Comments on: DC Promos Countdown on MySpace

By: Johanna

Johanna — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:23:19 +0000

Jim, I think we may be talking about two different things. By shelf life, I meant “by which point have you sold XX% of your total sales?” If a retailer determines that she needs 90% sell-through, for instance, over the lifespan of the book, then with a weekly series, she may aim to get 80% within the first week. (Just making numbers up to show what I’m getting at.) There may be additional sales, but I’m looking more at where the peak and majority occur.

I haven’t heard many comments about people jumping into the series later on. That’s an interesting comparison from your shop.

By: Jim Perreault

Jim Perreault — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 12:28:50 +0000

Johanna wrote:

A weekly series’ shelf life isn’t very long to start, so that should be plenty of time to catch most customers.

I find that comment interesting, because it differs from what I’ve heard from my comic book shop.

They have had customers start reading 52 half way through it, picking up the entire run at that point. They were able to do so because DC kept the series in print.

Myself, I dropped 52 after a couple of issues. Partly because I was not interested, and partly because I was doing a lot of traveling last summer and did not want back issues to pile up.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:50:14 +0000

I have faith that Dini can deliver good stories. That’s enough to bring me in for countdown in the short term. Long term, I’m a little iffy. There is at least one writer on board that I’m not particularly fond of so we’ll have to see if maybe he’ll be better under a seasoned hand like Dini.

As for the concept I’l compare and contrast a tiny bit. 52 was designed to show the missing year of the DCU through the eyes of background and/or new characters. Countdown does the exact same thing only it’s not a year behind. I worry that the reason 52 was able to get out on time every single week (so far) is because it wasn’t relying on other books for continuity the way Civil War was. Captain America and Amazing Spider-Man were horribly late and it was due to no fault of the creators on those books. It all fell on the CW mini. I fear the opposite may happen with Countdown. If Dini can keep the weekly schedule who is to say (for example) something major that happens to jimmy olson in Countdown but because the issue of Superman that is supposed to run concurrent with this is late, Countdown ships late as well. I’ll take my typical “wait and see” approach to Countdown. All I know is SOMEBODY better take the Montoya ball and run with it. She’s a superstar waiting to happen.

By: Shawn Hill

Shawn Hill — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:54:29 +0000

I’m not sure if I’ve got the patience for another weekly series. Especially when the concept isn’t really clear to me, as 52’s was. I did get happily hooked by that series by the end, though I didn’t buy every issue. I don’t think Countdown is really as similar as they hope.