The Countdown conundrum

A recent interview with Dan DiDio at Newsarama has caused a stir along the internets. Former DC employee Valerie D’Orazio has spoken on it, and so has Heidi MacDonald. And now me.

Here is a blurb from DiDio that Heidi printed in her blog that I want to touch on...

"The channels that are carrying a lot of the reaction that I’m seeing are coming from the stores themselves and from fans that I’m at conventions with. I attend multiple conventions throughout the course of the year, and I’ve gotten a very positive reaction to what’s going on.

Given that there seems to be a very vocal – and I don’t know its size – group of fans online that is counter to that hasn’t really affected sales at all. I find it humorous that information that comes to me from online is erroneous in regards to the actual sales figures. I find it humorous that certain retailers decide to make blatant statements about how they’re going to be striking back at the book by making returns, when in fact the portion of books that they’re actually returning is less than 0.01% of the books that we sold.

The reality is that the sales are there, the strength is there, and I have a lot of faith in regards to how the series works and how it’s moving forward. From my standpoint, there were stumbles along the way, just as there were stumbles with 52, but the best part about it is that we were able to sit down with the talent and figure out how we would be able to make course corrections during the series, which we did. We recreated the pacing, and we put the focus back on Countdown again, which is what it is about. It was going too far abroad in regards to making sure everything lined up perfectly, and when you do that, something was going to be serviced improperly. I want to make sure that Countdown is serviced properly. Countdown, as I said, is the spine of the DC Universe, but it works better if it stands on its own, rather than stands on the strength of everything around it. I feel very confident in where the series is going, I’m very excited about where the story is going, and the best part about it is that it’s where we thought it was always going to be, so we haven’t had to change that much along the way"

Would it be wrong to sum up these paragraphs as  DiDio saying "NOTHING IS WRONG! WE ARE FIXING IT!"

First off, people are not just going to come up to DiDio's face and say Countdown sucks. That's what the internet is for. So all that DiDio is hearing is sunshine and roses doesn't surprise me.

Now, about the sales. Here are the sales estimate charts for May and June courtesy of CBGXtra.

Name	Rank	Issue	Price	Company	Sales	Date
Countdown (Vol. 2)	19	51	$2.99	DC	91,054	May-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	20	50	$2.99	DC	83,725	May-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	22	49	$2.99	DC	81,458	May-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	25	48	$2.99	DC	79,784	May-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	17	47	$2.99	DC	77,456	Jun-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	19	46	$2.99	DC	76,315	Jun-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	21	45	$2.99	DC	74,871	Jun-07
Countdown (Vol. 2)	22	44	$2.99	DC	73,925	Jun-07

 

I cleaned it up in excel a bit, but the figures are accurate.

What the numbers show here is a steady decline. Now, I don't have access to July or August, so there might be a bump later. But sales declined by 17,129 copies, 124 copies more that the June sales from DC's Blue Beetle (great series, by the way) between the first issue (#51) and the last one in June (#44).

Could this be the natural attrition of sales that all new series go through? Yes. Could this be fans leaving the series in droves? Yes.

Don't forget, these sales figures are based on retailer orders and do not represent the number of issues fans buy. The issues could be sitting in retailers back issue bins. However,it also should be said that issues #50, $49, and #48 have received 2nd printings.

But sales declines usually take a while to become evident. Not every issue of Countdown is sold to people who have hold lists at stores. Some, perhaps many, are impulse buys buy browsers who pick one up with their order. Retailers order enough to accomidate these browsers and if these browsers stop picking up the series of the shelves, it takes time for the retailers to adjust their orders.

So, I think it is a bit too soon for DiDio to use sales to refute the size of the Countdown naysayers. Only time will tell who is right and who is wrong.

I want to comment on another quote from DiDio about the number of crossovers:

"...we at DC Comics produce a certain number of comics on a monthly/yearly basis. We are not producing any more books than we have in any other year or the previous year. We have chosen to produce books that, we believe, can capitalize on the success of things that we have going on with the hope that they sell better than books that don’t capitalize on things that are going on.

It’s very simple – no different than the logic that any other company would employ when they have something that is successful. You want to build on that success. Dark Horse has Buffy and Star Wars – they know they can put out more Buffy and Star Wars because that’s successful to them. The same thing with Marvel and Civil War and World War Hulk - they put out more product tied to events that are successful in the hopes that the product tied in to that will be successful as well. We are building off of our successes right now – we are not creating additional product, we’re not flooding the market. We are just replacing the books that we feel would not sell as well as the books that we hope will sell well."

And if I were to sum these paragraphs, it would "ALL DC WANTS IS YOUR MONEY!"

Perhaps that is a bit unfair. But really, isn't what DiDio is saying, "Sorry fans of Manhunter, Hawkgirl, and Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis! Instead of devoting time to promote them, letting them find their fan base, or fixing them so they get more readers, we're going to cancel them and publish a passel of Countdown tie-ins that fans of that series will have to buy to get a grip on the story. We know you're pissed, but don't worry, we'll restart all of those titles later on, do the same halfassed job getting them off the ground, and then cancel them again."

Let me just say this. 52's least selling issue sold more than Countdown's best, and there was only one spin off series from that (and then only because they needed to shoe-horn in the continuity changes 52 didn't have time for). Sure the whole "One Year Later" thing might have something to do with that, but they could have had 10 tie-in series for it if they tried hard enough.