Morrison on Green Lantern

[Trey Strain]

I've submitted an inquiry as to whether DC is offering free returns on any of its unsold titles. If I'm wrong about this, I'll be happy to say how amazed I am that Green Lanterns is selling only 4K copes fewer than HJ&TGLC.

[Frontier]

I don't think that we need to make this thread about who is the best lantern to carry the franchise, really is a pointless disscusion.

It wouldn't be a proper GL thread if it didn't come up though .

[Grayson - The Dark Heir]

I've submitted an inquiry as to whether DC is offering free returns on any of its unsold titles. If I'm wrong about this, I'll be happy to say how amazed I am that Green Lanterns is selling only 4K copes fewer than HJ&TGLC.

That was only a practice that DC used to get retailers into Rebirth btw, they don't do that anymore. You can check Diamond's Top 100 charts for each month, they used to make mention of when returnable comics was a thing and marked them with asterisks.

Here's July 2016: https://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1...ticleID=182669

And here's March 2018 to compare: https://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1...ticleID=210853

Green Lanterns is indeed selling as much as being estimated/reported, free returns is not a thing.

[Trey Strain]

That was only a practice that DC used to get retailers into Rebirth btw, they don't do that anymore. You can check Diamond's Top 100 charts for each month, they used to make mention of when returnable comics was a thing and marked them with asterisks.

Here's July 2016: https://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1...ticleID=182669

And here's March 2018 to compare: https://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1...ticleID=210853

Green Lanterns is indeed selling as much as being estimated/reported, free returns is not a thing.

ALL those launches offered free returns, and therefore got an asterisk. Why would DC or Marvel tell Diamond, ""Hey, we're offering free returns on a few titles now." That's not Diamond's concern. I'll look forward to an official word about whether this is happening with any titles now.

[MRP]

ALL those launches offered free returns, and therefore got an asterisk. Why would DC or Marvel tell Diamond, ""Hey, we're offering free returns on a few titles now." That's not Diamond's concern. I'll look forward to an official word about whether this is happening with any titles now.

Because all returns have to go through Diamond, so yes, it is Diamond's concern. DC is not a distributor, they don't deal directly with retailers, that's how distribution works. Any returns go to Diamond, who would credit the retailers account at Diamond. DC did not and does not handle the returns.

If you are looking for an estimate of real sales to end customers, you can always use Brian Hibbs paradigm that retailers have to sell 4 out of every 5 copies ordered to turn a profit, so figure approximately 80% of the Diamond numbers is sales to end customers for all titles on average (but less than that where order threshold variants are involved as there are likely less copies reaching end customers with the price of the order in variants covering the cost differential).

So, I'm curious though-how much is Green Lanterns sales dropping vis-a-vis other books on the market? Year to year sales have been dropping for the past couple of years, so sales are shrinking everywhere. Are Green Lanterns sales dropping at a greater rate than those an average title i.e. greater than the average rate of attrition (usually 3-5% month-to-month), less, or about the same? All titles lose sales as time goes on. Attrition is part of the package with ongoing series. The direct market for periodical comics is not a growth market. There is a set number of customers in market and it's not going to grow. Periodicals (a dead format in the mass market) sold in a niche destination store is not going to bring in new readers at a greater rate than it loses old customers who lose interest, age out, etc. All that is happening with direct market sales is that publishers are re-slicing the pie, not making the pie bigger, and it's essentially a zero-sum game-if one title gains sales, those sales are likely lost elsewhere, so there is not much (if any growth) in overall revenue in the market. Marvel and DC are struggling to re-slice the pie in their favor with all these publishing initiatives, variants, new #1s, new creative teams, etc. and whatever gains are to be made, will be lost down the road to typical attrition and the next new shiny thing that re-slices the pie. If I recall, the direct market was down 10-12% in 2017 over 2016. Did Green Lanterns sales drop by a larger percentage than that? If not, then sales are not failing, they are holding better than the market as a whole. If yes, well, then the book can be said to have failing sales because it was losing more than the average book on the market. If you are going to discuss sales in the context of success or failure, you need to do so in the context of how the market as a whole is doing. Sales are not growing anywhere in the direct market. If your measure of success is titles that are growing sales long term, there are no successful titles in the market.

