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Dave, I’d match HAL JORDAN to GL, and the LanternS book to GLC, personally — GL was always the Hal title, and GLC the “Not Hal”

Interesting is the five-years-ago figures (from just before the New 52 started) versus now. So in spite of all the “darker and edgier” New 52 revamps, “DC You,” “Convergence,” and other changes, the only characters to see a rise in sales figures since then are Batman (who’d probably sell well anyway), Superman, Batgirl, Constantine, and… Scooby-Doo? Interesting that in sales growth percentages, Scoob and the gang are one of DC’s main successes…

Scooby Doo Apocalypse was a lot better than I could imagine. It inspired me to buy the other similar books. Nice surprise in fun and entertaining reading

I’m really surprised by Unfollow. It’s a great book, full of mystery, intrigue, and plenty of weirdness! It’s a perfect Vertigo title! Why is no one buying this thing?

Nahan: bad marketing strategies. I probably would have been interested but no interior art was visible in the Previews (I think), price of the vertigo floppy was upped 33% just before and they didn’t made any effort on the price of the first paperback as they used to.
And launching a serie demanding such a very long run of issued to be correctly mamanged (the counter can’t drop from 140 to 10 in 2 issues) at a time were any new launch making it past issue 12 is a miracle was perhaps a little too risky.

Nathan: I’m buying it. And it is the perfect Vertigo title. It reminds me of Air by Wilson & Perker from a few years back, gives me that same feeling of those cool little books poking their heads out between Sandman and Preacher and Animal Man and Fables, you know? That…Vertigo feeling…mmm…

isn’t he too young to play Supergirl’s man of steel? I only watched a few episodes but hasn’t he already reached adulthood and been superman for years when Kara shows up as a 12 year old?

What a substantial “article” this one was.

I grabbed everything but Green Lanterns. Rebirth has been good for my LCS and I’ve been pretty excited to see what they are going to do from here on out. I honestly haven’t looked forward to each issue of Superman this much since John Byrne was on the book.

You and I are on the same page Shawn, though John Byrne was just a tad before my regular reading kicked in, my era was Ordway-Jurgens-Stern etc. Looking forward to reading Action next week!

real strong week, all titles were very good reads

My two favorite comic book characters are Superman and Captain America. I wish Cap was getting the same kind of revival that Superman is getting. Ever since the Lois and Clark mini, I’ve loved reading Superman again!

With all the praise for the inking, please give a shout-out to Mick Gray, the unsung hero of this book. He and Patrick Gleason are an incredible combination.

DC should just call itself “Bloodlines Comics” to better reflect where its priorities are (spoiler: stuck in 1993).

Survivors’ Club and Last Gang in Town ended last week.

Slash & Burn, by virtue of Vertigo’s lowest-selling title for April 2016, ended that month.

Seriously — are trade sales of Doctor Fate what keeps that book going? Paul — come back to the Legion!

I’m curious why Midnighter and Martian Manhunter, both great books that are being cancelled, are being kicked to the curb while Doctor Fate, selling worse than both of those, is apparently continuing post Rebirth? Makes no sense. Maybe you’re right, Steve, and it’s trades sell well?

RE: Green Lantern: Edge of Oblivion – I am still for about the 3rd month wondering why the numbers for GL: Lost Army are not included in the past counts.

As for Bloodlines, I remain convinced that DC has to do things with titles every once in a while for some reason in the family of trademarks/copyrights. There are too many times when older names get thrown out for no reason. Like “Star-Spangled Comics featuring G.I.Zombie” – why not just “G.I.Zombie”?

Alex,
Janin is continuing with the series. He was named as part of the rotating art team with Finch when the series was first announced a few months ago.

Having not read any of the New 52 Superman, I actually enjoyed Superman: Rebirth. I found it quite moving.

How interesting! I haven’t been able to find hide or hair of that information, unfortunately. DC’s site only lists Finch in the first arc of issues and all the promo also only speaks to Finch. Do you have a source?

It was announced at WonderCon, http://comicsalliance.com/dc-rebirth-announcements-wondercon/
which was great news to me of course!

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Having completely dropped Marvel, I have high hopes for Rebirth. I was only buying Batman and Justice League a few months ago. I’m a Superman fan so I liked his issue. I didn’t particularly like the Green Lanterns book so it’s 3 likes and 1 meh for me.

The more serious they try to make Batman and Superman’s costumes, the sillier they look.

Nothing says “stuck in the past” to me like people hung up on wanting to bring back briefs. But then, I’ve also always been a “no cape” person even before The Incredibles.

Is it sad that today’s superhero fan can make exception for superpowers but can’t get past the red undies or a cape?

