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At first I was disheartened, then angry. Slowly the anger is wearing off and being replaced with a 'now what.'

Since DC started their holding the line at 2.99 I've been pretty much all in, buying the vast majority of their titles on a monthly basis. For titles that are fairly new, say numbered less than 25, this feels like a stick in the eye. I'm not sure why exactly but it does. I know I need to get over the consecutive numbering thing but still, do I need a Thunder Agents, Batman Beyond, Xombi, Superboy, renumbering when none of them have even hit double digits yet ?

So after my initial gut reaction to just drop everything, I've started trying to approach going forward in a more rational manner. At least as rational as a rabid comic fan can be. I'm probably going to get all the new number ones with the exception of characters or stories I have no interest in. Very few things don't interest me so it should be close to the entire line of 52. Then based on what grabs me, I'll probably just start collecting the trades going forward. Yeah, this won't push me out of the DC universe but I think it's killed the idea of collecting the floppies on a monthly basis. I'd been considering this anyway given how quick some series have been killed off recently.

The message I keep getting from the big two comic companies is that continuity shouldn't matter. And I'm not talking about the numbering, but the history and the story lines that molded and made the characters. I hear words like 'tweak' and 'modernize' being bandied about which may indicate very small changes (yo Jim Lee, hating the collars on the uniforms) but the story telling as is often pointed out is generally set up to be 4 to 6 issue story arcs that don't necessarily compel you to read the next issue. So if companies are going to write for the trade, it only makes sense to read the trade at this point. And face it, storing comics is a pain in the Ar*e anyway so trades again make more sense. And the further benefit of being able to get reviews on the trades before buying may save you a dollar on some stories that don't read well as well as let you pick up an arc that gets good reviews.

The digital downloads will offer me the opportunity to selectively read stories that do have immediacy to them should I need to .. I'm thinking along the lines of Blackest Night ... and not have to worry about my retailer having a back issue of a storyline like I do with the floppies now. If the digital was less expensive, I'd probably dip in and out of some books I would normally pick up. I've used this with some of the smaller publishers with a great deal of satisfaction.

And then there's no more driving, out of my way, to get to my retailer. I'm fairly lucky that I have 6 retailers within 50 miles of me to choose from but none of them is convenient to get to. My favorite store is an hour away and I make that trip once a month. I will miss that a lot as I like the owner and his back issue selection is great. Very much that kid in the Candy store kind of experience.

So in theory, I'm looking at moving to all trades after September which will be to in-stock trades or amazon's advantage, no longer going to an LCS, and stopping my long box growth. I also expect I'll be getting fewer titles overall. The winner's in my solution include DC (as I'm not stopping my buying, just moving it to a different format) and the online stores. The loser unfortunately is my LCS all the way around as my trade buying will not translate to his store nor will my occasional dips into the digital world.

HOWEVER, DC has plenty of time to change my mind. I've got the 13th of this month marked on my calendar to read the solicits when they hit. Could easily pull me right back in again. Hopefully they won't push me away even further. And I suspect the 'buzz' going forward will have an impact, either negative or positive. Bob & John have had a fair amount of influence on my buying of books and probably will as I have to commit to this choice one way or the other.

I will still consider dropping completely out of the DC realm (already have with Marvel and it hasn't killed me) going forward. I have tons of back material to read which I haven't read in ages or read at all. I suspect if I didn't buy a comic or trade for the next 5 years I'd still have plenty of material new to me to read. And if continuity doesn't matter, why not ?

Think I've rambled enough for the time being ... September seems like a long way off but I feel like a young kid waiting for the first day of a new school year. A mix of resignation and anticipation. And like a kid going to school, it can go either way.

I am very excited by DC's announcement. As a DC fan who went away for a while, then recently returned, I am looking forward to a clear jumping-on point for my favorite titles.

I am also very much enjoying my digital comics. I am married to a wife who, while she is a fantastic woman, can't stand the fact that I have longboxes of comics stacked in the house. I can't stand the stacks of physical paper, either. We recently moved, twice in the last year in fact, and I've come to the conclusion that I need to dispense with as many physical things as possible. With digital, no more longboxes.