Morrison coming to the title will re-slice the pie. The GL book will get a bump in sales. The question is, how much of that bump will it retain over the long haul. It too will lose sales over time, but will it lose more or less than the market average. Success will be a title that loses less than the market average and retains a large chunk of the initial sales bump.

The only DC initiatives looking for actual new readers are things like Ink, Zoom, Neil Gaiman's Sandman line, Black Label and pop up stores at places like SXSW that are courting readers outside the direct market, and none of those are looking at periodical sales as a measure of success, they are looking for evergreen sellers on the book market that have long term revenue potential and sell for much longer than the 1-2 week sales window the typical periodical has. There is actual year to year growth in graphic novel/comic sales in the book market (most of the stuff selling is not collected periodicals though, and not put out by Marvel or DC, and not targeted at hardcore comic/super-hero fans). But that's where the real revenue streams for comics lie, and where the real success is measured. Now how much did it sell the week it came out, but is it still selling 2-3 years later, 5 years later? 10 years later? Successful books sell in the long term, not create a short term sales spike and then fizzle. DC has a number of books that do well in the long term in that market and generate real revenue over the long term. Not a lot of them are collections of ongoing periodical series. Some of Morrison's stuff has made the transition to the evergreen book market. Not all, but some. The ultimate measure of success on a Morrison GL book will not be how it does in the direct market compared to the creative team before it, but can it produce a volume or three of evergreen sellers that keep making DC money down the road.

-M

[WillieMorgan]

I'm just having fun here as I'm fairly sure you're just always trolling with this nonsense (which you're free to do) but if you really are stuck in the past this much, you've got to move on dude.

I must admit, the idea that we're just being endlessly trolled here does sometimes cross my mind. Especially when I find myself in a similar situation.

If we are being played though then it's to an insane, almost genius, degree and I can only tip my proverbial hat in a kind of perverse admiration at it all .

Because all returns have to go through Diamond, so yes, it is Diamond's concern. DC is not a distributor, they don't deal directly with retailers, that's how distribution works. Any returns go to Diamond, who would credit the retailers account at Diamond. DC did not and does not handle the returns.

If you are looking for an estimate of real sales to end customers, you can always use Brian Hibbs paradigm that retailer shave to sell 4 out of every 5 copies ordered to turn a profit, so figure approximately 80% of the Diamond numbers is sales to end customers for all titles on average (but less than that where order threshold variants are involved as there are likely less copies reaching end customers with the price of the order in variants covering the cost differential).

So, I'm curious though-how much is Green Lanterns sales dropping vis-a-vis other books on the market? Year to year sales have been dropping for the past couple of years, so sales are shrinking everywhere. Are Green Lanterns sales dropping at a greater rate than those an average title i.e. greater than the average rate of attrition (usually 3-5% month-to-month), less, or about the same? All titles lose sales as time goes on. Attrition is part of the package with ongoing series. The direct market for periodical comics is not a growth market. There is a set number of customers in market and it's not going to grow. Periodicals (a dead format in the mass market) sold in a niche destination store is not going to bring in new readers at a greater rate than it loses old customers who lose interest, age out, etc. All that is happening with direct market sales is that publishers are re-slicing the pie, not making the pie bigger, and it's essentially a zero-sum game-if one title gains sales, those sales are likely lost elsewhere, so there is not much (if any growth) in overall revenue in the market. Marvel and DC are struggling to re-slice the pie in their favor with all these publishing initiatives, variants, new #1s, new creative teams, etc. and whatever gains are to be made, will be lost down the road to typical attrition and the next new shiny thing that re-slices the pie. If I recall, the direct market was down 10-12% in 207 over 2016. Did Green Lanterns sales drop by a larger percentage than that? If not, then sales are not failing, they are holding better than the market as a whole. If yes, well, then the book can be said to have failing sales because it was losing more than the average book on the market. If you are going to discuss sales in the context of success or failure, you need to do so in the context of how the market as a whole is doing. Sales are not growing anywhere in the direct market. If your measure of success is titles that are growing sales long term, there are no successful titles in the market.

