Retailer Brian Hibbs on the realization that today’s DC Entertainment is a very, very different beast from the DC Comics of yore:
So, when DC Entertainment suddenly broke that promise right before Thanksgiving, I was fairly appalled. Not only because they didn’t have the common decency to tell us to our faces, not only because it directly no-fooling broke a promise they made to our faces just a year before, but mostly because it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of business sense to give a weaker segment a clear market advantage over your primary economic engine. It just doesn’t make sense if there’s not momentum in that direction, and the publishers are telling us that there isn’t.
Ultimately it shows the retail community that, all of their pretty words to the contrary, DC Entertainment really doesn’t care about any of our businesses. DC Comics, under Paul Levitz, always and unflinchingly had our backs, but that left us 38 months ago when Paul was removed from the company.
In that time, DCE has abandoned most of the policies that made it a great publisher in the first place — walking away from creators (like Alan Moore’s wishes on “Before Watchmen”), from imprints (the slow Warner’s strangulation of Vertigo appears to have finally chased out Karen Berger), and now from the Direct Market.
December 7th, 2012 at 10:38 am
Not exactly without precedent. When new people come in they don’t feel obligated by promises made by people who are not them. Back in the 1980s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS was released in a $100 hardback because “there will never be a softcover edition.” A few years later, with little fanfare, a softcover was released. DC didn’t even bother to explain. They just did it.
December 7th, 2012 at 10:43 am
This was a promise by exactly the same people who run the company today — directly from John Rood’s lips — not from Levitz’s era.
-B
December 8th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Every other entertainment medium has evolved to include digital distribution in the past decade, but dinosaurs like Hibbs refuse to evolve from the antiquated direct market distribution formula that has relegated comic books into a ghetto of dank little holes that actively chase off outsiders. It isn’t just the simplicity and convenience of being able to buy our comics from the sofa that has driven digital comic sales, but shop owners like Hibbs that have chased readers away from the LCS.
Paper comics are for collectors. Digital comics are for READERS. DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, etc need READERS not just collectors to stay in business.
Waiting till 2pm every Wednesday was ridiculous. Now I can read my comics when I first get up in the morning. Kudos to DC for recognizing this and getting me my comics ASAP and for taking the steps to expand the distribution of comics back into the hands of real people who have spend billions on other superhero material, but wouldn’t step foot in a comic shop ghetto a second time.
December 8th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Michael Payton: Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the business practice, you’re willfully missing Brian Hibbs’ point, which is DC’s willingness to completely go against their own word in such a short interval of time without any prior warning. In the real world, that is, by definition, a deal-breaker for actual businesses; people get fired and corporate partnerships get ended over things like that.
December 10th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
It’s cyclical…I’m buying much more Marvel product these days as my beloved DC stands revealed from behind the curtain with nothing to say (at the moment to me). So unlike Dorothy I’m ignoring the entity behind the curtain.
January 31st, 2013 at 2:12 pm
It’s hard to come by educated people about this subject, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about!
Thanks