With digital, I can either buy day and date, or wait until I hear people like Bob and John review a comic on their podcast or forum to decide if I will buy a particular issue. Even if DC charges $2.99 a pop for digital, I will still save money because my goal is to experience the best quality story possible. I will buy my favorites anyway, but if I hear a title I'm not getting is good, I can go download it at any time and not risking a copy going out of print. That's what I'm doing with the indies. Also, With Justice League: Generation Lost on digital, DC experimented with lowering the price of each issue to $1.99 after one month, which is the way I went most of the time...although I did grab them day and date when I heard good buzz on a particular issue. I'd like it if they did that again.

Then, there's the fact I can read these in the dark on my iPad after the family's gone to bed. I like the backlit display because I'm a stickler for having bright light illuminating my paper comics to bring out every aspect of the image. Good light is sometimes hard to come by.

The irony of all this, as I've mentioned on the Previews podcast, is that I recently went back to print for DC titles, only, because I wanted to stay more current. Well... guess what I'll be doing now. Digital just works better...for me. If I were still collecting paper, I would go with the fantastic DCB Service...and I hope those who still will collect physical copies will go with them or their local LCS. I'm sure there are plenty of collectors who plan to do just that.

By the way, Bob and John... thanks for the excellent DC "breaking news" episode last night! I haven't finished it yet, but I'm enjoying it.

BobBretall wrote:The price point for the digital comics can serve as an IQ test for the DC Marketing Dept.

If it's $2.99, they are morons.

If it's $1.99 then they are of average intelligence

If it's 99 cents, then they are geniuses.

While I like your thinking on bringing in new readers at a lower price point the question is will it work? I don’t know, but I do know that current and historical data suggests it won’t. Bringing in new readers is (or to some anyways) the key to the whole industry working or thriving in the future. How to attract new readers is a question everyone asks and seemingly no one has come up with an answer for. Is gambling on low price digital a risk worth taking to lose what you already have.

A lot of people bring up the music industry as a model for how to or not to move to digital. As someone who ran a record store for many years, and watched that industry die I have many opinions and some first-hand knowledge. Let us first look at price point, the recording industry didn’t lower its price point only the way you were able to buy things at that price point. There is a belief buy some that $0.99 is the price point for digital media because it was the price point per song that seemed to work for the recording industry. The question is was that a lowering of price or only a change of delivery method to meet the customer’s desires. Let’s break this down simply by looking at what the price of music was, and is.

I ran a music store from 1993 to 2001, in that time I saw the MSRP (Manufactures Suggested Retail Price) go from $12.99 to $16.99. The average album had 10-15 tracks with the median being around 12. 12 Tracks for $12.99-$16.99 is a per track price of $1.08-$1.42. Now let’s look at the single market in the recording industry for those same years we saw the MSRP on a single go from $2.99-$3.49 and shrink in popularity form about 10% of the market to about 4% of the market in those same years. What you will notice here is the single (which usually had two tracks and one additional remix) had a per track price of $0.99-$1.17. People didn’t however buy them because they usually didn’t want the second track or remix making it appear to have a $2.99-$3.49 per track price.

The second part of this equation is this is also the time period where the big box retails came into play in the record business. Stores like (Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Wal-Mart) who almost always sold bellow MSRP at prices around $9.99-$12.99 for full length albums. For the average consumer the price of a full length album on a per track basis was $0.83-$1.08. Music fans began pirating some of which couldn’t be controlled and still isn’t but we discovered that most people are honest and willing to pay that $0.83-$1.08 per track price, they just wanted to be able to buy on a per track basis instead of buying full albums. The price of music still hasn’t really changed, just the way in which one can buy it.

Based on this let’s look at comics, the average on an album or full story (trade paper-backs) basis is $14.99-$24.99 for 5-6 issues. If we are generous and assume 6 issues that is $2.49-$4.16 per issue. Single issues are currently $2.99-$3.99, right in line with the trade(or whole album price). Again if you assume $0.99 for a download you have to compare like for like. The current model is 6 issues in a trade for $14.99 on the low side. 6 issues with 22 pages each is 132 pages for that $14.99, if you want $0.99 downloads you would have to assume 9 pages for that $0.99. People in the comic community do not want smaller stories as they did in the music industry, if anything they want larger chunks not smaller. That is why I not only think $0.99 downloads of single issues won’t happen it isn’t even a fair argument.

