§ ICV2 reports that, bowing to retailer pressure, DC will publish a SPIRIT movie tie-in, of sorts:
spirit special

DC Comics is rush soliciting The Spirit Special #1, a 32-page, full color collection of four classic Will Eisner stories intended to introduce modern readers to Eisner’s timeless creation, which is the subject of the Frank Miller movie debuting on Christmas Day. The Spirit Special #1 (cover price $2.99) ships to retail on November 19th and has a final order cutoff date of October 30th.

DC’s Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne noted that DC was “pleased to offer this Special based on suggestions made at the Diamond Retailer Summit in Las Vegas. This issue will be a great way to introduce curious customers to The Spirit as the movie gets closer.”


§ This week’s DC mailer also include the following “You don’t say” news release:

Please note that THE GUARDIANS OF METROPOLIS SPECIAL #1 (SEP080140) and THE GUARDIANS OF METROPOLIS SPECIAL #1 Variant Edition (SEP080141) will arrive in stores with the new title ADVENTURE COMICS SPECIAL FEATURING THE GUARDIAN #1. This is “New Krypton” part 3 of 9, written by James Robinson, with art by Pere Perez, a cover by Aaron Lopresti and a variant cover by Victor Ibánez.


At least there is no colon in the title.

1 COMMENT

  1. We have a Spirit movie coming out. It is based on a comic character. We publish the Spirit comic. Maybe we should publish a movie tie-in?

  2. You know things are bad at DC when retailers have to “pressure” them into releasing a tie-in product for one of their titles that has a feature film playing in theaters.

    I can just see it now: “Please, DC…May we have a movie tie-in to sell in our stores? Pretty please? We’ll be ever so grateful and promise to stop asking so many questions about why BATMAN and those delightful FINAL CRISIS books are running late.”

  3. A better tie in would be newspaper Sunday supplements, similar to what Marvel did with Spider-Man, leading up to the release of SPIDER-MAN 3. It would be a natural, since the SPIRIT stories were originally published in newspapers. 7-pages each, with room for an advertisement promoting the movie and/or the DC series. I liked the SPIDER-MAN newspaper supplements, but those were full-length stories, and the eight-page format resulted in some peculiar “chapter-breaks” each week.

  4. And since it’s Frank Miller’s the Spirit- maybe the books will sell like hotcakes and THEN get recalled because of multiple printing errors that has Denny Colt referring to all the women cast members with names that begin with the letter C…

    …unless that kind of language is actually in the movie itself.

    ~

    Coat

  5. Maybe they never considered it because the two seem so stylistically different.
    The images and trailers from the movie look very little like the Eisner comics, maybe DC felt that people would be turned off, one way or another. Besides, didn’t they just release a trade paperback of Eisner’s Spirit stuff gleaned from their archive series? Couldn’t they just rerelease that with a reproduction of Mr. Miller’s shi,…uhm,…black and white poster design from the movie, as a cover?

  6. Then again, the SPIDER-MAN Sunday sections from last summer evoked the same reaction from me and a friend. The Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stuff is great, but so far removed from what’s in the current comic books. I wonder what the reaction would be of someone seeing the Sunday stuff, then decided to schlep into the comic store and discovering the Bland New Day storyline.