Morrison coming to the title will re-slice the pie. The GL book will get a bump in sales. The question is, how much of that bump will it retain over the long haul. It too will lose sales over time, but will it lose more or less than the market average. Success will be a title that loses less than the market average and retains a large chunk of the initial sales bump.

-M

I'm not sure what you're doing here. Coming onto a Green Lantern thread with a genuine understanding of how the market works as opposed to crackpot theories is NOT the accepted standard .

Thinking back to where the GL market was five years ago, even though it was on the slide even back then, I'd say that the current rate of attrition for both GL titles is higher than average. It's been a long time since the franchise was performing so poorly.

[K. Jones]

I read this news at work the other day. I'm extremely gratified if it happens - I also hope to see Tim Seeley keep working on whatever the Lantern "sister-book" might be - if there is one, of course - because I think Seeley would be a great partner writer for Morrison the way Tomasi has been and so forth.

[Nick Miller]

They weren't when he was doing New X-Men at Marvel. He was turning in scripts leaving Igor Kordey about 2-3 days to do 20+ pages of pencils and inks to make shipping dates (part of the reason Korbdey's stuff looked as bad on that run compared to work he did elsewhere particularly in Europe where he wasn't rushing out pages ot make up for a writer who had no regard for deadlines or the rest of the creative team). Things may have changed, but Grant had a pretty bad rap for missing deadlines earlier in his career.

-M

that was for 2 or 3 issues.

and about 17 years ago

he was probably in Tibet with no mail service, no cell phone and no internet

[Nick Miller]

Maybe it'll be a hit. But as I said in another thread, the histories and the tendencies in this industry usually hold true. When someone says it's going to be different this time, is almost never is.

This is an audience that doesn't change or grow very much. It's going to pretty much do what it's always done.

love awesome GL books?

[Nick Miller]

No Lantern should carry the franchise. That was a bad idea. My point was that as a fan of Kyle, Morrison won't make the property Hal-centric and keep announcing that "Hal is the greatest." That'll be a real change, and for me a welcome one.

In universe, Hal is the greatest. its canon.

[skyvolt2000]

But that's not what you said. You said you don't think that they "can" sell a comic when that's what they've been doing for the past two years. GLs will be one of only about a dozen or so Rebirth titles to hit 50 issues, currently at #45 it's still well above the danger zone and above plenty of other titles, including Green Arrow and Aquaman, and even if their book ends in August with #53 as part of a shake-up to the GL books, they'll still be tied with Steel for having the second longest POC lead solo book at DC."

Actually the order of POC lead solo/duo is

1 Kyle
2 Cassandra Cain
3 Jaime Reyes
4 Steel
5 Jessica & Simon
6 Batwing
Jason Rusch 35
Black Lightning 29
New Superman 21
Cyborg 33
Michael Lane 19
Mr Terrific 8
John Stewart 18
Duke holds last place at 3

Now that does not include Catwoman, Damian & Milestone.
Since it's debated if the first two are POC. If Catwoman is counted. She is number one.

If you count Milestone-Static is tied with Jaime
Hardware is after Steel
Icon is after Batwing
Kobalt is after John Stewart
Xombi is after Black Lightning

Of John Stewart is below the other 3 since editors took issues with him despite sales being decent according to Cully Hammer. 5 of those books had editor issues.

[Assam]

Actually the order of POC lead solo/duo is

We've been over this before, dude. Kyle and Selina count about as much as Dick Grayson. Additionally you're counting David and Luke's Batwing runs together, you once again ignored Connor Hawke and Jaime is only that high in terms of how many solo issues he has total. None of his individual runs has lasted longer than 35 issues.

[skyvolt2000]

In universe, Hal is the greatest. its canon.

And it's not helping sales.

That is what is turning folks off about the Hal & TGLC book-they don't want to read about HAL or that greatest BS.

Thus you have alienated the other Lanterns fans and one of those fanbases tired of being lectured about being a GL fan. Because that same request for respect was never shown to Kyle, John, Jessica & Simon.

[KurtW95]

Would much rather put him on Shazam (the Marvel Family). I’m no Morrison fan, but his Thunderworld was fantastic. Exactly what I’d want for those characters moving forward.

[Sacred Knight]

I think Shazam's on the same hands-off list that JSA and the Legion are on.