Just because the music industry was the first to experience and really go through the digital revolution doesn’t mean they set that price on all digital media. Look at movies, legal digital downloads of movies are right in line with DVD prices, $11.99-16.99. What movies have over other types of digital media is the rental aspect; even digitally you see a movie rental for $0.99-$3.49. That might be the only way you see $0.99 comics digitally, where it is only viewable a single time or number of finite times, or for a finite amount of time. There is no reason as fans based on another industry to assume a price point that isn’t even a fair comparison. The music industry didn’t lower is prices and I don’t think anyone has reason to believe any other industry will either.

June's Previews Call should be REALLY fun. Hope I'm in town for it.

fudd71 wrote: There is a belief by some that $0.99 is the price point for digital media because it was the price point per song that seemed to work for the recording industry.

I made no such assumption.

I look at 99 cents completely independent from what that would roll up into as a "whole item" value. Or any kind of value, for that matter.

I look at 99 cents as an "impulse buy" price point that people will spend without having to be sold too hard.

When something is $2.99 (or $1.99) people are going to think about it a lot harder. When people start to think about a purchase of something they don't physically need (or perceive a need for) more often than not the will not consummate the purchase.

99 cents seems to be a throwaway price point that people will impulse-buy at. There are HUGE ranges in the kind of things people will get for 99 cents, from a soda to a song, to a goofy app, to a digital download that provides hours of entertainment.

The common thing is the "Oh, what the heck, it's only 99 cents!" thought process that will get your foot in the door and allow someone to make a guilt-free (thought-free?) purchase.

oooooooh. It looks like Wildstorm characters ARE going to be part of the reboot.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/01/ ... wildstorm/

Paul Nolan wrote:oooooooh. It looks like Wildstorm characters ARE going to be part of the reboot.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/01/ ... wildstorm/

Making any of the Wildstorm titles readable would be a good trick. Maybe they can get Ellis back on Authority.

BobBretall wrote:

Paul Nolan wrote:oooooooh. It looks like Wildstorm characters ARE going to be part of the reboot.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/01/ ... wildstorm/

Making any of the Wildstorm titles readable would be a good trick. Maybe they can get Ellis back on Authority.

Abnett and Lanning and Christos Gage did an exceptional job on the Worlds End stuff. (and Gage just before that on PHD).

Wildstorm have a decent library of Characters.

BobBretall wrote: I made no such assumption.

I look at 99 cents completely independent from what that would roll up into as a "whole item" value. Or any kind of value, for that matter.

I look at 99 cents as an "impulse buy" price point that people will spend without having to be sold too hard.

When something is $2.99 (or $1.99) people are going to think about it a lot harder. When people start to think about a purchase of something they don't physically need (or perceive a need for) more often than not the will not consummate the purchase.

99 cents seems to be a throwaway price point that people will impulse-buy at. There are HUGE ranges in the kind of things people will get for 99 cents, from a soda to a song, to a goofy app, to a digital download that provides hours of entertainment.

The common thing is the "Oh, what the heck, it's only 99 cents!" thought process that will get your foot in the door and allow someone to make a guilt-free (thought-free?) purchase.

Two quick points:

1-I know you live in So Cal like me; the $0.99 single serve soda is a thing of the past and has been for a while at least in this part of the country, $1.50-$2.00 especially after tax and CRV.

2-While I like the impulse buy idea, that doesn’t make a comic reader, sure you may get a bunch of people to buy one issue that way, but what you need is them to come back and buy the next and the next and so on. At the later point it is no longer an impulse buy. The key here is the habit not the impulse. The industry has been doing FCBD for quite a while now without much proof that it brings in new regular readers. Maybe $0.99 first issues is worth a try, but setting a price below what the market will bear for no appreciable reward is just bad business. The Comic companies are not charities.

fudd71 wrote: 2-While I like the impulse buy idea, that doesn’t make a comic reader, sure you may get a bunch of people to buy one issue that way, but what you need is them to come back and buy the next and the next and so on. At the later point it is no longer an impulse buy. The key here is the habit not the impulse. The industry has been doing FCBD for quite a while now without much proof that it brings in new regular readers. Maybe $0.99 first issues is worth a try, but setting a price below what the market will bear for no appreciable reward is just bad business. The Comic companies are not charities.

