When is DC's The New 52 going to revert back to the original universe

[Takeru]

Re: When is DC's The New 52 going to revert back to the original unive

I would be happy to end a cycle and reboot while the books are dominating the sales. Going out on top is a good thing! People will remember the great previous cycle, the new cycle will benefit from that and the readers are already there and will probably be interested in checking it out.
If you wait until sales are down the toilet all you get is whining how the cycle started out great but ended shitty and you have to try to win back customers.

Publocation cycles would be great, they would be even greater if Marvel and DC had the balls to ditch the monthly books and the direct market. They write for the trades anyway, so just release the stories as trades from day one!
Let the comic shops die, they ruin the image of superhero comics, in the eyes of many people they are dinky shags where nerds live. The aren't even enough regular comic book readers to justify catering to them, ditch them, rebuild your audience and if it doesn't work give up and stop publishing comics. At this point DC and Marvel probably make more money from Batman and Spider-Man pyjamas and lunchboxes than from the comics themselves. They should concentrate on makind animated and live action movies, tv shows and DVDs. The lowest rated episode of Smallville had 1.9 million viewers, that's still an audience 20 times bigger than one buying Superman comics. It's really sad how pathetic the comic book numbers are.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Re: When is DC's The New 52 going to revert back to the original unive

The industry is clearly moving towards digital periodicals and print collections being the mainstay of its business, but they're trying to navigate the transition without their current business model falling apart before digital has matured. Monthly print books and the direct market are still too important to abandon at this point, even though they're not where the future lies.

Print monthlies are a decidedly niche business, with individual titles selling low numbers compared to the past, but a much larger number of titles are published than in the past. The Top 300 titles sold about 72 million print monthly comics in 2011, with the Big Two accounting for about 90% of that. Print comics are actually in much better shape than other print periodicals. Newspapers and magazines are in terrible shape.

As for the New 52's sales, in April of this year DC had a unit market share of 34.06% in terms of direct market print monthlies out of a Top 300 that sold an estimated 6.1 million total. In April 2011 DC had a unit market share of 26.89% out of a Top 300 that sold about 5.3 million total. So DC sold over half a million more print comics in April 2011 as compared to the year before.

As has been pointed out already, digital sales numbers aren't reported. Neither are total graphic novel sales. Graphic novel sales for the direct market are reported, but they represent a relatively small percentage of all graphic novels sold. Most graphic novels are sold by bookstores and online booksellers.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Re: When is DC's The New 52 going to revert back to the original unive

I'd like to see periodic reboots that start from scratch with each publication era forming a complete saga. Each publication period would last for, say, 10 to 15 years. One saga might span decades in its internal chronology, while another might run in real time. Creative teams should be encouraged to make each era fresh and distinct. Eventually you'd have a number of different takes on the DC Universe that would each tell a complete story. I'd like to see Marvel do the same thing.

There is a similar plan that had been floated at DC by one of their assistant editors during the original CoiE with a new Earth in the multiverse being the setting and then the cycle restarting on another Earth in ten or twenty years. The person who had the plan I believe is currently doing DC's YJ cartoon.