Afterwards, not so much. The title started to coast. Mini-stories that were pretty to look at and not horrible to read, but nothing of substance. The “threat” of a created-out-of-thin-air cosmic villain never gelled.

Then Perez left and the coasting slammed to a jerky halt. I read the grand finale to the Megistus Crisis (YAWN). I barely made it thru the inane drivel of issue. B&B is off my list.

[...] the last of my picks for the week is Brave and the Bold #13.  While online talk of the book recently have been about it’s sales, I’m not going to go into that [...]

I still think it is a good book, but am not surprised to hear that it is not doing well.

Jim

And yeah, the Flash situation was very disappointing, especially with an artist so ill-suited to sequential storytelling.

I can be kinda snobby at times regarding comics, but that being said, I don’t know that I agree with any comment that implies people are stupid for not reading a given title. I don’t necessarily think B&B is appealing *only* to intelligent readers, or that people reading, say “Booster Gold” or “Blue Beetle” in lieu of B&B aren’t intelligent.

I honestly think Waid just isn’t as popular as he once was and therefore isn’t driving sales like he once did. The bait and switch DC did with him on “The Flash” didn’t really set the sales charts on fire, so why would there be an expectation for B&B to do the same?

DCU books aren’t really selling at spectacular levels – I think the highest seller has been JLA with 70K copies a month – and I think that’s the reason for B&B’s low sales.

I don’t think there are many people on this island with me, but I’ve long felt the superhero reading audience is shrinking and manga is the new mainstream. As a result, I don’t think a book with an old school feel is going to sell well.

And you’re right, that characters still matter a lot more than creators or content when it comes to superhero books.

Given the solicits, future issues appear to be done-in-one’s. This would address one of the concerns. Waid has said in interviews that he specifically chose Batman & Green Lantern & Supergirl as the main characters of his first few issues based on how well their respective comics were selling at the time he was writing the stories. As the series has progressed he’s chosen less popular characters and the sales have reflected this. B&B 7 had Wonder Woman & Power Girl on the cover and sold about the same as the issue of Wonder Woman that came out that month.

This makes me come to the somewhat obvious conclusion that much of the sales are determined by who is on the cover. If Waid wanted to correct this, he could write more stories w/ Batman. But why should he? He already has another job that surely pays better and he’d rather tell the stories that he wants to tell.

What I find really fascinating from the sales figures is how well Superman/Batman is performing. I’ve never read a single word of praise for this comic and all the scans I’ve seen look atrocious. You can see why DC execs would be dismissive towards blogosphere cognescenti when a title like that is one of their better performing comics.

I think they put the books out first as hardcovers because Marvel does. Marvel, for the past several years, has put out hardcover collections on much of their stuff before they put out the softcover. Marvel proved the market would support hardcovers, and DC followed. That only makes business sense, even though not all customers would be happy with the decision.

Last I looked it was Batman (Waid’s Batman is usually odd), a Green Lantern I dont care for, a LSH I lost interest in and a Supergirl I find just a bit icky.

Ray, I haven’t seen the trade yet, but those kinds of extras sound great… and may drive waiting for the book. And I agree with your methods — I do the same thing these days, preferring to read larger chunks.

Michael, I don’t know what determines those format decisions these days. Although my default answer, “money”, may apply. :) Plus, hardcovers survive shipping better and can be priced higher.

I agree with thekamisama that Brave & Bold is at an inherent disadvantage when there’s so many “event” comics going on around it at the same time.

With a new Brave & The Bold cartoon coming to the Cartoon Network, I imagine that DC will publish an accompanying animated-style comic. Sadly, it will probably sell as poorly as all of DC’s other animated-style tie-in comics.

All I know is that the first B&B book was really a lot of fun, and I placed my pre-order for the second one yesterday. Waid and Perez are creating absolutely perfect superhero comics. I’m fine with Perez’s style (in fact, I’m a big fan!), and Waid’s spinning great stories from the recesses of DC’s continuity. He’s doing it the right way; instead of resenting the author for forcing me to know all sorts of DC trivia, he’s making me interesting in Space Taxi and the like.

I think that the extra material in the trades also helps a lot. The trade for B&B had “director’s commentary” at the end, which made it a lot more rewarding.