Countdown to Failure

Countdown to Failure

Jul 20

Once again, Dick Hyacinth is prompting some contemplation from me via his post on the state of DC Comics today in the era of Countdown.

The short version: I think he’s dead right, and DC is experiencing a creative, critical, and commercial landslide that is breathtaking to behold as a detached observer, and heartbreaking to suffer through as a fan.

I want to take this apart. First, the numbers, via ICv2 and their June estimates:

The top-selling issue of Countdown in its second month of release was the first issue of the month, Countdown 47, with 77,504 copies sold. By the time the fourth issue comes around, that number is down to 73,971; one of the scarier aspects of a weekly comic must be the way in which you can document its every sales fluctuation by one handy glance at a single month’s sales figures, as opposed to the extra time and work required to compare sales on monthly books.

In May, Countdown 51 launched with sales of 91,083, and again, by the end of that month’s four issues, sales on Countdown 48 are down to 79,810.

I think it’s fair to compare Countdown to 52, so let’s do that. 52 launched with sales of 140,971 in May 2006, coming off the 198,442 sales of Infinite Crisis #7. To be totally fair, 52 atrophied readers in its first month as well, with week 4 selling 121,440. A precipitous dip, and comparable to Countdown’s dip in its first month. In June 2006, 52 started with 111,895 in sales and ended up on week 8 with 105,107 in sales–again, similar numbers to Countdown, in terms of readers lost.

In April 2007, the closing issues of 52 hovered around 94,000 copies sold, comparable to the start of Countdown. There was of course an uptick on the final issue of 52, selling at 102,075.

So that’s kinda all blah-blah-blah; we could stare and speculate all day and get nowhere. Except for one glaring factoid: From the end of Infinite Crisis, through 52, and now to the first third of Countdown, these big DC event books have lost ABOUT HALF OF THEIR SALES.

To me, that fact can only say one thing: The most die-hard of DC fans are abandoning the line’s big event books. They are walking away from what the company’s editorial and creative teams are putting forth as the central, most important books in the DCU. Hell, Infinite Crisis launched with sales of 249,265, topping the sales charts for 6 of its 7 issues. If we can agree that the sales on these core DCU titles are a fair barometer of who is investing themselves in the universe as a whole, then shit, something like 2/3 of readers have walked away since the start of Infinite Crisis in October 2005.

That’s a lotta burnout for just shy of two years. To contrast, Marvel’s Civil War launched with 260,804 issues sold, and World War Hulk launched with 178,408 in sales. That means through the year (or so) of Marvel events, they’ve sacrificed FAR fewer readers.

Speaking of the Big Two, let’s look at one other set of scary numbers; here’s a quote from ICv2 on June 2007:

Marvel recorded 48.42% of the Unit Market Share, nearly 20 percentage points above DC’s 28.57%. Both the size of the “spread” between publishers and DC’s percentage of share are perhaps both historic figures in the Diamond/single distributor era. From a Dollar standpoint, Marvel’s 43.62% to DC’s 27.07% is comparable to May’s figures.

Though for some reason, these numbers are hard to find on a regular basis at ICv2, their report from October 2005–Infinite Crisis’ launch month–cites a LEAD for DC in dollar share, topping Marvel by 4.5%. Meaning that DC has sacrificed something like 20% of the market’s dollar share to Marvel in less than two years.

So whatever DC’s doing, wherever Countdown rests in terms of fulfilling the publisher’s expectations and standing up to the precedent set by 52 (if that’s even a consideration for them; I have to imagine it would be, but I’m not Dan Didio or Paul Levitz), their line as a whole is WAY behind Marvel. To me, that means the overall image and brand of the line is fading, and since that image seems to be dominated by Countdown and its ever-expanding family of spinoff one-shots and miniseries…well, you can do the math.

What got me back into comics this time was Infinite Crisis. I missed all the lead-in stuff but I jumped into the deep end in the middle of Infinite Crisis, out of a fun geeky love for the idea of the event comic as “big, dumb blockbuster” fare. I think to many readers, that sort of thing definitely has its appeal.

Then it became event after event, and really, no significant break between IC and Countdown and Final Crisis.

So it got less fun real fast, and now, I’m only interested in pieces and snatches of DC’s line. It’s like, are they going to keep marketing to this shrinking population of completists, even as the most diehard of fans is starting to get burnout and prune their pull lists because of it?

Perhaps what’s most intriguing about the situation to me is that it seems like a train wreck by any objective standards, and yet both the company’s top people and its most diehard fans seem to still have this lingering celebratory air of excitement, mixed with unearned optimism, topped off with abject denial. I guess some of that is a necessary evil of marketing, but still…the weekly Countdown interviews on Newsarama, the teaser ads, Didio crowing at conventions…it’s starting to look a bit unseemly. Fiddling while Metropolis burns.

If DC Comics right now is a train wreck, and I think it is (and only going to get worse, much worse, before it gets better) then it’s like there’s a mob of passionate train fans cheering on the locomotive as it plows into the station wagon sitting on the tracks. And that mob includes the executives of the train company, patting each other on the back over how well their trains run.