FCBD is not an apt comparison, since people have to
a) Hear about it
b) physically go to a shop

The people who seem to go (besides regular customers) are mostly people who like scrounging for feeebies. These are not good potential customers to spend $2.99 - $3.99 per book on an ongoing basis. Get them in for FCBD & they may buy digital ongoing for 99 cents per.

Impulse buy will get someone to try, but not stick around, I know. But $2.99 is too much for totally disposable entertainment (you get no physical item with a digital comic).

You mention "what the market will bear". That is what the COMIC SHOP market will bear, for people who buy physical comics, not what the digital market will bear, if you want to cultivate a mass audience.

I know Comic companies are not charities, but 99 cents is plenty to make per unit if you're selling WAY more than the 20k you can move via comics shops.

Plus, print comics can still help recoup production cost from the paper-addicted niche-market. This makes digital more of the on-going gravy.

fudd71 wrote: 1-I know you live in So Cal like me; the $0.99 single serve soda is a thing of the past and has been for a while at least in this part of the country, $1.50-$2.00 especially after tax and CRV.

I guess the last time I bought them they were 99 cents

See, they raised the price and I stopped getting them

BobBretall wrote: FCBD is not an apt comparison, since people have to
a) Hear about it
b) physically go to a shop

The people who seem to go (besides regular customers) are mostly people who like scrounging for feeebies. These are not good potential customers to spend $2.99 - $3.99 per book on an ongoing basis. Get them in for FCBD & they may buy digital ongoing for 99 cents per.

Impulse buy will get someone to try, but not stick around, I know. But $2.99 is too much for totally disposable entertainment (you get no physical item with a digital comic).

You mention "what the market will bear". That is what the COMIC SHOP market will bear, for people who buy physical comics, not what the digital market will bear, if you want to cultivate a mass audience.

I know Comic companies are not charities, but 99 cents is plenty to make per unit if you're selling WAY more than the 20k you can move via comics shops.

Plus, print comics can still help recoup production cost from the paper-addicted niche-market. This makes digital more of the on-going gravy.

I hope you are right Bob. As someone who doesn’t like digital comics and has no plan on buying them I don’t really have a dog in this hunt. As a number guy and businessman if I’m sitting at that meeting discussing price point you need a lot better argument, to get me to pick the lower price point. We will wait and see what they decide. The fact that the holding the line at $2.99 thing can’t even stop existing customers from dropping books they were buying last month, it becomes a harder sell too.

I remember last month you were quoting an article about the difference between the way things are and the way you wish they were, this might be one of those situations. The other thing to think about is you already have a niche market and fan base. There are a percentage of those people who don’t want digital; they also don’t want to feel ripped off. Think of this, if you leave print prices alone and go with $0.99 digital versions, what happens to the people that don’t want digital. Some of them may stop buying print based solely on the fact that it would have a 300% price penalty for not wanting digital. They might just stop buying comics altogether.

It is a gamble either way, but if you go $0.99 and are wrong you could be in a worse place, possibly out of business. If you go $1.99, $2.49, or $2.99 and are wrong you are pretty much in the same place you were before.

If you gamble $0.99 and are right you improve sales and prosper. If you go with the higher price point and are right you also improve sales and proper, sure you might have prospered more but there is little chance to lose.

With the economy we are in I just find it hard to believe you can convince a corporate accounting department to take the gamble on lower price points with many more ways to lose then win.

A little late to the party, myself, but here are some of my thoughts on it.....

1) RELAUNCH. Sure it sounds like a big deal -- 52 new #1's, total relaunch, new characters made relevant for a new age -- but at the end of the day, the same people will be creating comics with pretty much the same characters. I really doubt it's going to make that much of a difference in the quality of the comics DC will be putting out. The "relaunch" isn't going to all of a sudden make mediocre writers/artists better writers/artists. And there aren't 52 talented writers and artists out there to begin with. So there will be plenty of mediocre comics coming out of this relaunch. So I'm predicting, the more things change, the more they'll stay the same.

