The Business of Marvel’s Cannibalizing
With the impending DC relaunch, it is worth looking at Marvel’s frequent numerical tinkerings and whether or not they have led to a positive impact on sales.
Let’s consider relaunched titles alone. With the exception of Wolverine (perhaps due to market confusion), any A-List property (Hulk, Avengers, Thor) that was relaunched enjoyed an initial sales boost because of a relaunch. That boost has tended to serve a sales reboot before standard attrition sets in again. It’s telling that Hulk and Thor are both relaunching (or have relaunched) once again this year. Still, all of that is common sense. More interesting to me is what they’ve done with the established numbering of the books being canceled to allow for the relaunches.
DC, in a sign that they mean business with their relaunch and to garner more attention through controversy, are completely scrapping the numbering and lineage of all of their titles; including, and most notably, Detective and Action Comics. Marvel on the other hand, has made use of the established numbering to launch B or C-Level properties that might not have been able to sustain a more independent launch, and they have done this with some surprising success.
Launching new properties in today’s market is always a tricky proposition. Fans tend to gravitate towards the characters they have always read. They are invested due to continuity and inertia. It’s hard to rationalize the big universe-shaking events centering on a B-Level book, just as it is harder to convince big name talent to work on a lower-profile title. Artists tend to want to work on the characters that are usually headliners.
With all that in mind, it’s interesting to examine the difference between how the two big companies actually launch a book. Neither have had a lot of success, but DC’s launches over the last few years seem more haphazard than Marvel’s. Marvel tended to launch books out of big events. Messiah CompleX created X-Force and Cable. Secret Invasion created Dark Avengers (and Agents of ATLAS vol 3 as well as a few other things). Fear Itself is creating Defenders and Alpha Flight. Ideally this gets a book buzz and puts eyes upon it.
The problem with new launches is generally not getting a lot of attention with an issue #1 but instead keeping sales steady throughout the first year.
DC has been notoriously bad at capitalizing on their events. 52 only gave us Booster Gold and Infinity Inc., six months or a year later than they should have dropped. This seems to have been somewhat rectified with the follow-up of Brightest Day. Deadman, Hawk and Dove, Hawkman, and Aquaman will all be represented in The New 52. Up until now, and save for a few specific experiments we’ll mention later, new DC property and title launches worked in one of two ways: a new title was tossed out into the ether to survive on its own (REBELS, Doom Patrol, Outsiders, Freedom Fighters), or it was flooded out in a themed group (The Red Circle Books, First Wave). Rarely did these books stem from a hot storyline, and almost all of them are gone now.
Every tool publishers have needs to be used to support any new title launch, let alone one featuring a new or more obscure property. Marvel has been somewhat shameless in this regard, using events, character deaths, variant covers, poly-bagging, secret solicitations and spoiler-ridden mainstream articles in order to get people to look at their launches. However, they are also more savvy in using Social Media (such as ‘motion’ comics and PR). The main beneficiaries of this are, of course, the A-List characters. Increasing Spider-Man or Thor’s readership by 30% is both somewhat easier given media attention on those characters and more beneficial as a 30% increase on a higher selling property brings in more profit than a 30% increase on a lower selling property. This is one reason why they’ve relaunched some of their flagship titles to coincide with new movies. They wanted a brand new #1 out there for the movie-going audience to tap into, for retailers to be able to suggest to new customers quickly and easily. Marvel has done this with Hulk, Wolverine, Thor, and Captain America, all having a movie out in the year they were relaunched. They also have relaunched Daredevil in a similar manner, allowing for a definitive ending to the Shadowland story and in order to tie a new #1 to their Big Shots marketing campaign which reintroduced Punisher and Moon Knight into the Marvel Universe proper, all with big creators attached.
What’s left in each case were legacy numberings, #112 for Incredible Hulk, #75 for Wolverine, #621 for Thor, #512 for Daredevil, and #619 for Captain America. There were consumers with subscriptions to these titles, both through the mail or pull lists at stores, completionists who had followed these titles for decades and wanted to keep their collection complete, meaning anything Marvel did with those numbers would automatically have built-in eyes upon them.
