I’ve been hearing a lot of people wondering when the next DC Walmart comics were coming out.  Near as I can tell, you should probably be looking for them around the first weekend of the month and the third weekend of the month.   Well, it’s the third week of the month, so the first set of #2’s shipped: Superman and Justice League.

What was on the shelf this weekend?  At this particular location, 4 copies of Justice League Giant#1, 4 copies of Batman Giant #1, 3 copies of Teen Titans Giant #1, 4 copies of Justice League Giant #2 and 3 copies of Superman Giant #2.

What have we learned here?  Unless some copies sold before I got the issue count, we’re looking at the same initial stocking as last month: 4 for Justice League and 3 for Superman.  They aren’t removing the previous issues from the shelf yet.  (At this location, they were sold out of Superman #1 last week, so that’s why it isn’t on the list.)  Since these are serialized stories, it is absolutely not a bad thing to have #1, i.e. Part 1, available for a little longer.

If you talk to fans who were around when the newsstand was in full swing, they’ll be able to tell you about places back in the day that didn’t keep the best track of their comics and if you went through all the racks, you might be able to find two or three consecutive issues of a title.  I think that was mostly just grocery stores back when some of them would have comic racks in every checkout lane.  There could be a little bit of that flavor here.  We’ll just have to see what happens with the older issues over the next two months.  I’ve been checking at a couple Walmarts that haven’t been totally selling out.  Not all stores are going to have this potential issue.

This round, both issues have the Comic Shop Locator ad in them.  Not the last page of the comic, but towards the end of the issue.  The ads continue to be centered around trade paperbacks with the language about getting them wherever you buy comics.  You’d think if this was an important sales initiative they’d get around to customizing a different call to action for those ads.  Dan DiDio is saying he only wants to sell periodicals in Walmart, so the language really should be directing readers elsewhere if they’re trying to cultivate new readers.  At least the Comic Shop Locator was in each issue this time, though.

In two weeks, we should be seeing Batman Giant #2 and Teen Titans Giant #2.  Will there be a restocking of Justice League Giant #2 and Superman Giant #2?  That’s an excellent question.  There didn’t appear to be any additional restocking going on this week, just the new issues arriving.  It is worth noting the the restock for the #1’s seemed to be in larger numbers than the initial stocking in some areas, so it will be interesting to see if, for example, 5 copies of Superman Giant #2 arrive next week.

I suppose the “Justice League Giant” naming convention is safer for public consumption than Marvel’s old “Giant-Size” convention. “Man-Thing Giant” doesn’t sound quite as provocative as “Giant-Size Man-Thing”