The original Firestorm was quite successful and his book for over 100 hundred issues back in the day. For a new character, that was no small feat.
But I believe a lot of his sales were from outside the direct market (although available sales data from that era is hard to find).
I dunno beside declining comic sales?
Black Superman will be quite a thing, I'm sure. Strangely though I hear Henry Cavill has stopped following DC & WB on social media, say what? Huh, I'm positive those things are totally NOT related.
Batwoman tv ratings are a smashing success & making it wildly popular with fans & critics, right? Not a problem.
Anyone hear about Margot Robbie's Birds of Prey getting a sequel?
Captain Marvel 2 is now called, "The Marvels"? But didn't Captain Marvel make over a billion dollars? Seems strange to just abandon the "Captain Marvel" brand just like that? Seems weird. Anybody remember what Marvel's statement about the name change was? I must have missed it.
Yes-ish.
Firestorm's original series, Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, only lasted five issues before getting caught up in the DC Implosion of the late 1970s, and he was trundled off to the JLA, along with out about a dozen backup appearances in The Flash. His 1980s series, The Fury of Firestorm, did indeed last over 100 issues. The character has never been able to hold up a title for very long since.
There is an understanding now that serialized fiction works best if you start in the beginning. Better Call Saul, Succession, Billions, Barry and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are not very accessible if you start with a random episode.
Comics are in a similar place. It's easier than ever to read earlier chapters, and it does create a different reading experience. A downside is that it's harder for someone to get started.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
There's a bit of a wrong turn in that need to start with the beginning that both of the Big Two made starting in the 1980s (it seems to me). Up to that point, there'd been some editorial paradigms that every issue might be somebody's first. Hasn't been that way in a looooong time.
Is it necessary in the current market where most trade paperbacks are readily available, and every recent issue of note is available digitally?
There is a tradeoff if they regularly adopted the idea that issues may be someone's first, in terms of limiting the ability to tell complex stories.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
They've been waiting for 21 years (the X-Men movie was released in 2000) for fans of the movies to show up in the comics shops, and it hasn't happened yet. The strategy of "if you build it, they will come" has been the shining hope of Marvel and DC since the movies first started coming out, and what's happened to sales in those 20 years...they've declined. Putting asses in seats in movie theatres does not translate to traffic coming in to comic shops and buying single issues or trades. Fans of the movies are fans of the characters and stories in the movies (or on television), it doesn't mean they want to read about those characters or those stories. Movie customers do not become comic customers unless they are already inclined to be readers and customers of reading material. IF they are hoping for that to happen, 21 years of it not happening has shown that to be a vain hope.
-M
Comic fans get the comics their buying habits deserve.
"Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding." -Plato