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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2020 10:41:10 GMT -5
Sorry, can't follow you here: why wouldn't they be selling less if DC is producing less?
Consider the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the "80/20 Rule". Batman, Superman, and the JL books are likely around 20% of their total series output while accounting for 80% of their sales, with the other 80% of their total series output accounting for 20% of their sales. They have said the series in the first group are going to be retained, but they will also cut their total output by 40%. Sake of argument, since I like round numbers, let's say they are printing 100 series per month, so reducing total output by 40% means going down to 60 series per month, with 20 of them being the aforementioned "Big Three" that were accounting for 80 issues sold out of every 100 and should continue to sell 80 issues per month going forward, regardless of total company output. That means there are 40 other series left (from a group of 80) that previously were selling 20 out of every 100 issues moved. Cutting the output in half ostensibly means a corresponding equal drop in issues sold, putting this new slimmed down group at 10 issues sold per month. A reduction from 10% in the number of issues sold (90, down from 100) will certainly impact their bottom line, but the comment from thwhtguardian was that it would not be a "significantly lower number", and the numbers here bear that out. Additionally, there will be some ancillary cost savings benefits from not having to manage so many titles, including those that sell fractions of issues per 100 issues sold. When I'm managing my warehouses for my company, if I can eliminate SKUs from the shelves because we have two functionally-similar items from multiple manufacturers, I do that, because one invariably moves faster than the other one. Likewise, if I can move items from our stock to a vendor-managed inventory system (which I do for non-technical, consumable items like paper towels, toilet paper, batteries, Gatorade, gloves, safety glasses, and the like), it reduces the amount of non-value add activities I have to engage in, which frees up time to negotiate better contracts, find cheaper sources of supply for more technical items, etc. **Caveat: I produced this off of simply applying the Pareto Principle to DC's theoretical situation, without analyzing their monthly sales data. It might be off by some factor based on the actual data, but it's a fair place to start the discussion. The terrible result is that DC might only produce Superman, Batman and JLA books. That's all you have to choose from. |
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Post by The Captain on Aug 14, 2020 11:00:16 GMT -5
Consider the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the "80/20 Rule". Batman, Superman, and the JL books are likely around 20% of their total series output while accounting for 80% of their sales, with the other 80% of their total series output accounting for 20% of their sales. They have said the series in the first group are going to be retained, but they will also cut their total output by 40%. Sake of argument, since I like round numbers, let's say they are printing 100 series per month, so reducing total output by 40% means going down to 60 series per month, with 20 of them being the aforementioned "Big Three" that were accounting for 80 issues sold out of every 100 and should continue to sell 80 issues per month going forward, regardless of total company output. That means there are 40 other series left (from a group of 80) that previously were selling 20 out of every 100 issues moved. Cutting the output in half ostensibly means a corresponding equal drop in issues sold, putting this new slimmed down group at 10 issues sold per month. A reduction from 10% in the number of issues sold (90, down from 100) will certainly impact their bottom line, but the comment from thwhtguardian was that it would not be a "significantly lower number", and the numbers here bear that out. Additionally, there will be some ancillary cost savings benefits from not having to manage so many titles, including those that sell fractions of issues per 100 issues sold. When I'm managing my warehouses for my company, if I can eliminate SKUs from the shelves because we have two functionally-similar items from multiple manufacturers, I do that, because one invariably moves faster than the other one. Likewise, if I can move items from our stock to a vendor-managed inventory system (which I do for non-technical, consumable items like paper towels, toilet paper, batteries, Gatorade, gloves, safety glasses, and the like), it reduces the amount of non-value add activities I have to engage in, which frees up time to negotiate better contracts, find cheaper sources of supply for more technical items, etc. **Caveat: I produced this off of simply applying the Pareto Principle to DC's theoretical situation, without analyzing their monthly sales data. It might be off by some factor based on the actual data, but it's a fair place to start the discussion. The terrible result is that DC might only produce Superman, Batman and JLA books. That's all you have to choose from. Eventually, that is what will likely happen. Hawkman might be a great book, but there isn't going to be a Hawkman movie, and if the IP isn't going to make money through alternative media streams, there is no reason to keep publishing a book that ships (not sells) 