‘Realism’ is a fickle thing.

I think it’s still worth noting that Golden Age superheroes wore trunks over tights like acrobats or circus performers. Not wearing the trunks would be… very revealing for a man. I guess we’re now so far from Superman’s original cultural context that most people are incapable of seeing his old costume as anything but “underwear on the outside.”

For what it’s worth, I think Derenick’s turnaround here looks a lot better than the cover by Janin released previously. Maybe it’s just that he used a lot more ink for shading, so the overall impression isn’t such a blue onesie.

I agree with Tim. Whenever anyone tries to “fix” Superman, they tend to break him even more.

Superman, to me, is a cartoon character, and changing his costume so drastically is kind of like getting rid of Bugs Bunny’s ears. Bugs has had many designs over the years but nobody has ditched the ears.

Superman is an old-fashioned character – he’s the guy superheroes are named after! – so his costume should have an old-hat feel. And Kate it’s not about being “hung up” on it – the red trunks aren’t going to make me read the lousy Super-books either way. But the traditional costume had a very simple red-blue-yellow rhythm that worked well and endured for decades, and tinkering with it, uh, has *not* resulted in any kind of successful, enduring looks.

Could maybe Jim Lee not design the new costumes on any iconic characters? Seriously, they just look cheesy as hell.

I can believe a man can fly before I can believe a man in American society would wear the trunks. It’s not about science, it’s about what the trunks look like to an observer. Arguably, he could have one of those frilly Victorian collars, since what he wears apparently doesn’t matter, right?

“Arguably, he could have one of those frilly Victorian collars, since what he wears apparently doesn’t matter, right?”

It does matter. He’s an icon. What he wears is practically synonymous with who he is. More people wear Superman merchandise than have ever read a comic book.

If red underoos don’t look realistic, then don’t fucking draw him in a realistic style. Pretty simple.

Red boots
Red boots
Red boots

looks much stronger than the initial new52 pool of creators. let’s hope for the best.

Looks stronger than the initial new 52? Except for bringing in Rucka, it’s the same gang of idiots.

PRE-FLASHPOINT SUPERMAN IS SUPERMAN!!!!!

Hey, Scott Lobdell is down to one book a month now. That alone is a victory. Maybe Harras will finally have to not give him any more writing assignments after he runs Red Hood further into the ground.

Overall I like Snyder, King, Jurgens and Seeley staying on the Batverse side of things and it feels like the books will just organically grow into the new status quo for some reason. Otherwise until I see some real descriptions of concepts behind the titles not really overly interested in any of these titles just based on a marketing burst.

And so we have Barbara Gordon still as Batgirl. So much for the hopes of a return to the old continuity.

Can’t say I’m blown away by the old-new mismash going on above, but I can see a couple of books I’m definitely picking up and a couple more I’ll keep an eye on. That’s more interest than I was able to scrape up for Marvel post-Secret Wars.

Also, how the hell did DC managed to score Christopher Priest on Deathstroke?! That’s amazing.

Comics are synonymous with habits. For those of us who’ve been away, it might just be easier to maintain the habit than go out of the way to look in on DC’s characters again. Especially since such irrevocable damage has been done to them.

That includes the travesty of the cinematic universe.

More for everyone else, I guess. :)

Yep, I sure do remember Tom King, Christopher Priest, Hope Larson, Gene Luen Yang, Simon Oliver, Phil Jimenez, and Dan Abnett’s total of 0 comics in the New 52 launch.

Yes, many of these writers are *now* writing DCU books (though not Larson, Priest, Oliver, or Jimenez, let alone relatively new writers like Percy, Semper, or the Bensons) but there’s a lot of people with titles coming out this summer that weren’t at DC post-Flashpoint.

Sorry to see SECRET SIX, BATGIRL OF BURNSIDE, and DOCTOR FATE go (along with the promised second PREZ series, most likely), but turnover is inevitable. Sigh.

PRIEST! HOLY CRAP!!!

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*tveeeeeeeet*

odds are toberoff will appeal and be denied to the supreme court even though just when it looked like at long last the never ending battle for who owns super man once and for all has been over by the courts deciding screw copyright law saying the siegels at least still own the original superman stuff before dc got a hold of it and screwed them out of the billions owned. but also have the rights of their half of superman fully now. for even if the supreme court did in a surprise rare move take the case.and rule for siegels warners would still fully claim super man is there once and for all . as the courts have sadly ruled. for superman sadly will never be back in the hands of his fathers once and for all till in the public domain.

“45:22– What really made All-New All-Different Marvel the success that it was?”

