More on Earth One
More on Earth One
Dec 08I was gonna put together a follow up to Jeff’s post from yesterday but Chris Butcher said it far better than I could.
For the purposes of discussion, this is almost two announcements: The “fanboy bait” we got today, and the publishing and marketing details that will indicate at some point whether DC has designs on reasonable success in the non-direct market, or whether this is some insane new DM scheme that on its face makes no sense, OR whether the first of the two preceeding theories is correct AND they have the strategy that Butcher discusses worked out.
I think Butcher’s most salient point may be that there are already so very many Superman and Batman collections at your average Borders that unless there is significant thought put into how to design and truly SELL these books into an essentially “new” market, this thing will die on the vine.
For whatever reason, as a publishing move, it intrigues me. We’ll see.
All well said, by you and by the original poster.
One thing that jumps out at me is that, from the point of view of the bookstore audience, whether or not the book was originally published in issues/chapters and sold in the direct market probably isn’t going to make any difference in how appealing the product is. It might be a nice opportunity for the writers to stretch some creative muscles and write something that’s not paced for issues. But as I said in my comment to Jeff, continuity-free Superman and Batman stories seem like a pretty conservative way to test the format. Does this really fill a niche?