06/10/08 at 6:01 pm
“We had to cut our Final Crisis numbers on the FOC by nearly 80% – which means we’re selling it at 7Soldiers numbers, not major line wide crossover numbers.”

Hold on… what? That’s a bit drastic only one issue in, surely?”

No sadly… it’s not… we were ordering upwards of 450 – 500 copies of Final Crisis, expecting it to have the weight of a big event book. In the first week it only sold 50 copies, and the FOC for issue two was the following week, so we had to make the cut. We give a lot of shelf space to the big event books, and when one does that badly in the first week, we have to radically adjust our plans for the summer, asap.

Would we have cut the orders as drastically is this had been promoted as a 7Soldiers styled event, probably not… because stories like that will appeal to those customers who come in after wednesday looking for something good to read. Event books like this, all hinder on the opening performance. Civil War #1 sold to super numbers, every issue after that sold under it. Same for Infinite Crisis. The view in the store is that people don’t want to try it out right, and it’s only going to get worse as the ship moves on. Let’s face it, big EPIC line wide cross-overs are like blockbuster movies, they appeal to certain audiences for certain reasons… and Final Crisis might win an Oscar at the end, but it didn’t manage to get anyone into the box office to try it out (sorry for the bad movie analogies)

And honeslty… Morrison, Didio, Editors, DC, WB… everyone is to blame. This was meant to be a huge event, and though I’m sure it will do really well in trade, it’s a cold fish for whatever reason someone wants to blame for it.

While the conception of the maxi-series was OK in my book, the overall implementation was horrible. The plot went AWOL and continuity lapses became eyesores that began to chip away at the readers’ enjoyment of the series. The same thing happened at Marvel, so it’s not about one being better than the other. Editors and the E-I-C need to stop hyping the content and start honing the content into something that consistently delivers, and word of mouth alone will drive the sales into the stratosphere (or, bring it down). Let the work speak for itself!!

Years ago, the Superman team sat down and mapped out events for the future, and crossovers actually flowed and stayed true to the continuity, and really built the character. Same with Batman. I’m sure a return to this style of writing could be done to make the DCU (or Marvel Universe) a cohesive stage for great stories that intertwine characters from various books, but it needs solid management, and that’s where it is important to have competent and supportive editors.

But on ‘our’ earth….. “Didiot is”.

I wonder how much “lipstick” Didio will bring to his next interview to apply to this “continuity pig”.

- When I went to my local comic shop yesterday, they still had two 3-inch thick stacks of FC #1, two weeks after its release. Early issues of Secret Invasion are sold out and they only have the 2nd and 3rd printings, and were down to just a handful of the newest issue.

- I read FC #1 last night and found it more or less inpenetrable. There was just enough interesting stuff going on to get me to at least bite on #2, but it doesn’t have me fired up to read the next issue like SI does. I’ll admit, though, that the DC Nation page on the back mentioning the NINE FC tie-ins almost makes me not want to bother.

Ha. Gotta give Morrison credit for his on the fly comment explaining it. That the event was so cosmic and transcended reality that it happened in three different ways. Gotta admit, it’s not a bad cover your ass statement.

I gave up on Countdown early on. I just never picked up Death of the New Gods. The whole New God thing was interesting, but I simply didn’t trust DC to give us an epic story with these amazing characters. I still have yet to pick up the Kirby stuff anyway.

Meanwhile, I loved Morrison’s JLA. (Rock of Ages was amazing!) I liked Seven Soldiers. DC 0 was interesting. Final Crisis sounds good. I’m interested to see where this goes. His comments about the New Gods being immortal in all of us is pretty neat. As always…

Darkseid is.

And I’m VERY curious to see the numbers the series will do on TPB. Who is going to buy it now? This has “lame duck” written all over it!

Hopefully this has killed future DC megacrossovers for a long, long time. Now we only have to hope Marvel does a similar faux pas…

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

These are just comics and none of it really matters. The only truly meaningful stories are the good ones, the right writer with the right characters at the right time, and comic companies can’t tell you when that’s going to happen.

D00d, take a nap or something. Yer awful cranky-like.

CHRIS ECKERT said: “show Piper and Trickster literally kicking Bart Allen to death, then following it up with stories about how they’ve been wrongfully accused.”

DiDio admitted this was an editorial screwup when they allowed the art to go through without correcting it.

BRIAN DAVISON said: “…squeezing a Ford F-150 truck into a parking space for a compact car…”

Hey, my truck will fit in that spot. I just can’t open the door.

All of which is to say, I’m feeling pretty generally ripped-off. However, it’s been a good learning experience. I was planning to buy, once again *all* the tie-ins, direct and otherwise, to FC. That is SO not happening anymore. I’ll still be reading FC and Morrison’s Superman Beyond, and *maybe* the two main side series, but I won’t be buying a single issue of any of the other tie-ins. I know from personal conversations and many, many posts online that I’m not alone in this.

And comparisons to Secret Invasion aren’t too valid. All of the books leading up to the event were written by the same guy who’s writing the main story. A better comparison would be Civil War where there were the same type of continuity issues from one book to the next.

Hold on… what? That’s a bit drastic only one issue in, surely?

Amen to that, I haven’t read DC books in ages but thought I might give this one a try. I shouldn’t have bothered, the thing was completely impenetrable.