2) THE "REAL" UNIVERSE. This has been done before on a much smaller scale. Not Marvel's Ultimate line - because when that was launched, there was still the "real" 616 universe. The better comparison is the 90's Heroes Reborn launch of 4 comics (FF, Avengers, Cap, Iron Man) made "relevant" for a new age. Utter failure. Why? Crappy stories and/or crappy art. But while it was being put out, it was the "real" version of those characters. IIRC, in retrospect/retcon, we were told that the plan all along was to only run those titles for the year they ran and then return to the "real" real titles (i.e. the previous versions). Don't doubt for a minute, though, that if those comics had succeeded, they would have continued as the "real" versions. Now reverse that here. Yes, 52 relaunches. 52 "real" titles for Batman, Superman, JL, etc. If they do well? Those are the "real" versions. If they suck and tank after a year? Professor Zoom runs a little faster and reverse-Flashpoint turns back the clock a year. Status quo. The failure of this relaunch won't destroy DC, any more than the failure of 4 of their core titles destroyed Marvel in the 90s. It will just bring things back to where they were. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

3) DIGITAL COMICS. This seems to me to be the biggest part of the announcement. DC taking the full plunge to digital day and date releases (so why DON'T they just call it "same date" releases??). Because by making the digital comics come out on the same date as the "real" floppies, they are giving them equivalent status. Which is the "real" version of JL #1 - the floppy or the digital version? They're equivalent, with neither inferior or superior to the other. That's what DC is saying - and that's a big statement, I think. As for pricing? I dunno. Personally, I hate reading comics on my computer. Perhaps if I had $800+ in disposable income to buy me an iPad, I'd like it more. I'm sure I'll own one eventually as the prices come down and I feel I "need" to own one. But it certainly seems to be the direction our society is heading, so it makes sense to gear your product to it. Seems to me if they want the digital comic to be the "real" comic eventually, lowering the price is the way to go to bring in the readers. I buy my new comics for $1.79 (or $2.39 for $3.99 books) apiece through DCBS. Even if I liked reading digital comics, I wouldn't like paying more for them than I'm paying for floppies now. So 0.99 seems like the way to go - even if its a loss leader to begin with. OTOH, the idea of a release day price of $2.99, followed by a reduction down the line makes sense, too. You don't lose the full $2.99 price that your most rabid fans are willing to pay, but you also lure in the new readers (who perhaps care much less about getting their comics on New Comic Book Day Weds, than your old time readers). Also, even with the old time readers, many will be willing to wait and buy a cheaper version (and 0.99 seems to be what I think they'll do if they're smart for at least the first few years), because the comics industry has been training its readers to wait for delayed versions of their products for years now. How? In the shift to collected editions - HCs/TPBs. A significant section (how much? I don't really know?) of the fan base is ALREADY buying their comics months after they come out on New Comic Book Day. So they may be more likely to wait a few weeks or months to buy digital comics cheaper. Otherwise, fans might also buy their favorite titles for the full $2.99 on release day, and try out new titles a few months later for the cheaper price. So I really think you need that cheaper price there. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, by making the release date version $2.99, you're not screwing your LCS retailers by undercutting them.

4) JIM LEE'S COSTUME REDESIGNS. Didn't he redesign Wonder Woman's costume, which failed utterly? Not looking forward to more!

5) DC HISTORY. So does this mean the 10 issue recent DCU Legacy miniseries which gave us a comprehensive history of the DC universe is wiped out? yeeesh! This is the part of the whole relaunch I find the most unpalatable. I hated it back when Crisis came out in 1985, and I hate it now. There's no need to reboot your universe. Marvel's been doing just fine for 50 years w/o a reboot. You have parts of the universe you don't like or you think are too bulky or just plain stupid. What do you do? Do you need to legislate them out of existence with an official proclamation/Crisis/relaunch? Or course not. Just ignore it. Deemphasize it. Explain it away (my favorite recent "explanation away" was in Bucky's origin - the whole "Bucky catches Steve changing so Cap makes him his partner" was explained away as the propaganda story for the newsreels, with the truth being that Bucky was a highly trained soldier specifically trained to work w/Cap and do the dirtier work that the iconic hero couldn't be seen doing). If youdon't like it, don't write about it. It's gone. Frank miller didn't need to reboot DD to make it work in the 80's. He just wrote great stories using the elements of the DD history that he liked. If you don't like Damian or Jason Todd or whomever, then send them to boarding school and stop talking about them. No need to wipe them out. Every time DC does this, they weaken the fabric of their universe. They mess with their history and say things don't count, and who knows what won't count next. It's a mistake. You don't need to rewrite your characters' histories to make them "more relevant" - you need to write more relevant stories. Similarly, aside from the bump you get w/a #1, it's so common these days that it's not much and doesn't last long. So why weaken the fabric of your universe w/repeated #1s? Especially when you can point to a proud lineage dating back to Action #1 and Detective #27. That's why it's a mistake to renumber your big titles (or any, for that matter) for the quick fix.

