DC's latest reboot

[MRP]

My local Ollies is my LCS for most purposes. I picked-up a ton of SW stuff this weekend for a fraction of list and there was plenty left that interested me for another trip.

I just got back form my local Ollie's with a small pile of Star Wars trades and hardcovers.

-M

[Falstaff13]

My local Ollies is my LCS for most purposes. I picked-up a ton of SW stuff this weekend for a fraction of list and there was plenty left that interested me for another trip.

Same for me. I just got some of the SW collections. My dad has already taken the comic strip collection and been commenting on how well he remembers reading them in the paper.

[EMCE Hammer]

My local Ollies is my LCS for most purposes. I picked-up a ton of SW stuff this weekend for a fraction of list and there was plenty left that interested me for another trip.

[danadoll]

Oh, for Pete's sake! Again, again, again!?

Dana

[enyawd72]

My LCS is selling more reprints and facsimile editions than regular books too, and they're being scarfed up by regular customers for reading, because quite frankly they're better than anything else being published at the moment.
They're all I buy anymore, and I definitely ain't getting them slabbed.

The resale market for these is TINY. All you have to do is check completed eBay listings. There have only been a little over 100 sales of slabbed facsimile editions in the last three months. Considering the millions of comics sold on eBay, that's literally nothing.
No, most of these books are going to readers like me.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Good points. But why would anyone care to have a reprint of Batman Adventures #12 slabbed? It's not the original, and the story has been reprinted in TPBs for years, hasn't it?

I just don't get it.

Chris

[MRP]

Apparently DC head honcho Dan DiDio recently admitted at a con, that DC's Dollar reprints and Facsimile editions were outselling their NEW comics...which is really, really sad. But you think that would give them a clue.

Chris

A couple of things to keep in mind about that-those sales numbers are to comic retailers not end customers. Our local shop used to buy these in large quantities so he would have them available for sale. After his last quarterly analysis, he found out he was selling through less than a quarter of what he was ordering and has vastly scales back what he was bringing in on these, and in communicating with other retailers, he found they were having a similar experience. They were not selling to end customers at anywhere near th rate they anticipated. When they started we were told we didn't need to let him know if we wanted these ahead of order dates as he was bringing in plenty, at the end of last year, he notified us we needed to preorder them if we wanted to be sure to get them because he was heavily scaling back on the number he ordered and wanted to make sure he was still getting enough to meet his regular customers's demand.

Secondly, large numbers of these reprint highly collectible books, and are being bought simply to slab and sell at inflated 9.8 graded copies or to take to the bigger cons and have them signed and certified slabbed. They aren't being bought by readers or average customers, but by dealers looking to resell them at inflated prices after having them slabbed since the demand is already there in the collectible market for the content being reprinted. One local con dealer in our area was "pre-selling" slabbed 9.8 copies of the $1 reprint of Batman Adventures 12 for $75 a pop, saying he only had 100 available at that price and any more he had would be at whatever the market determined at that point.

So yes, the reprints in some cases were outselling the regular books, but it wasn't sales to end customers who liked the content better than the new material that were fueling that trend, it was over-ordering by retailers who overestimated sales to end customers and speculators looking to cash in on those books that were fueling the higher sales numbers, and neither of those are sustainable sources of sales you should model your future publication plans on.

-M

[Makernaut]

^ That's definitely sad

[Earth 2 Chris]

Apparently DC head honcho Dan DiDio recently admitted at a con, that DC's Dollar reprints and Facsimile editions were outselling their NEW comics...which is really, really sad. But you think that would give them a clue.

Chris

[Makernaut]

Thank god for reprints.

Indeed!

The Marvel True Believer series and the DC Dollar Comics keep me pretty happy.

[fun guy]

It's part of the DC FCBD offering, so I will likely check it out. I really liked the Wonder Woman story in #750 kicking off her new timeline, and as along as the result is stories I like to read, I could care less about what they do with overall continuity anyways-trying to fit all of Superman's adventures into a timespan where he is eternally 29 results in him having to have about 134 adventures a day to get them all to fit with that passage of time, so it's all utter ridiculousness anyways. Unless you are going to have characters, grow, age, change, retire and be replaced, there's no sense in trying to make every story fit anyways. Just tell good stories, the rest will take care of itself. The Siegel and Shuster Superman bears little resemblance to the Weisenger era Superman as even though there was no "reboot" they were essentially different characters reflecting the sensibilities of different times, not the same character evolving as a result of the stories told in a single continuity. Continuity has always been a fan creation and only really entered into comics when fans grew up and started writing comics.

-M

Me too.,count me in.this will be the best DC FCBD offering yet!

[The Bat]

It...gets...tiresome...

[PNGwynne]

Thank god for reprints.

[MRP]

It's part of the DC FCBD offering, so I will likely check it out. I really liked the Wonder Woman story in #750 kicking off her new timeline, and as along as the result is stories I like to read, I could care less about what they do with overall continuity anyways-trying to fit all of Superman's adventures into a timespan where he is eternally 29 results in him having to have about 134 adventures a day to get them all to fit with that passage of time, so it's all utter ridiculousness anyways. Unless you are going to have characters, grow, age, change, retire and be replaced, there's no sense in trying to make every story fit anyways. Just tell good stories, the rest will take care of itself. The Siegel and Shuster Superman bears little resemblance to the Weisenger era Superman as even though there was no "reboot" they were essentially different characters reflecting the sensibilities of different times, not the same character evolving as a result of the stories told in a single continuity. Continuity has always been a fan creation and only really entered into comics when fans grew up and started writing comics.

-M

[palitoy]

Let's reboot every other month!