DC

This interview with Scott Lobdell from ComicVine was sent to us with the idea that maybe he wasn't up on the news that Static was joining the Teen Titans, which was announced at MegaCon:

Looks like this really is Earth 2's "New Costume Week." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess Superman and Alan Scott/Green Lantern are going to appear in the next two days, although Jay Garrick/The Flash was mentioned in the solicitation.

Beyond sweeping a perfect 10 out of the month's Top 10 comic books, DC's "New 52" titles are also starting to show first signs of stabilization in January. The average "New 52" title dropped 7.4% in sales, down from 17.4% in December and 19.6% in November. This gives reason to be cautiously optimistic on the longer-term prospects of DC's relaunched line. The trend should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as DC made a number of changes to its various retailer incentives in January that may be affecting sales one way or another. On Detective Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight, Superman and Aquaman, the returnability incentive was replaced with 1:25 variant-cover incentives. Batwoman, Green Lantern: New Guardians and Swamp Thing, which were promoted with a special-discount incentive from September through December, also switched to 1:25 variant-cover incentives in January. Finally, the threshold retailers were required to meet in January to qualify for returnability on the 37 titles that weren't promoted through variant-cover or discount incentives changed from 125% of retailers' May 2011 orders to 100% of November 2011 orders. With this in mind, let's wait for the February figures to see if the trend holds when incentives are equal from one month to the next.

The internet is NOT forever. DC's website is undergoing a huge overhaul in a few weeks, according to The Source, with a new design, and new, exclusive content, and the old forums are going to be erased.

The new Nerdist YouTube channel is hosting the first look at the Plastic Man shorts that will be airing shortly on DC Nation. As we reported earlier, Tom Kenny voices Plas, while Andy Suriano and Stephen DeStefano are involved in the animation—the John K. influence is strong but it works with the character.

The major con season for 2012 kicked off with MegaCon in Orlando. And so did the con news tidbits season.

New collections from Marvel, including a storyline which takes place between paragraphs in another book! And the Justice League as zombies! New Titles from DC, including Silver Surfer and Captain America!

Via Fast Company, of all places... So this is going to be the Minutemen Frontier? No surprise there. And, of course, it does look great.

Dropped into this little item about BEYOND THE FRINGE, a digital tie-in to the popular TV show, is the news that Jhonen Vasquez, the incredibly popular creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, will be doing some digital comics for DC, along with Becky Cloonan. SWEET.

Comic books crossing over? The crossover quote of the week goes to Dan Buckley in his Comic Book Resources interview:

What is James Robinson's and Nicola Scott's Earth Two comic really about? The official line is, it was originally to be titled Justice Society. We know that Worlds' Finest is about the Earth Two Power Girl and Huntress (who is confirmed as the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, per the original concept of the character) getting trapped in whatever DC is calling its main dimension. But I don't think anybody's ever said Earth Two was necessarily going to be where the superheroes started out in World War II. Like most people, I'd just been assuming that was what they were talking about, and then DC releases an alternate cover for the first issue:

How many statistics can one news day handle? DC has just released results from their Retailer Survey which they launched in conjunction with the New 52. As we noted at the time, the survey was aimed at gauging interest in each and every New 52 title, as well as general readership demographics. As such, it represents the most comprehensive reader survey a comics company has made in some time. While it's very New 52-centric, it does reveal a lot. While DC has released their own bullet points, which we've shown below, ICv2 has more info and an interview with John Rood. You'll want to head over there and digest the whole thing. But here's the broad picture: