What?!? How did that not work!?!

[Frontier]

I'm not shocked by anything not working because I know that the comic book reading demo is very limited. For instance, I think Amethyst doesn't break out solely because it's in the wrong market. The success of Netflix's She-Ra shows there is definitely an audience. Maybe Gemworld should have been a bigger part of DC Super Hero Girls.

The DC Nation Amethyst shorts felt very She-Ra.

I think there is potential in a concept like Mystik U if DC committed to it more. Ditto for Gotham City Sirens.

It surprises me that DC has never really capitalized on the Sirens outside their pre-Flashpoint book. Mystik U was a cool idea although I'm not sure how well sales were for it.

[skyvolt2000]

Vixen. There is no logical reason why she shouldn't work. The animated movie even set up the perfect plot for a series. Collect all the totems. But for some reason, she can't seem to get a series.

Mother Panic. If there's some backstory behind why this failed, I'd love to hear it. This was an awesome series and deserved to last longer. I don't know if it was the victim of some inter-office politics or what.

Dr. Fate. Technically he's had a lot of series over the years that lasted into the double digits, but he's never been what you would call a major character. I think he suffers from the same problem Zatanna does, name recognition with no real connections to anything.

Sideways. Hear me out. I think a lot of the hate it got was more directed at Didio himself rather than the character. He came along at a sore time when Rebirth was in the middle of being established and I think there was still a lot of hate for Didio and New 52 floating around.

Dan used Sideways to bash the Teen Titans at Hotspot's expense. That constant Teen Titan basing will get you a book ignored.

Mother Panic-put her at Dynamite and she won't have issues selling. She probably works better with a mini here and a mini there versus an ongoing.

How characters everyone likes don’t sell has always intrigued me.

Because not everyone in charge cares for said character.

Because sometimes the role that character plays allows for acceptance but when you try to go beyond it-you get issues. Look at Storm at Marvel. Look at Cyborg.

Or that effort is done by those who don't care for the character. New 52 Firestorm & Static Shock say HI. As does 90s Black Lighting & Green Lantern Mosaic.

Or you are in the WRONG market. Funny when you take a Squirrel Girl and give her an OGN outside the market-she becomes a best seller. Same with Cassandra Cain and Raven.

Amethyst would KILL in the OGN market. Princeless has 10 voulmes. If she can work there so can Amethyst.

[Electricmastro]

I love Dr. Fate, but I think the idea of him as a helmet's sock-puppet limits his potential. It can make for great stories, but it also limits what can be done with the character as much as it opens opportunities for him.

I mean, being trained by a wizard in the ways of sorcery in order to fight crime and wield magical items, including a helmet which occasionally has a god character possessing him, can bring out a lot of potential for interesting material, can’t it? He didn’t have an origin like having a chemical spilled onto him or something like that, because it was a rather uncommon origin which I’m sure you could do so many things with!

[LP22]

Sorry, nope nope nope nope nope!!!
The first issue of Fastest Man Alive sold well, but it went downhill almost immediately. The numbers were nowhere NEAR the numbers Wally was generating.
The story was a complete mess, with the TV show writers Bilson & De Meo both gone after #8 with the wreckage passed to Guggenhiem to attempt to salvage.
By then, DC realised they'd cocked up and began arranging the return of Wally and asked Mark Waid to come back.

While it made perfect sense for Bart to take over the mantle - it was too soon.
Bart was aged up and had a complete personality transplant. It was just not handled particularly well

Creativity wise it's a matter of taste...but you saying that bart numbers were nowhere near wally's number is either a lie or you completely forgotten about that timeframe and I'm sorry but I have to prove you wrong this is sales numbers and years comparisons from June 2006 until December 2008 with 6 months gaps from comicsbeat and it clearly shows not only bart numbers were better then Wally but once Wally came back they went down.

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[LP22]

Creativity wise it's a matter of taste...but you saying that bart numbers were nowhere near wally's number is a lie my friend and I'm sorry but I have to prove you wrong this is sales numbers and years comparisons from June 2006 until December 2008 with 6 months gaps from comicsbeat and it clearly shows not only bart numbers were better then Wally but once Wally came back they went down.

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Again as you can see no disrespect to Wally but bart numbers were just as good and in fact were better and fans were more then willing to give him a chance commercial wish but DC butchered him completely.

[DrNewGod]

I mean, being trained by a wizard in the ways of sorcery in order to fight crime and wield magical items, including a helmet which occasionally has a god character possessing him, can bring out a lot of potential for interesting material, can’t it? He didn’t have an origin like having a chemical spilled onto him or something like that, because it was a rather uncommon origin which I’m sure you could do so many things with!

Again, I love Dr. Fate. Being a god's sock puppet does have interesting stories attached to it, but it also diminishes the host's potential for heroic stories. Plenty of Woe Is Me, but the opportunities for a Kent or Khalid to rise and shine would be few.

Another thing it cuts off is progression. In contrast, one of the things I adore about Ditko's inaugural run in Strange Tales was the way Dr. Strange grew in skill and power. At first, there was a sense that he wasn't Baron Mordo's equal, winning mainly by trickery, but over time became more than a match for his one-time rival, and moved on to bigger and badder adversaries. I suppose something similar could be done with Dr. Fate, but so far, it hasn't.

[The Odd Man]

Along the same line as the Power Company is the Shadowpact. It was such a good team book with characters that had been around for years all joined together. It is sad it was replaced by the inferior Justice League Dark book, and yes JLD is inferior to Shadowpact in almost every way. Better characters and better stories. It was a true team book and not just John Constantine and Friends like JLD was.

Came here to post about SHADOWPACT for the exact same reasons (and JLD-diss) and see you beat me to it.

Cheers!

