".
But all of Marvels' latest releases have started at $3.99 with NO price reduction for subsequent issues that I am aware of.
Once comics have been solicited a company has to put them out or take a hit. If the comic is being cancelled a top creator might not be interested in staying around, whereas an up-and-coming creator could use the work.
...Yeah , I halfway thought it might be a " give a newcomer/old-timer a slot/credit " thought - However , that woul;d have to be ones that are solicited that way , yes ??? If they changed creators from the first silicitation it'd have to be re-solicted , right ???
Luke Blanchard said:
My impression is that they only get re-solicited if they miss their on sale dates by LARGE margin.
This reminds me of when the L.A. Dodgers had recently added the then-new pitcher Fernando Valenzuela. His fans would figure out when he was due to come up in the pitching rotation and buy tickets for that game. When they suddenly changed the rotation a lot of people were up in arms, contending that it was a ploy to arrange a sell-out for a different game. I think the only thing that was promised is guys on the field dressed in Dodger uniforms. I don't think DC would have to re-solicit because a creator changed.
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