The problem with new launches is generally not getting a lot of attention with an issue #1 but instead keeping sales steady throughout the first year. Very often, retailers over-order an issue #1, in part thanks to all the hype elements listed above. A very large sales drop for an issue #2 is standard in the industry and how long it takes for a comic to find its level often has a huge amount to do with whether it survives or not. If a comic starts out with a very high launch, it means that it will probably level out higher than a comic with a much lower launch. Quality does matter (though less than you’d think and usually in negative ways). This is especially true for new or lower-tier properties which are the very ones that Marvel and DC have every incentive to push and develop.
The real money in comics isn’t in comics at all, it’s in movies and licensing, toys and cartoons. From a financial sense, the comics serve as something of an R&D engine for new properties and stories, a tool that can generate both ideas and buzz for characters that generate money in other ways. At the same time, the comics themselves have to be at least moderately profitable or else the parent companies cannot continue to rationalize publishing them. Having six strong selling Batman titles at DC has value, but maybe not as much as one strong Batman title and five other new or underdeveloped properties that are all selling strong and churning out new and relatively varied intellectual property.
Marvel took lingering numbers and tempered the #2 drops in a rather clever way. Incredible Hercules #113 kept Incredible Hulk’s high sales numbers coming out of World War Hulk, launching much, much higher in the charts than it would have otherwise. Afterwards, the attrition was rough, but instead of being fatal like it might have been had the book launched on its own, between the extra eyes and Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak’s critically acclaimed story, it was able to survive long enough for the creators to tell their entire planned story, develop a strong new character in Amadeus Cho, lead into an event of its own in Chaos War, and spin off into a new Herc book. It’s been a three-and-a-half year and counting run for a book that should have lasted a third of that time, led by a character who’s only had supporting roles in mini series before.
Marvel has had similar success with Daken, turning the Wolverine ongoing into Dark Wolverine with issue #76. The character has recently been relaunched into his own book which is still selling above cancellation levels. Six issues in, the Daredevil replacement, Black Panther: Man Without Fear, is selling around twice the numbers of the last mini series, though it is still struggling. Thor has become Journey Into Mystery, a critically acclaimed title focusing on a de-aged Loki which already has a better chance to succeed than it would have otherwise. It started higher than the previous Loki mini-series, and only experienced an 11% estimated drop between the first two issues of the run. Marvel attempted this again with Captain America, relaunching the title to #1 for the movie and turning the ongoing book into Captain America and Bucky set in WW II, an attempt to doubly capitalize on the movie.
DC has used this technique in a less direct way, having Batwoman debut solo in Detective Comics with a critically acclaimed Greg Rucka/J.H. Williams run to more success than I think she would have had otherwise. The character was introduced and had a chance to develop in an established book with established numbering before spinning off into her own title. The execution of that title’s launch had its own problems but that had more to do with politics and the impending relaunch than the experiment being a failure. DC also attempted another technique with their second-tier characters over the last few years, using back-ups across the lines to rationalize a $3.99 price hike. I don’t think at this point anyone would consider THAT experiment a success, but DC is better off for at least attempting it.
Marvel has had considerable success in transferring the numbering of comic titles to new or supporting properties, avoiding or absorbing the sharp drop offs traditionally apparent with new lower profile property launches.
In the race to avoid a direct market solely made up of Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Batman comics, and to develop properties that will rationalize DC and Marvel’s continued existence to Time Warner and Disney respectively, DC is sacrificing a potential tool with their systemic line-wide relaunch. Marvel has had considerable success in transferring the numbering of comic titles to new or supporting properties, avoiding or absorbing the sharp drop offs traditionally apparent with new lower profile property launches. DC has chosen a completely different route, creating a universal dropping on and dropping off point, not even ensuring the inertia of traditional eyes on Action and Detective.
With the Captain America and Bucky launch having hit just in the last month, and the DC relaunch set for September, it will be interesting to see if DC’s all or nothing strategy of rebooting leaves the secondary and tertiary titles behind relative to Marvel’s policy of giving every single launch every advantage possible, even including cannibalizing both numbers and fans from a totally different title getting relaunched.