JD's Comic Book Thread
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At the moment, it looks like DC will release at least some of their OGNs and Collections which they can get to book stores via the Penguin Random House distribution system, and those will also be released digitally. Nothing yet on whether they'll digitally release new single issues.
DC released a letter to the Direct Market comic retail community:
To Direct Market Retailers:
First, the entire team here at DC hopes that you, your family and your employees are staying safe and healthy during this very tough and precarious time. We know that you have been waiting for DC to comment on the state-of-affairs and to address any measures we will take to help our community lighten the burden of the disruption to our business, and we’ve been working hard on a long-term, solution-focused plan. Here is how we will help:
Periodicals and books with in-store dates between March 18, 2020 and June 24, 2020 will be fully returnable. We’ll even provide credit for your separate return shipping of these items only.
Additionally, because we anticipate that continued disruption to business operations will create regional volatility, DC is exploring a multi-distributor model to provide us with the flexibility needed during this crisis to get new content to our readers on an ongoing basis. In the short-term, we continue to engage in active conversations with Diamond to help us solve the distribution issues that have arisen and hope to get new product to stores that want or need it as soon as possible. We will provide additional information about how we’ll make that happen in the coming days.
Thanks for your patience with us. DC will continue to monitor the situation, continue to speak with you directly, and continue to support you through the days ahead. You are the lifeblood of this industry.
All best,
The DC Team
To Direct Market Retailers:
First, the entire team here at DC hopes that you, your family and your employees are staying safe and healthy during this very tough and precarious time. We know that you have been waiting for DC to comment on the state-of-affairs and to address any measures we will take to help our community lighten the burden of the disruption to our business, and we’ve been working hard on a long-term, solution-focused plan. Here is how we will help:
Periodicals and books with in-store dates between March 18, 2020 and June 24, 2020 will be fully returnable. We’ll even provide credit for your separate return shipping of these items only.
Additionally, because we anticipate that continued disruption to business operations will create regional volatility, DC is exploring a multi-distributor model to provide us with the flexibility needed during this crisis to get new content to our readers on an ongoing basis. In the short-term, we continue to engage in active conversations with Diamond to help us solve the distribution issues that have arisen and hope to get new product to stores that want or need it as soon as possible. We will provide additional information about how we’ll make that happen in the coming days.
Thanks for your patience with us. DC will continue to monitor the situation, continue to speak with you directly, and continue to support you through the days ahead. You are the lifeblood of this industry.
All best,
The DC Team
So do all of the comics publishers release their TBPs through the book publishers? They mention Simon & Schuster in the Boom! letter, and recently I was looking through the Simpsons comics, and I noticed their trades were sold through Random House. I've seen a couple other company's trades with a book publisher also listed on them.
*Sigh*
DC's Weekly Comics to Continue Digitally During Diamond Stoppage.
Unless Marvel holds their releases, which I don't expect, this might spell the end for Diamond.
Now, we'll have to hope that other distributors emerge that can bring the print issues to the stores (in my case, hopefully internationally), otherwise this might be the end of print floppies and the Direct Market.
DC's Weekly Comics to Continue Digitally During Diamond Stoppage.
Unless Marvel holds their releases, which I don't expect, this might spell the end for Diamond.
Now, we'll have to hope that other distributors emerge that can bring the print issues to the stores (in my case, hopefully internationally), otherwise this might be the end of print floppies and the Direct Market.
i hope this is the end of Diamond and others can step up with distribution.
With that said, it's hard to distribute something that's printed when most of the printers are shut down as well.
With that said, it's hard to distribute something that's printed when most of the printers are shut down as well.
I have long sought to get back into comic books. At the height of my collection I had about 6500 comics, but like many had to sell most off. Of course it is not economically feasible to try and repurchase those physical editions, however, I was looking at a company called Comixology. They deal in digital copies. Has anyone here dealt with them? Is their service good?
Dynamite Entertainment joins the "no digital until print" movement.
I'm about 90% digital when it comes to comics, and I've used Comiology for years, and I love it. I've read comics on Google Play, Kindle, Nook, and Hoopla and Comixology is one of the best.
So how is this going to work once the physical comics start back up? Are they going to just release everything from the gape all at once, or will the digital just stay ahead of the physical releases?
My guess is they'll treat the print issues as "published, but not distributed", meaning they'll all get delivered once distribution works again. But, honestly, that's just guessing. We've never been in a situation like this before, and we don't know quite when distribution can resume, so there is no certain answer here.
It will be interesting to see if this has much of an effect on the physical comics' sales once they're back up and running. I could see a lot of people deciding they like the convenience of digital over physical comics, I know I did when I switched over. Most of the comic shops in my area are kind of hard to get to, so the digital comics are a much easier way to get them.
Well, on Comixology, DC's new releases of this week have been rescheduled for April 29, so I guess there's some internal debate going on at DC over how to deal with this situation, and for the moment, the "no digital until print" faction won.
Even though I'm a digital reader, I still think everybody holding off on digital version of print/digital comics would be the best way to go about things. Keeping digital going while the physical books stop, just makes things way to complicated.
Digital exclusives should be able to go ahead as planned.
Digital exclusives should be able to go ahead as planned.
And with Marvel holding back their digital releases of April 1, it looks like the "no digital until print" movement has won, at least for this week.
Thank you. One more question, do you use Comixology free or did you subscribe to their "Unlimited," $5.99 per month, plan? I will be downloading the Comixology app and maybe even give their monthly subscription a try. I am primarily looking to collect the Bronze Age issues (1970 - 1983) and they seem to be well stocked for that era.
Well, as was to be somewhat expected, Diamond declares cash flow problems and won't be able to make payments to publishers and manufacturers of collectibles this week.
Keep in mind that Comixology Unlimited doesn't give you access to everything on Comixology, just a relatively small curated group of titles that changes over time. For Bronze age books you're mostly going to have to but individual issues or collection. They do have frequent sales though. Singles at $.99 and collected editions as low as $4.99.
I don't do the subscription service, I'm already at my limit with TV/movie services. They've always got some kind of sales going, usually with the different publishers' books being based around a theme. Usually they coincide with a new movie/TV release, or an aniversary or something like that.
Right now they've got:
- Vault Vagrant Queen and Science Fiction Sale to coincide with premiere of Vagrant Queen TV series - 72 comics until 4/13
- Marvel New Mutants Sale probably to coincide with pre-Covid release of New Mutants movie - 203 comics until 4/9
- Image: Johnathan Hickman Sale - 147 comics until 4/2
- DC Darkest Timeline Sale - 375 comics until 4/6
- Marvel Star Wars Doctor Aphra Sale probably to coincide with her new series - 85 comics until 4/2
- Caliber Linewide Sale - 700 comics until 4/16
- Dynamite Superhero Sale - 76 comics until 4/2
- Europe Comics Royalties Sale - 5 comics until 4/12
- Valerian The Complete Collection Sale - 6 comics until 4/12
- Marvel Chip Zdarsky sale - 15 comics until 4/2
- Viz Love is War Sale - 12 comics until 4/5
So all together that is 1,717 comics on sale right now. I have to confess, I've gotten the vast majority of my comics from them while they were on sale. It's hard to pass it up when a comic that is usually $7-$20 is on sale from $0.99 - $5.00.
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