It seems like the jury’s still out on whether ANAD was a success or not. I’ve not actually seen anyone try and prove it mathematically one way or the other but it seems the general mood is that ANAD is arriving with a thud.

I’m surprised by Unfollow. Immediately picked up for TV, no one seems to even know it exists. In fact, I was looking for a copy of the second issue (as my store had only copies that literally had split open on all the bottom seams, part of that whole “We print crappier comics today than we did in the 60’s!” mentality the Big Two are using today, but I digress… ) and comic shop owners were all like “Unfollow? I’ve never heard of that title.” Boom.

And can ANYONE tell me what Survivors’ Club is actually about? I mean, I read the first issue and it made 99.8% no sense. Honestly, I pick up each issue that comes out, look over it in the shop and go “Nope, still making NO sense!” ;) I wanted to like it, too.

I thought creators were ditching Vertigo for Image because its page rates had gotten worse (see: Snyder, Morrison, Lemire). Something must have changed to spark all these launches.

Based on Diane Nelson’s description of Vertigo as reported by Variety at the Variety Summit in September 2015 it sounded like the creator-owned aspect is all but gone.

“Vertigo, which focuses on stand-alone fantasy stories, is an engine “for getting original IP into the company and feeding other businesses as well as our publishing business.”

http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/dc-diane-nelson-batman-vs-superman-marvel-flash-arrow-1201595124/

Superman Lois & Clark turns out to be an 8-issue miniseries in a tweet posted before the publication of this article.

Wow at Omega Men doing the usual Vertigo numbers.

“In DKIII’s case, even if you are very generous and assume that up to 200K of those copies went to customers who actually read them (and frankly I think that the number is likely closer to 150K), that means that over half of the total copies sold of DKIII #1 are either sitting unread in a bag and board somewhere or just taking up space on a retailer’s rack (and before too long in a retailer’s quarter box…)”

Dave, maybe don’t confuse sell-through with profit?

My basic line is that you can’t succeed in retail if you’re not keystoning cost-of-goods (doubling your whole cost), but the nature of Variants, both limited by number (1:25, 1:50 and so on) as well as retailer-exclusive covers (where the large majority of DK3’s 440k is going to *actually* come from) means that you might very well be keystoning COGs and yet still be liquidating the majority of your sell-in number.

I also suspect there’s a WIDE swath of retailers who are “just” breaking even on store-exclusives, but they view it as a marketing expense, and therefore are revenue neutral in their heads.

If someone has been selling comics for six years or more, and is still in business, and doesn’t show any signs of imminent closure… well, it’s probably safe to assume that their business model is absolutely no worse than break-even at which point the market needs to say “Sure, OK” — it’s only cases in which retailers are actively losing money that we should have the slightest concerns about their viability — and the impact on the greater market in the sense of “collapse”

*just because you don’t like how someone conducts commerce does not, a priori, make it a poor model*

(All said with the understanding that I personally believe variants, and marketing in that direction to be the equivalent to a disease: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=41000)

-B

@Brian: I understand fully well that retailers can be breaking even or coming out ahead on incentive variants even while leaving a large amount of the stock unsold. That was kind of my point. It may be good in the term for retailers and publishers, but long term it is bad for everyone.

I mentioned my August 2015 column with my variants rant, but neglected to link to it; it’s here http://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-comics-month-to-month-sales-august-2015-bombshells-return/

I suspect you and I agree far more than disagree on this.

@axspo This column was submitted several days before it was published on the site.

Nathan AAron–

I’m with you. I haven’t bought a book from ‘the big 2’ for years, but the premise (as advertised) for Survivor’s Club intrigued me.

I read the first issue, scratched my head, and never went back.

“Based on Diane Nelson’s description of Vertigo as reported by Variety at the Variety Summit in September 2015 it sounded like the creator-owned aspect is all but gone.”

But if it’s all about IPs for other media, I wonder if that’s the lure, and if there’s a major incentive if they get bought up.

I’m not gonna cry for vertigo as they launched al those new titles with a 3.99$ cover price and apparently stopped their 9.99$ pricing, and did not bother to communicate at all on what their new offer will be to promote this new line of titles.

And yes, I was quite early this month with my column, as I was the last one last month. :p

Greatest immigration story ever told? Someone hasn’t read Angela’s Ashes….

…Or in comics Persepolis, or in children’s books The Arrival, or in movies… Ugh! I won’t go on.

…or, y’know, Maus.

Sorry, but looking at the drawings, I’m drawn away from it…

Dietitians ought to work to ensure their shoppers and sufferers perceive
the dangers related to dietary weight-loss supplements.