13K issues per month (February ship figure was 13,279, while March was 12,987). However, Harley Quinn only shipped 22K copies in March, and that character was the focal point of two movies, and Aquaman had a solo film and only shipped 17.7K copies, so maybe what we're seeing is the era of the monthly floppie rapidly coming to a close. Maybe DC is onto something, putting out monthly floppies for their top sellers and doing OGNs for their other properties instead of paying creators to make monthly books that don't move enough to cover costs. Sake of argument for me is something like John Constantine. I might not buy his monthly series, but if they were doing an OGN that had an interesting premise, I could possibly be tempted to pay $12.99 for it once or twice a year, rather than investing $3.99 per month over 12 issues, of which maybe I only like 4 in the same way as the OGN. Sell me a great one-and-done story in 48 pages, not six decompressed issues that leave hanging threads that I need to keep buying the series to resolve. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2020 11:49:39 GMT -5
The terrible result is that DC might only produce Superman, Batman and JLA books. That's all you have to choose from. Eventually, that is what will likely happen. Hawkman might be a great book, but there isn't going to be a Hawkman movie, and if the IP isn't going to make money through alternative media streams, there is no reason to keep publishing a book that ships (not sells) 13K issues per month (February ship figure was 13,279, while March was 12,987). However, Harley Quinn only shipped 22K copies in March, and that character was the focal point of two movies, and Aquaman had a solo film and only shipped 17.7K copies, so maybe what we're seeing is the era of the monthly floppie rapidly coming to a close. Maybe DC is onto something, putting out monthly floppies for their top sellers and doing OGNs for their other properties instead of paying creators to make monthly books that don't move enough to cover costs. Sake of argument for me is something like John Constantine. I might not buy his monthly series, but if they were doing an OGN that had an interesting premise, I could possibly be tempted to pay $12.99 for it once or twice a year, rather than investing $3.99 per month over 12 issues, of which maybe I only like 4 in the same way as the OGN. Sell me a great one-and-done story in 48 pages, not six decompressed issues that leave hanging threads that I need to keep buying the series to resolve. Agree. But I will ask out loud if maybe the pandemic has affected those numbers. I just started going to a comic shop the last month or so, and maybe your regular comic fan begged off of visiting brick and mortar stores. It's a tough time for floppy comics in general. The only monthly book I still try to track down is Savage Dragon and I read somewhere that it only sells about 4k books a month. Erik Larsen dream of doing 301 issues might be cut short with the types of numbers. |
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Post by The Captain on Aug 14, 2020 11:54:51 GMT -5
Eventually, that is what will likely happen. Hawkman might be a great book, but there isn't going to be a Hawkman movie, and if the IP isn't going to make money through alternative media streams, there is no reason to keep publishing a book that ships (not sells) 13K issues per month (February ship figure was 13,279, while March was 12,987). However, Harley Quinn only shipped 22K copies in March, and that character was the focal point of two movies, and Aquaman had a solo film and only shipped 17.7K copies, so maybe what we're seeing is the era of the monthly floppie rapidly coming to a close. Maybe DC is onto something, putting out monthly floppies for their top sellers and doing OGNs for their other properties instead of paying creators to make monthly books that don't move enough to cover costs. Sake of argument for me is something like John Constantine. I might not buy his monthly series, but if they were doing an OGN that had an interesting premise, I could possibly be tempted to pay $12.99 for it once or twice a year, rather than investing $3.99 per month over 12 issues, of which maybe I only like 4 in the same way as the OGN. Sell me a great one-and-done story in 48 pages, not six decompressed issues that leave hanging threads that I need to keep buying the series to resolve. Agree. But I will ask out loud if maybe the pandemic has affected those numbers. I just started going to a comic shop the last month or so, and maybe your regular comic fan begged off of visiting brick and mortar stores. It's a tough time for floppy comics in general. The only monthly book I still try to track down is Savage Dragon and I read somewhere that it only sells about 4k books a month. Erik Larsen dream of doing 301 issues might be cut short with the types of numbers. No, those numbers had nothing to do with the pandemic. Those were shipped to the stores in March, which means they were ordered in January, and the February figure for Hawkman was based on orders from December. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 13:36:29 GMT -5
The culling has started.
October sees the last issues of:
Batgirl
Batman and the Outsiders
Justice League Odyssey
November sees the last issues of:
Hawkman
Teen Titans
Young Justice
John Constantine: Hellblazer
Suicide Squad
and it's been announced that Aquaman is ending as well.
Several of those have media tie-ins so that will not be a saving factor in the culling.
