It’s only one store’s experience, sure, but this latest Tilting At Windmills from Brian Hibbs is must-read material for what it has to say about the New 52 DC relaunch:
What most impressed me a year ago was the sheer number of “lapsed” comics readers coming back into the store for the first time in a decade-plus — there was tons of sampling being done, and a truly significant number of those new customers have seem to stuck. I’m sorry to universalize from my individual experiences, but I can’t think of a clear and unambiguous way to measure this in the national sales charts, but in my individual store, customer transaction counts (basically: every time the register is popped, to make a sale) are up 20%. I also have about 20% more subscriber customers than I did a year ago — and exceedingly few (like “I can count them on one hand” few) new “DC-specific” subs that were opened had to be chased down for payment or cancelled.
What I see is that a lot of new customers came into the market looking at the DC reboot, and they didn’t only buy DC comics — they saw the wide wide range of material that’s available, and discovered new favorites. The entire Direct Market is up, directly counter to the general experience of all other print media, and this at the same time that major expansion to digital was announced, providing virtually every comic on sale in print and on line at the exact same time. John Jackson Miller calculates that Direct Market year-to-date sales through July are up 18.5%. Can you name any other print media where this is anything close to true in the year 2012?
Not snark, but genuinely asking: What is the likelihood that Marvel NOW! can produce anything close to this in terms of results? Was this a one-time deal?
August 17th, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Marvel Now is really just a Titanic styled deck chair shuffle (with some dubious Captains in charge) It won’t come anywher close to the DC 52′s results.
August 17th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Marvel’s higher prices won’t help. And I think that spreading out the relaunches will only tamp down the excitement that came last September. Everyone was talking about the New 52, for good or for ill, because it was concentrated in some huge doses.
But never underestimate Marvel’s publicity machine.
August 17th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
I think Simon hit the nail on the head: the spread out roll out will make it hard for Marvel to duplicate what DC did.
Marvel’s also made a point of saying it’s not a reboot, so I don’t know how much a new #1 would really appeal to lapsed fans who would still be missing all the continuity from when the last bought a comic.
Not that DC’s relaunch was perfect, because it was really far from that.
August 20th, 2012 at 8:31 am
I sort of wish Marvel had followed suit and pressed the reboot button too; even if they kept some continuity and adjusted others. I’ve been a DC reader my whole life but would have tried more of their stuff if I could have arrived at equal grounding to more rabid fans.
And having everything back at number ones does allow the monthly new floppies the less intimidating look of being fresher with lower numbers.
But it doesn’t sound like it’s going to help me into that universe.