Yep. Here we are with another one of these things. If you missed last week’s column, you can read it here.
The previous rant was all about how, at least when it comes to the Big Two, the entire business strategy seems to revolve around getting more money from existing customers by expanding lines and raising prices. And right on cue, a rumor appeared last week that DC was about to launch a sixth – yes, sixth – Green Lantern title called “Sinestro Corps.”
That’s probably a smart way to make a quick profit, assuming a decent percentage of readers who already buy the other GL books pick up the new one. (Safe assumption.) But again, the question becomes, what does the expansion do to bring in new readers, which the mainstream industry is going to have to do at some point, instead of just doubling down on material for the few die-hard fanboys that are left?
DC did an amazingly courageous thing back in 2011 by completely rebooting its entire line. Although now as we sit here two years later, it’s becoming increasingly clear that – like almost everything in the comics world – the reboot didn’t really provide real change, just the illusion of change before snapping back to the status quo.
Much of their line remains impenetrable to new readers. The characters didn’t change all that much. Neither did the roster of creative talent.
DC co-publisher Dan DiDio told the New York Times a few weeks back that to service just a small slice of the audience was not the way to get ahead. “We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible,” he said.
Sounds good, but how do you do that? One way might be for DC and Marvel to drastically slash their lines. The move might actually increase sales.
It may seem antithetical that cutting back on something might help it grow, but occasionally it’s true. Hell, it works with hair and it works with bonsai trees.
Just look at DC’s New 52, which has seen quite a few of its basement titles cancelled over the last years, suggesting that 52 ongoing titles (plus multiples minis and other series) is just too many for the current market to bear.
After Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the other recognizable marquee characters, DC was left scrambling to fill the racks with unknowns like Mister Terrific and Voodoo, just to reach this rigid, nonsensical 52 threshold that they set for themselves. It doesn’t make any sense.
I’d cut the number of titles by more than half. Completely pare down the line to only its most recognizable and bestselling titles. Sorry, OMAC. I don’t care if the co-publisher is writing you. You would never have been greenlit in the first place. Sorry, 15 confusing iterations of the X-Men. There will now be two books with X in the title, tops.
“Well, speaking strictly as a consumer, I would love to see it,” says a former DC editor speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Overall quality would go up because — one would hope — only the best of the best would get the creative gigs. The numbers would dictate that nearly every title would get at least a B+-list team. The one downside, though, would be the lack of arenas to groom new or developing talent, which would have an effect down the line.”
That’s true, although these days, new talent can cut their teeth in the world of self-published, digital or small-press comics. The upsides to slashing the lines could be huge.
One of the things that both DC and Marvel are selling is the shared universe concept, the idea that these adventures and characters all inhabit the same place. Something that happens in one title has a ripple effect to another. With fewer titles, readers would be a lot more likely to follow a greater number of books as the universe begins to feel a lot less sprawling and more manageable. Readers would invest more in the stories. Too many titles only leads to confusion and encourages readers to head for the exits.
“The Marvel and DC universes would be infinitely more accessible to new readers if there was one X-Men book, one Spidey book, one Superman book,” the editor says. “If someone walked out of a movie theater and into a comics shop, there would just be one book to put in front of him or her. The story of that person’s new hero would start in that issue. That was always the great thing when I was discovering new comics, growing up in the ’70s and ’80s: If I got curious about following a new character, I could pick up his (or rarely, her) book and that would be it. I didn’t need to dig up the year-long saga that led into that issue or the four other monthly titles featuring that character, so that I could get the ‘entire’ story. It was one book — at most, two — and that was it.”
Look at old Marvel subscription ads from the early 1980s, and you’ll find almost no offerings beyond simply-named titles featuring recognizable characters (except for US 1, whatever that was), as well as a few licensed titles. Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk. Is it a coincidence that the massive expansion of the X-Men line coincided with the greed-drenched speculator boom of the 1990s? Prior to that, if you wanted a title with X in it, there was Uncanny X-Men.¤.¤.and that was about it.
A smaller line will force more readers to invest in those few series, as opposed to spreading their money out broad line of titles. Instead of having 30,000 people buying, say, four different X-Men books, wouldn’t it be better to have 120,000 people buying one X-Men book? (On top of that, a title becomes cheaper per unit to print the more copies you produce.)
Imagine if Marvel only published 5 titles. How many Marvel zombies would buy them all? What about ten titles? Fifteen? At some point the line of titles gets too broad for fans to pick up every one, but the fewer the titles, the greater the likelihood that readers will buy more of them.
Simplify, consolidate.
Of course this will never happen, mostly for economic reasons. Slashing the number of titles so violently will probably cost the publishers a lot in the short-term, and for companies that are chasing growing quarterly profits, that’s just not acceptable.
But what about in the long-term?
As the months went by, wouldn’t die-hard fans be apt to pick up more titles when faced with fewer choices? They’re addicts who need their fix and they’re gonna get it any way they can.
Let’s look at the math. DC, for example, shipped around 2.4 million comics in February 2013 for about $8.4 million in sales. And the company had to publish about 70 titles to get there.
Let’s say the company only published 20 titles. That’s it. To reach their current sales mark of 2.4 million units, each title would have to sell 120,000 copies. Moving that many units doesn’t seem feasible and it may not be, but then again, the Justice League and Batman regularly sell around that mark – and that’s on a monthly basis, without any crossovers or gimmicks.
Take a recognizable character, tell a great story with great art that isn’t too overly tangled in years of continuity, and new readers might come. If not, you can always just publish a seventh Green Lantern book to pay the bills. “Mogo Corps,” anyone?
—
Email us at parallelworlds@nypost.com.
Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NYPost_PW and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/NYParallelWorlds.
