How Long Can DC Comics' Rebirth Maintain Its Dominating Sales?

[CBR News]

July was another record-breaking month, but how far can DC ride the Rebirth wave. And is Marvel relying too much on variant covers?


Full article here.

[KOSLOX]

How many more #1 do they have yet to relaunch? My guess is they can maintain for about a month after that.

[CrimsonRain666]

The only lcs in my city is already dropping numbers on some of the books. Example the Super-Man book is down to special orders and maybe 4 or 5 copies. They are already saying it's going to be the first to get cancelled.

[Redvector]

Rebirth is shiny and new right now. After the novelty and excitement wears off sales will come back down to earth. So spacing out the releases is a good idea. The New 52 was heavily front loaded like a shotgun blast. A lot of hit's but just as many misses.

[Rich Johnston]

August has a 350,000 selling All Star Batman 1 and a 400,000 selling Harley Quinn 1. So, for August at least.

[Redvector]

The hyphenated Super-Man is just a dumb idea. Give him his own identity. It just feeds the narrative that the Chinese can't come up with their own superheroes without stealing the ideas from Western heroes.

[Lemurion]

I am extremely biased in favor of DC over Marvel. I enjoy Marvel books, but I've always preferred DC.

Having said that, I think DC has a statistically significant chance of "winning" August, and it might stretch into September. I don't see it happening in October or beyond. Given the smaller line, DC has to sell about 33% more copies of each title to match Marvel on units; they need even bigger numbers to make dollars thanks to the lower ASP, and the reserve against returns makes it worse. July's numbers imply that DC sold slightly more than twice as many copies of each book on average to Marvel. That's not going to happen.

If double-shipping works as intended, and DC's able to top-load their sales they may be able to compete on units, but history shows that Marvel can and will double-ship too. (See the thrice-monthly Spider-Man relaunch for Brand New Day as an example of the same basic tactic in action). What's really going to make the difference there is depth. If DC can keep sales high on the bottom tier of the double-shipped books they have a good chance of staying competitive on units.

Dollar share is another matter. As long as DC continues to release fewer titles at a lower price-point they're going to face an uphill battle in dollar share, and I don't see them overcoming it regularly.

[Blackest Knight]

A few points which may have been overlooked in this discussion...

1) Didio and Lee confirmed in a previous interview on CBR that they pushed Super-Sons #1 back to first quarter 2017 as well as other Rebirth titles.
2) This means Rebirth will be continuing to release new Rebirth #1's and new 1st issues well into early next year (which is 5 months from now).
3) There are plenty of DC titles promised to relaunch which have yet to get their debut. Chief among them are JSA and Legion Of Super-Heroes, both of which I would think would rack up big numbers in their returns. Plus, there other big names such as Shazam.

The staggering of Rebirth over a 6 month period will be a live experiment as to how long you can stretch out a relaunch. We shall see how it goes.

The point is, it ain't over yet. Far from it. This is continuing into next year!

[yet another]

The point is, it ain't over yet. Far from it. This is continuing into next year!

Yes, but most/all of the big titles have already relaunched.

I don't see Super-Sons #1 and the like making even close to the numbers of Batman #1, Superman #1, Wonder Woman #1, Green Lantern #1 etc.

[plo12]

I'm surprised with all the money Marvel is making, yet they don't hire decent artists.
The majority of their current books look like vomit.Especially titles like Silk or Spider-Woman.

[yet another]

The majority of their current books look like vomit.Especially titles like Silk or Spider-Woman.

"Decent" artists generally work on A-list books. Those do not (yet) include titles like Silk and Spider-Woman.

[Arghant]

I think Rebirth is going to be a much better sales platform for DC than New52. Specifically, I'm seeing much greater interest in my comics from younger kids this time around. I've been letting my 12 year old goddaughter read my Rebirth titles and she's already latched on to New Super-Man, so I've now added a second copy to my pull list at Midtown so she can start her own comic collection. It's all about getting the next generation of readers hooked. Also, she freaking loved the Suicide Squad movie, along with her older sister. I may have to take her to see it again.

[Cloudman]

Hopefully for long enough that Marvel will actually start trying to compete.

[Ghatanathoah]

I think Rebirth is going to be a much better sales platform for DC than New52. Specifically, I'm seeing much greater interest in my comics from younger kids this time around.

I think this has to do with how Rebirth is trying to go back to the more "Iconic" versions of superheroes. Generally the iconic runs of superhero comics are the ones that get adapted into movies and cartoons, and are therefore the ones most people are familiar with. New readers like seeing comics that resemble the superheroes they see in the movies and TV. They don't like radical changes, like the ones in the New 52.

I remember taking some kids to a comic book store last year. They liked seeing the 80s Teen Titans trade paperbacks that had the characters they knew from Teen Titans Go. They were just confused by the New 52 Teen Titans.

[Cinnamon]

I hope the Young Animal sales will be equally strong.