Earlier this month when a workprint of Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked in its entirety over bittorrent sites on the Internet, the blogosphere and the entertainment press erupted with reviews, previews, debates, examinations of the financial fallout and all manner of other reaction to the event.
As a comic book fan, though, this weekend isn’t, and never has been, “the week Wolverine will hit theaters” to me. Instead, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of DC’s Free Comic Book Day offering, Blackest Night #0 by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Doug Mahnke. Imagine my surprise, then, to find out that with no fanfare or attention, apparently someone has also leaked that book.
Within three hours of the premature release of Wolverine to the web, I had friends, acquaintances and even the odd comic book professional professing to have seen it, and asking me what I thought–of the movie, the leak or whatever. Reactions were fairly mixed to the film itself, as has been widely reported, and while early critical reception of Blackest Night has been almost uniformly good, it took an entire weekend for anyone to comment to me that they had seen a copy of the comic online. No news sites–comics or otherwise–seem to have picked it up as a story, and certainly there has been no serious discussion of its long-term economic impact.
This latter piece of information is interesting. While Blackest Night #0 is a free comic book, and so people who download it might feel less guilty about getting the comic itself for free, it’s also part of the Free Comic Book Day event–designed to get people away from their TVs and computers and lure them into comic book retailers, where ideally they might give books a try that they ordinarily don’t. In terms of a long-term impact on the comic book industry, someone who didn’t go to a shop to pick up Blackest Night could easily leave a much larger footprint than somebody who skipped out on an $8 matinee of the newest X-Men flick if it meant they never pick up their first issue of Booster Gold or Dark Avengers. Obviously the movie cost a lot more money to make than the comic book did, and relies much more heavily on “buzz” to be profitable, but really–at least for those of us in the comics press–why is the leak of a major “event” comic book over a week before its release date not bigger news? Why isn’t it met with anger and controversy? Is it just because the non-comics press didn’t take notice?
April 29th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I can’t answer your questions about the whys and wherefores of this particular leak, but i can say that this sort of thing, will eventually work itself out. Right now things are obviously in flux with both some consumers and industry trying disparately to hold on to a dying or dead concept of “hard copy”. And i’ve heard all the arguments, but eventually everyone is going to realize that “floppy” comics and cds and dvds are the modern day equivalent of the buggy whip.
Now, as far as this leak goes, I think what i call “instantaneous distribution” will be the wave of the future. I think soon, media companies will be doing promotion and hype long before the product is “in the can”, so that things are released much sooner after they are completed. One of the main reasons i believe this, although not the only, is the recent announcement that the dvd box set of this season of 24 will be out the day after the season finale. And really, why not? heck, you can even see signs of it in the announcement of the issues of wolverine that are going to be released in out of number order (73, then 72, then 74 or whatever the actual numbers are). It’s a brave new world.
April 29th, 2009 at 5:46 am
“Is it just because the non-comics press didn’t take notice?”
I think the difference is that this is a multi-million dollar summer blockbuster movie that was released a month in advanced in its (near) complete form versus a comic book that was going to be given away for free.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Or maybe its because many shops received their books a couple weeks in advance and started giving them out to customers early, similar to every other Free Comic Book Day. DC has already posted just about the entire story online anyways, leaving out maybe 4 pages of content from their FCBD offering, which makes it even more of a moot point and non-news.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:29 am
The idea of comics leaking is scary and should be noted. But in this case, I think it’s fair to say the economic impact is zero. People who go looking for and download Blackest Night 0 are already comic book readers and buyers who visit the store weekly. I doubt the main target audience for Free Comic Book Day — new readers — are downloading comics.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:36 am
I don’t think there’s any comparison here. It wasn’t leaked – the book was completed, printed, and distributed.
First off, people were reporting getting copies of the book a early as two weeks ago. Many of the FCBD books ship early to make sure they arrive in time, and comic shop owners who couldn’t be bothered to actually participate in the FCBD event (or perhaps more kindly, wanted to make sure their regular customers got the book) just handed it out to people as soon as it shipped. The books don’t have a hard street date (something many retailers have railed about, but that’s another issue) so there’s nothing inherently wrong with them doing that, it’s just a little confusing.
Once the books are in the hands of readers, having it make the jump to scanned is also no shock. Yes, we can have the whole “It’s wrong / no it isn’t” conversation again, but nothing new will be said, and no one will get convinced to pull a Specturn (trademark! trademark!) and change sides.
I’m far more fascinated by the fact that there is at least one copy of BN #0 on ebay, and is getting up to $7.50 top bid. I’m amazed we haven’t heard about stores selling “preview copies” of the book. Another example of the industry going for the short-term cash over long-term benefits.
Very few non-comics readers will be coming into comic shops for Blackest night #0. But the ones that do come in will have a chance to see the start of a very promising story.
Once again, I expect to see almost no news articles about the event get done BEFORE it happens. There’s plenty about it afterwards, usually on the nightly news as they take b-roll footage of the folks at the stores, and tell people, basically, what they missed today. Pointless.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I heard the New Avengers FCD and Wolverine FCD both leaked as well.