-M
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2020 13:45:29 GMT -5
The culling has started. October sees the last issues of: Batgirl Batman and the Outsiders Justice League Odyssey November sees the last issues of: Hawkman Teen Titans Young Justice John Constantine: Hellblazer Suicide Squad and it's been announced that Aquaman is ending as well. Several of those have media tie-ins so that will not be a saving factor in the culling. -M In the case of Teen Titans and Aquaman , they might be subject to returning after the initial dumping of salaries. With a new # 1 of course. |
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Post by brutalis on Aug 14, 2020 14:48:11 GMT -5
Maybe with all these cancellation of 2nd and 3rd tier characters in their own series we will see a return of "classic" style teams? Like in the days of yore (aka the 70's/80's) when the major Team Comics were made up of a core mixture with those heroes whose own series didn't generate enough sales or following? Stop with the dang any new heroes on a team tossed together to see if it sells and back to basics focusing on keeping existing heroes in the spotlight and minds of readers.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 14, 2020 15:07:29 GMT -5
I like variety on principle, but the fact is DC readers have never really supported anything outside of the core titles to protect them from this eventual shift to "just the proven sellers." Same goes for Marvel readers. Hell, Marvel almost did this in the 90's with Spider-Man and X-Men. I'm only surprised that this didn't happen a decade ago since I and others have been predicting this for years. It will be interesting to see if the quality of the remaining titles will improve given the fact that writers, and artists to an extent, will have fewer books.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 14, 2020 17:05:15 GMT -5
Wow, I'm surprised Constantine is getting the boot, it's been an amazing run thus far.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 18:09:08 GMT -5
Didn’t DC thin out its line around 1996/97? Less is more. Fewer books would be better, I’m sure.
They need to resurrect DC COMICS PRESENTS and THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 22:44:14 GMT -5
Wow, I'm surprised Constantine is getting the boot, it's been an amazing run thus far. Every current Black Label title is ending or cancelled. The Ridley penned Other History has been scheduled, but I am not sure how many other Black Label books will be see the light of day since the new head honcho is not fond of the more mature approach to comics. -M |
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Aug 14, 2020 23:25:24 GMT -5
Change is hard. This sucks, but like the saying goes: "Those with the gold make the rules". Jim Lee is sticking around, but I do wonder if part of that is just due to him being a popular figurehead/name "recognition". Also, probably wouldn't want him as a free agent going to the other top dog Marvel. Lee back at Marvel would be a big shakeup. I am beginning to wonder if there is some kind of clause in Lee's contract from the sale of Wildstorm to DC that guarantees him a position at the company or that has an untenable buyout as part of the contract (properties reverting to Lee is he is terminated, a big monetary payout AT&T doesn't want to make right now, etc.) for him to have had such a Teflon survival factor while every other executive around him has been terminated on several occasions. -M I've heard this pushed around also. Definitely sounds like some 90's business contract, and I applaud Lee for having the foresight at that time to put something like that in the contract if true. Would come in handy for a situation like this when the high rollers at the top start playing musical chairs. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 15, 2020 7:54:31 GMT -5
Wow, I'm surprised Constantine is getting the boot, it's been an amazing run thus far. Every current Black Label title is ending or cancelled. The Ridley penned Other History has been scheduled, but I am not sure how many other Black Label books will be see the light of day since the new head honcho is not fond of the more mature approach to comics. -M That's too bad, there's definitely a sizable market in book stores for material like Constantine. |
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Post by The Captain on Aug 15, 2020 8:11:01 GMT -5
Every current Black Label title is ending or cancelled. The Ridley penned Other History has been scheduled, but I am not sure how many other Black Label books will be see the light of day since the new head honcho is not fond of the more mature approach to comics. -M That's too bad, there's definitely a sizable market in book stores for material like Constantine. So Constantine may be a character, if there is a market in more-mainstream retail outlets, that gets a couple of OGNs per year rather than an ongoing monthly series. If these companies are going to make any money off of their lesser-known IP, they are going to have to get creative and try things outside of the usual options, because it's clearly not working any more. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 15, 2020 8:31:24 GMT -5
That's too bad, there's definitely a sizable market in book stores for material like Constantine. So Constantine may be a character, if there is a market in more-mainstream retail outlets, that gets a couple of OGNs per year rather than an ongoing monthly series. If these companies are going to make any money off of their lesser-known IP, they are going to have to get creative and try things outside of the usual options, because it's clearly not working any more. I'd be down with that, supernatural/horror stories tend to read better long form anyway. |
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