Good morning to all from my sick bed. Let’s start with a quick link, shall we? Marc-Oliver Frisch looks at December’s sales figures for DC, noting – amongst other things – the 15% sales drop for the recent Batman fill-in:
The harsh December drop-off is a reaction to the book’s filler storyline by writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake, which was originally solicited to start in issue #660 — before DC changed their minds and moved it up by one month, presumably to accomodate the regular creative team.
In the short term, the decision to run fill-in stories no doubt has its charms; as a separate limited series or as a part of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, the Ostrander/Mandrake arc would likely have sold below 30K per issue. From that perspective, these numbers are clearly fantastic.
On the other hand, there are the long-term numbers of Batman to worry about. In that regard, I’m rather skeptical whether DC is doing itself any great services by interrupting their high-profile team’s run in this fashion. Plainly, it’s rather unlikely for the numbers to just pop back all the way to their former strength once the regular creators return. (Writer Grant Morrison is back with issue #663, artist Andy Kubert rejoins him with the subsequent issue.)
January 30th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Well, maybe they shouldn’t have paired off Morrison with someone as slow as Kubert in the first place? I mean, it’s not like All-Star, which is out of continuity and drawn by someone with talent.
January 30th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
ONE WORD: Manhunter
January 30th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Personally, I liked the fill-in. It was pretty good quality and kept me from going without the book for however long it would’ve been delayed had they not used a fill-in.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I really enjoy Morrison but I’ll take Ostrander over him anyday.
I would have rather that the fill in tie in a bit more to what was going on with Morrison’s run, however, even if it was just focusing on a side character, or a meanwhile.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I don’t understand why the 15% of fans won’t return. They’re obviously people buying the book because it’s Morrison, or they wouldn’t have left, so why wouldn’t they come back when he does?
In the meantime, there’s a four-issue run on Batman by a proven creative team, and the people not interested either save money or get to sample other books: who loses?
The problem with fill-ins in the past was that they were a) unannounced and b) done by whoever could be grabbed at a moment’s notice. So they were annoying and generally rubbish. (They still weren’t as bad as the occasional unannounced reprint, though!) This arc has neither of those problems, so it’s fine by me.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
The fill-in was fine. Not the best thing ever but better than most and it came out bi-weekly so we weren’t waiting four months for the next Morrison issue. Job well done if you ask me.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I’m a huge Ostrander fan, so much so that I’m buying the $25 Grimjack reprint volumes as soon as they come out. I can’t wait for the new Suicide Squad.
That said, the “Grotesk” storyline read like something Ostrander wrote in his sleep.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Business-wise I don’t see how it was a bad move from DC. Rather than losing money by not having any Batman issues shipping in december and january (which means 2×90,000) they chose to replace it with a 4-part arc (4×75,000) that would probably have done around 25,000 (based on Matt Wagner’s minis numbers) if it had been a mini, which means a gain of 4×50,000 issues sold, almost the same as two Batman issues by Morrison/Kubert.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Many comics are propped up for a while once a hot-selling creative writer/artist/team has left (e.g., Supergirl and Batman/Superman after Loeb left). I think it’s because many people don’t evaluate each and every month whether they’ll continue buying a title, but rather do so every few months.