Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The DC Relaunch

This one pisses me off. DC have announced that, in September, they will be relaunching most (if not all) of their titles at issue #1. This probably includes titles such as Action, Detective, Superman and Batman, all of which have had unbroken runs for over 70 years. 70 years of history gone, just like that, to a marketing gimmick.

One possible justification for the line-wide relaunch is that it will boost sales. But will it? True, #1 issues do tend to have higher sales, but often they settle down after a few issues so that within a few months it won't matter if it was issue #6 or #206. And it's debatable how much sales will spike for the new #1s, given the limited budgets of comic buyers.

What about from a creative standpoint? The shuffling around of most of the titles' creative teams could yield some hits - Brian Azzarello on Wonder Woman for instance sounds interesting - but couldn't this have been done without relaunching every title? Word of mouth about which titles are worth reading should spread regardless of the numbering system.

Really, DC have trashed 70 years of tradition for a short term gain. I wouldn't go so far as to say I hope it fails, but I hope they sorely come to regret it.

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