This is a very realistic look at the kind of choices comic book retailers will have to make regarding DC’s relaunch with # 1 issues of 52 titles — and is also a good example of one of the pressures driving more casual fans to digital comics.
If you are a casual fan, lapsed fan, or just someone who is intrigued by the publicity surrounding the DC event, the chances are good that you won’t be able to find those #1 titles you have interest in when you do wander into a comic store. Retailers are going to sell out of the hot books almost immediately. Oh, they will order heavily on things like Superman #1, Batman #1, etc. But they can’t afford to stock 52 #1 titles deeply.
If you are already a hardcore comics fan, you’ll order the titles you know you will want in advance by putting them on your “pull list”. Your retailer will order at least enough to cover those who do. But even the hardcore fan may miss out on a few titles that he doesn’t yet KNOW he wants — unless he’s the type that stands at the front door of the comics shop every Wednesday morning.
Digital releases simultaneously with print releases means you never have to worry that you are going to miss an issue, that you can sample anything that looks intriguing as an impulse purchase, that you can have it all without taking Wednesdays off work every week, and that you can go back and catch #1 of a title you missed when word of mouth praise reaches you about the time #3 comes out.
And what does it do to comics retailers? Honestly, what it does is force the, to be less reliant on casual sales of single issues and guessing right on which titles are going to take off. Instead, they are going to have to take all of those fans whose interest is sparked, maintained or expanded by digital sales and sell them other things they now want to buy — trades and hardcov collections, memorabilia and toys, anything that’s hard and physical and geeky in the same ways comics are geeky. The digital publishers can do a lot to help with that, if they will, by building social communities within their fan base and aiming those communities at the local stores. Retailers will have to embrace this and use it to the fullest to survive. Some won’t — and that is sad but inevitable in the face of any sort of change.
But the author of this piece is dead-on — the DC new universe isn’t aimed at making it easy for traditional comics retailers. It makes their choices a lot tougher, a lot faster. Some will find ways to make it pay, and those are likely to be the ones who start with the assumption that “business as usual” is over and who adapt quickly and decisively. A lot of it is going to be educated guesswork, and even some smart and worthy people are going to guess wrong and fail. I’m going to hate that, but it is evolution at work — and you can no more fight that than you can hold back the passage of time.
Still, I feel for all the folks who have to face that challenge.