[scary harpy]

Came here to post about SHADOWPACT for the exact same reasons (and JLD-diss) and see you beat me to it.

Cheers!

Speaking of Shadowpact, their villain Doctor Gotham was brilliant. I can't believe we won't see this warlock again.

Pentacle was good too.

[Vampire Savior]

I'm not shocked by anything not working because I know that the comic book reading demo is very limited. For instance, I think Amethyst doesn't break out solely because it's in the wrong market. The success of Netflix's She-Ra shows there is definitely an audience. Maybe Gemworld should have been a bigger part of DC Super Hero Girls.

I think there is potential in a concept like Mystik U if DC committed to it more. Ditto for Gotham City Sirens.

I actually feel the same way. Comic fans are pretty special. There aren't that many of them, they are usually only loyal or interested in a select group of characters, and marketing for comics is usually piss poor, so a lot of stuff has little to no chance of working with them, oftentimes regardless of quality. The only things that consistently work well at DC are events and Batman. Even if the events are terrible, people keep buying them anyway, I guess because they have the illusion of mattering.

[AdamFTF]

I actually feel the same way. Comic fans are pretty special. There aren't that many of them, they are usually only loyal or interested in a select group of characters, and marketing for comics is usually piss poor, so a lot of stuff has little to no chance of working with them, oftentimes regardless of quality. The only things that consistently work well at DC are events and Batman. Even if the events are terrible, people keep buying them anyway, I guess because they have the illusion of mattering.

Are we really all that different from the rest of the unwashed masses?

[Holt]

Going way back but given the legend he's known as, it's weird to think that Jack Kirby's foray into DC in the 70s was largely a flop. Especially when you consider how iconic Darkseid ended up becoming after Kirby left to go back to Marvel.

Are we really all that different from the rest of the unwashed masses?

I mean, kind of? I was saying this on the coronavirus thread, but part of the reason (among many others) Big 2 superhero comics have had such a hard time reaching wider audiences despite superheroes being arguably the BIGGEST force in pop culture right now is that we're the only ones willing to plop down 4 dollars for 20 pages of story. It's hard to grow your market when the product seems like a poor value proposition compared to just about every other form of entertainment.

With everything Robinson's written since, I get how it didn't work. But, leading up to it, I thought Cry for Justice was a slam dunk. I couldn't WAIT for that book.

Beautiful art, though.

I was a teenager at the time and that was a huge heartbreaker. "A darker, edgier Justice League book by the writer of Starman? This is gonna be awesome!" I foolishly thought.

[married guy]

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Again as you can see no disrespect to Wally but bart numbers were just as good and in fact were better and fans were more then willing to give him a chance commercial wish but DC butchered him completely.

Here's the sales for a random Wally/Waid issue (and coming towards the tail end I might add)

Sep 1996 58 Flash #119 53,700

Here's the numbers on the Bart/Bilson run (with a MASSIVE dropoff after the first issue)

02/2007 Flash: FMA #9 47,214 (- 7.4%)
03/2007 Flash: FMA #10 46,133 (- 2.3%)
04/2007 Flash: FMA #11 46,963 (+ 1.8%)
05/2007 Flash: FMA #12 47,809 (+ 1.8%)

What you're missing is that Wally had headlined his own title for well over a decade.
As I mentioned, the numbers dropped with #9 and stayed that way till the final issue spike.
This is on a title that had been running for less than a year. Make no mistake, the title was a DISASTER for DC sales-wise.

[Robotman]

The Creeper!

A Ditko creation who is half Joker and half Spider-Man. He seems like he should be far more successful as a character.

Would he have done better at Marvel?

[DrNewGod]

The Creeper!

A Ditko creation who is half Joker and half Spider-Man. He seems like he should be far more successful as a character.

Would he have done better at Marvel?

Possibly, but as you point out, Spider-Man already kind of owned the corner he would have been trying to work.

[Restingvoice]

But... Vertigo definitely existed... Fables was dare I say "WILDLY" successful. This is a mistake in thinking that the publishing company can only profit from one type of story. I'm gonna have to fully disagree on that point.

There's more in heaven and earth than your superheroes... and this from me an avid superhero guy.

A lot of people don't know that Fables or Vertigo is DC. I didn't know that Fables is DC until... The Wolf Among Us?... and not from the game, but from people talking about the game, then talking about the comic and then saying it was DC. I've seen Fables and Vertigo comics long before that, I just don't associate them with DC because DC for me, and a lot of people, are Superman, Batman and so on. We saw it as "other comics"

Swamp Thing, Constantine, never knew they were DC until New 52 because in popular media they're never associated with the brand DC in the past. Swamp Thing didn't have a TV series since the... the 80s? The Constantine movie with Keanu Reeves had no DC brand on it.

We're not talking about whether people like those genres or seek those genres or not, but whether they associate that genre with a certain brand, and especially with New 52's target audience, which is supposed to be people like me who didn't or hasn't read comics in a long time.

Some of us may be interested in the diverse title but most of us are gonna look for what's simple and recognizable. What's recognizable from the DC brand is the heroes, based on their movies and cartoons. That's what they've been promoting very clearly to us the past 20 years, so that's what we know and what we sought.

So when we heard DC's doing a reboot, we're not gonna think where's Constantine, we'll think, oh, now we can read Superman and Batman from number #1

(Swamp Thing is a New 52 launch title, which is good, btw, because I didn't know Swamp Thing was DC, but because it's a launch title, I immediately knew and immediately interested. So that works for characters who's been in the public consciousness)

To clarify even further, it's not that people won't be interested at all in a different genre of comics, the problem is the number. The number of people who's interested in what DC's offering will be affected by what they know about DC. People flock to Batman because they already familiar or even like the character from other media. For stories or characters that they never heard it's gonna be a harder sell.