That's my initial take on it all.

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fudd71 wrote: I hope you are right Bob. As someone who doesn’t like digital comics and has no plan on buying them I don’t really have a dog in this hunt. As a number guy and businessman if I’m sitting at that meeting discussing price point you need a lot better argument, to get me to pick the lower price point. We will wait and see what they decide. The fact that the holding the line at $2.99 thing can’t even stop existing customers from dropping books they were buying last month, it becomes a harder sell too.

I remember last month you were quoting an article about the difference between the way things are and the way you wish they were, this might be one of those situations.

I have ZERO desire to buy digital comics so this is definitely not a case of the way I wish things would be.

This is just the way I think they NEED to be to increase sales and capture new market share.

It's the businessmen sitting at the table doggedly sticking to the untenable $2.99 price point (for digital) that are going to ride the comics business into the ground like Slim Pickins on that bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove......

It's not my job to make a business case to the comics execs. All I'm doing is observing the tendency of people to not spend non-trivial amounts of money on stuff they do not REALLY REALLY want.

Like it or not, comics are not things most people REALLY REALLY want.

They can keep catering to an ever-shrinking niche market with high prices because that audience is already hooked (but, as you observed, people leave every month, so it's shrinking) or try something to win over a new market.

Maybe there are other ways to get a lot of new people to buy digital comics besides attractive pricing, I don't know what they are. We'll see.

fudd71 wrote: There are a percentage of those people who don’t want digital; they also don’t want to feel ripped off. Think of this, if you leave print prices alone and go with $0.99 digital versions, what happens to the people that don’t want digital. Some of them may stop buying print based solely on the fact that it would have a 300% price penalty for not wanting digital. They might just stop buying comics altogether.

Following this logic people should feel they are paying a 167% price penalty because they choose not to shop at DCBS. They should feel betrayed and stop buying comics because they choose not to purchase them via mail-order.

fudd71 wrote: It is a gamble either way, but if you go $0.99 and are wrong you could be in a worse place, possibly out of business. If you go $1.99, $2.49, or $2.99 and are wrong you are pretty much in the same place you were before.

If you gamble $0.99 and are right you improve sales and prosper. If you go with the higher price point and are right you also improve sales and proper, sure you might have prospered more but there is little chance to lose.

With the economy we are in I just find it hard to believe you can convince a corporate accounting department to take the gamble on lower price points with many more ways to lose then win.

This is another thing I just don't understand. There is all this Chicken Little talk of the immediate demise of the comics shops if digital comics are 99 cents. Where does this come from?

Print & digital are 2 different things. Ultimately they cater to fundamentally different demographics. It's just that right now we are FORCING the people who want digital to buy print because there is not a decent digital model.

The comic shops (as we know them today) are on a track to be out of business in 5-10 years anyway if something is not done to turn the market around. Add to this that I personally think that comics shops are doing more to impede the growth of the comics medium than any other single thing (though they have been forced to this by the non-returnable direct market model), pulling them out of the middle of at least part of the equation (the digital frontier) will remove their "gatekeeper of what comics the readers are allowed to see" status.

Also, print comics are NOT going away. If 50% of the customers flee to digital, cancel the books that don't sell well enough to sustain themselves, keep the ones where print covers the production cost, and then digital is where the profits roll in.

PLUS, you sell a print comic ONCE. Reorders are problematic to the point of non-existence unless you print & ship more. Those comics are on the rack for customers to see/buy for a month AT MOST.

Digital comics are around for as long as you want them to be around. Customers can do an easy search to find what they want, and then buy it immediately. They can hyper-link to each other, etc.

Grow the initial market and you open up a long tail of follow-on sales potential.....

AND all this from someone (me) with ZERO desire to buy/read digital comics.