Friday Food for Thought #1

DC Comics Universe Mismanagement

Week 1, Month 1… err… Episode 1.

Hello, and welcome to the first ever: Friday Food for Thought.  My name is Paul Naughton, Stellar Magic, Roguesaber, or if you’re from that distant corner of the internet called EVE Online… Saul Elsyn.

Yes, like many web denizens, I have many, many names… not that you particularly need to know them at all.  I encourage those of you who are just joining me to bookmark my weblog on tumblr, and my fictionpress or fanfiction.net accounts after this, or follow me @Paul_Naughton on twitter.  I plan to have these releases every Friday for you to enjoy.

Here I’ll be doing reviews, commentary, and just generally talking at you: the vast populace of the world online.  So sit back, relax, and listen up.

Today, I’d like to talk about DC Comics and their new 52 Initiate.  We’re now a full year into it… and well, I recently decided that considering I’m already well and truly marked as a geek with my writing, playing RPGs, and let’s not forget EVE Online.  I may as well go the full nine yards and try comics.

In my ignorance, I thought that a universal reboot would make the ideal opportunity to try the various series, oops.  I honestly don’t know what the people at DC Comics were thinking, or who they put in charge of marketing, but the idea that this restarted new universe would bring in new readers has some fundamental flaws in it.

Say I’m Joe Smith and I’m looking at maybe getting into comics… I already will probably know a couple of different heroes from other sources then comics… If I’m in the 24-32 year old demographic there’s a pretty good chance I saw the following cartoons on cartoon network at least once:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman: The Animated Series, and Teen Titans.  If I’m a younger generation yet I’d be seeing yet more Batman… Justice League: Unlimited, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and Young Justice, there’s also a pretty good chance that I’d seen Teen Titans reruns or will see the new Teen Titans series when it premiers this coming year.

So… I’d know Batman, Green Lantern, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League.  Of which a quick look at fanfiction.net suggests that Teen Titans are popular as hell being the second most written type of cartoon fanfiction on the site (right behind Avatar: The Last Airbender).  So… Teen Titans is popular, the five members being Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy.

If I followed the story in the TV show at all, I’d know all about the Titans struggle against Slade and Raven’s Demonic father Trigon.  So if I wanted to go into comics… and liked this hideously popular team… I’d walk into the shop and look for the Teen Titans series… and immediately be very confused. 

You see, the guys at DC Comics decided that they had to eject something from the continuity when they compressed the last eighty some odd years of comics into a five year timeline in their rebooted universe.

Which group was erased in the new continuity? I’ll give you a couple seconds.

You guessed it! The Teen Titans… more specifically the New Teen Titans, which is the comic series the show, was based on.  It doesn’t end here either.  The characters from that team still exist in the new continuity and they’ve been scattered around the various teams as if the editors were thinking the individual character’s popularity would increase the sales of each series.

Ahem, guys, it is not the individual characters that makeup the Teen Titans which make them really popular.  It is how those five individuals work together and interact that making them popular.  Sticking Cyborg on the Justice League does not make me want to buy the Justice League of America comic anymore than I already did, and sticking Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws… I’ll be talking about the error of that decision in detail two weeks from now when I focus on that comic specifically.

What’s worse is that there is a Teen Titans comic, with a completely different team!

This isn’t the only riotously popular storyline or character to be missing from the current lineup of the new 52.

If you’re a fan of Young Justice you know Wally West, the Kid Flash, if you’ve been following the series beyond season one you also know Bart Allen, the kid called Impulse.  What you might not know is that Bart Allen is currently the Kid Flash in the comics and Wally West… well. No one knows where he is.

*Head desk*

Is anyone in management at DC coordinating their comics with their other properties?  The cartoons are advertisements for the comics.  The comics are advertisements for the cartoons. Both are advertisements for the toys… the only part of the marketing machine that actually makes Time Warner a tone of money. If you have one really popular team in one, it better exist in the other!

Gah!  It’s so obvious…

I’d just like to point out the inevitable and obvious logic here… Let’s just take a quick look at two of the highest rated DC Comics Cartoon properties.  In fact looking at the numbers I’d guess the two share essentially the same audience.  I am of course talking about the older Teen Titans and the new Young Justice cartoon runs.

Both of these series manage or managed to attract around 2 million viewers per episode, which while not earth shattering is a loyal and very profitable following on the television market.  The most a DC Comic will sell per issue in the American Market seems to be around 100-150k units, which is around $500,000 dollars in revenue per issue at an absolute maximum, of which DC Comics probably gets only a tiny slice.  Keep in mind that a sales volume of around 30k or less seems to be about typical for comics.

In Brazil there’s a monthly comic that sells 400k units every month like clockwork… DC Comics would never acknowledge itself being outsold like that, hence their championing of the 200k sales of issue #1 of Justice League of America.  But how can a comic be that successful? Well, here’s how.

The comic I’m talking about is called Teen Monica’s Gang.  It’s about exactly what it says, a group of teens and the usual trials and tribulations that go along with that.  It’s drawn in a style similar to anime and manga.  It’s likely sold in supermarkets alongside the tabloids and magazines.  But still, why does this comic sell so well?

The reason why is rather simple… it’s not written for the 18-34 year old male ‘comic book’ market.  It’s written for a wider audience base and focused on the much younger 12-24 year old age group which also taps into the same market as most of the various mangas do in the United States.

Young Adult fiction is the biggest market in publishing, no matter what your medium!

When the new 52 initiative was announced there was a lot of talk about reaching out to new readers and so forth.  Quite simply this failed to happen… as people like me who had our own hopes for the comics read them and tossed them.  The stories we got were too bloody, too violent, and too adult.  What’s worse is that the comics companies have had a great opportunity laid at their feet.

Manga sales have been dropping in the United States, not due to lack of interest or a shrinking market but because of the economic strains.  A Manga volume sells for the same price as a trade paperback, so a comic book with similar material that’s 20 pages long and costs 1/3^rd the price would look really attractive, right?

So what would happen if DC Comics released something that appealed to that market?  Their current marketing, art style, and design are all pushing toward an older male audience, which is a smaller audience.  They have 52 comics, why can’t they release one for this group?  Just to give it a try, a little testing of the waters?  I mean you’ve got characters that we already know work well in a cartoon or anime styled environment and the newly revamped Teen Titans cartoon will be almost exclusively humor and relationship based.

There is an audience there, waiting to be exploited!

What’s worse is that the industry hasn’t yet acknowledged that there’s more competition than ever before.  There are over 60k fanfiction stories based on DC properties on fanfiction.net (Half of which are Teen Titans) alone, even with the omnipresent 98% of human endeavors are crap rule in place we’re talking about thousands of stories that people that dislike your changes can turn to DC…  Or worse yet get pirated versions of your comics in protest of the changes.  If you keep this up you’ll be dependent on income from selling movie and television rights instead of comic books… and then you won’t survive for long.  In which case you’ll either fold or be sold by Time Warner cable.

Maybe I should suggest that right now.  You there, did you dislike the changes? Yes? Okay, go get the comics you liked from the new series via isohunt or some other site until they fix it, okay?

Anyway, yeah… I’m done with that.  Next week… we’ll talk Mecha, and guns, and anything else really Otaku I can come up with… oh and alternate history!

Oh, before I go… remember, comments, reviews, and questions are always welcome.  I just might answer them.