With less than 48 hours to go until the world shattering Rebirth event, to be held at 9:30 am PDT on the Saturday of WonderCon (And livestreaming for audiences everywhere, DC is using a very unorthodox rollout for retailers.
As you may have noticed it’s solicitations week when all the publishers send out their upcoming books for June orders. Not wanting to spill the beans on what’s coming for Rebirth, DC only has a tiny section of the Diamond catalog, and even the website has only a list of titles with no creative teams.
DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH #1
Here’s the rest of this month’s catalog:
Since, as we’ve been told over and over again in the Diamond era, Previews is the holy writ from which all else stems, order-wise, this is as heretical move as one can make. DC is gambling that the drama and news value of its 90-minute curtain raising event will be enough to get retailers excited about the new teams.
But just in case, DC will release its own standalone 96-page catalog with tons of information and art. Retailers will get it automatically, at numbers equal to Batman #49, but they can order even more if they want.
While DC has managed to keep most of the actual assignments for Rebirth under wraps (as defined as leaks and plants on Bleeding Cool) according to yesterday’s story on Greg Rucka replacing Marguerite Bennet on Wonder Woman, things are maybe in play a little more as the big reveal draws closer.
And also, perhaps the drop dead deadline on getting that standalone catalog into print is as close as can be.
Meanwhile, on Twitter Jonathan Hickman has been either troling or teasing…
https://twitter.com/JHickman/status/712741037807116290
BTW, do YOU have a question for Geoff Johns, Dan DiDio and Jim Lee? The Beat Herself will be attending the press conference and will endeavor to ask at least one lucky fan’s sure-to-be friendly and informational question. If you’d like to submit a question for the co-publishers, do this: Follow @comicsbeat on Twitter and tweet your questions with the hashtag #rebirthquiz
If Scooby Doo and Superman got in a fight, which one would win?
The reason it is heretical is that it doesn’t leave us very much time to collect information about customer’s level-of-interest in time to place our orders. However, that matters “less” this time because of the full, no-hoops returnability.
I think there are many mechanical, structural-to-the-market reasons that this initiative is likely to not succeed: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/tilting-at-windmills-comicspro-astoundingly-useful-annual-meeting — but not-being-in-PREVIEWS isn’t one of them.
-B
There are no “plants”. Even that which I thought might have been I discovered was anything but.
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