Showing posts with label H'el on Earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H'el on Earth. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Issue Review: Supergirl 25
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
New Comic-book Night - 4/17
It's Wednesday, and that means it's New Comic-book Night. Once again, one of the comics that normally comes out this week (JLA) did not (I'm not clear on why that is), and Katana is still delayed (it's coming out next week apparently). But two of the three titles that I actually have on my comic-shop's pull list did come out today: Supergirl 19 and Justice League 19. I picked them up late this afternoon, and I've already read both.
These two latest installments have been a definite improvement over the recent issues of these titles.
Supergirl 19 - The Supergirl series has been in the absolute toilet since #13, first with the cringe-worthy H'el on Earth crossover into the other S-family books (#14-17), and then with the highly questionable "aftermath" issue, written in obvious haste (and without any coherence) by a fill-in writer. It's truly a shame that Mike Johnson is leaving Supergirl after this issue, and that he wasn't allowed to write the stories he wanted to for the last half-year. This issue is the best since #13, and shows just how good this book could have been if it hadn't been for the H'el crossover. It's a shame after starting up this new story-line that Mike will not finish it. Also, the way the book ends, leaves no doubt in my mind that Mike was basically forced off the book. If he was leaving voluntarily, surely he would have planned an "ending" to wrap things up instead of starting a new story arc and then leaving one issue into it. That said, Supergirl 19 is well worth a read. This series, despite being about Supergirl, was hovering on the brink of being yanked from my pull list (an event that should be unthinkable -- heck it should violate the laws of nature). That's how bad it had gotten. Issue 19 redeemed it (and convinced me that all the "bad" in the last few issues happened because people other than Mike Johnson were calling the shots). I'll be around for a few more months at least, to see what the new writer does with it.
Justice League 19 - JL has had its ups and downs. The first story arc was incredibly strong for five issues and then fizzled at the end (with a very disappointing treatment of Darkseid). This then started to become a pattern, with each story arc building up well and then coming to an abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion without a real climax. The most recent of these was the Throne of Atlantis crossover with Aquaman. Then we were treated to an issue 18 story that was all over the place, and honestly between that and Throne, I was starting to question Geoff Johns' writing (which had, up until JL #14, been quite strong with the exception of those pesky climaxes). Issue 19 redeemed Johns as well here. He did a good job with the story. This issue is probably a lead-in to yet another crossover (Trinity War), which is set to consume the Justice League family of titles this summer. I can only sigh. Enough with the crossovers. This one seems like it may be interesting at least (much more so than Throne). However, Johns needs to work on his conclusions/climaxes or this is going to be just one more disappointment.
Overall, I was fairly happy with both books. Although neither is a 10 out of 10, we've at least been able to move up out of the 6s and 7s (or worse) that these titles have been hovering in over the last few months.
These two latest installments have been a definite improvement over the recent issues of these titles.
Supergirl 19 - The Supergirl series has been in the absolute toilet since #13, first with the cringe-worthy H'el on Earth crossover into the other S-family books (#14-17), and then with the highly questionable "aftermath" issue, written in obvious haste (and without any coherence) by a fill-in writer. It's truly a shame that Mike Johnson is leaving Supergirl after this issue, and that he wasn't allowed to write the stories he wanted to for the last half-year. This issue is the best since #13, and shows just how good this book could have been if it hadn't been for the H'el crossover. It's a shame after starting up this new story-line that Mike will not finish it. Also, the way the book ends, leaves no doubt in my mind that Mike was basically forced off the book. If he was leaving voluntarily, surely he would have planned an "ending" to wrap things up instead of starting a new story arc and then leaving one issue into it. That said, Supergirl 19 is well worth a read. This series, despite being about Supergirl, was hovering on the brink of being yanked from my pull list (an event that should be unthinkable -- heck it should violate the laws of nature). That's how bad it had gotten. Issue 19 redeemed it (and convinced me that all the "bad" in the last few issues happened because people other than Mike Johnson were calling the shots). I'll be around for a few more months at least, to see what the new writer does with it.
Justice League 19 - JL has had its ups and downs. The first story arc was incredibly strong for five issues and then fizzled at the end (with a very disappointing treatment of Darkseid). This then started to become a pattern, with each story arc building up well and then coming to an abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion without a real climax. The most recent of these was the Throne of Atlantis crossover with Aquaman. Then we were treated to an issue 18 story that was all over the place, and honestly between that and Throne, I was starting to question Geoff Johns' writing (which had, up until JL #14, been quite strong with the exception of those pesky climaxes). Issue 19 redeemed Johns as well here. He did a good job with the story. This issue is probably a lead-in to yet another crossover (Trinity War), which is set to consume the Justice League family of titles this summer. I can only sigh. Enough with the crossovers. This one seems like it may be interesting at least (much more so than Throne). However, Johns needs to work on his conclusions/climaxes or this is going to be just one more disappointment.
Overall, I was fairly happy with both books. Although neither is a 10 out of 10, we've at least been able to move up out of the 6s and 7s (or worse) that these titles have been hovering in over the last few months.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Why I blame editors for bad decisions, rather than writers
Many times, comic-book stories go in directions that simply leave this reader scratching his head -- not because I do not understand what is happening on the page, but because I don't understand why anyone (sane) would write the story this way. For example, why would +DC Comics give Batman a new Robin, Bruce Wayne's son, only to kill him off in under two years? Why would DC reboot their universe to the point where they are re-telling Superman's origin, and the Justice League's origin, but not reboot Batman and Green Lantern? Why, after killing Jean Grey off, leaving her dead for years, and then bringing her back to life because they realized they needed the character around, would +Marvel Entertainment kill her off again? And why would the creators make a story-line that is a mega-tie in, crossing over an entire family of books, and then give it a plot that goes nowhere until the very final issue of the crossover sequence, in which the plot is abruptly and illogically resolved in a couple of pages? (I'm looking right at you, "H'el on Earth.")
All these, and many more, examples of head-scratching plotting decisions -- these story directions that make no sense to any reasonable person -- are written out by the writer of the comic. Traditionally, when head-scratchers like this are printed, the writer is blamed. After all, it was his plot, and his dialogue, that produced the poorly-thought-out plot element. There have, of course, always been editors, and we have always known that any plot point must be approved by the editor, so the editor was to blame as well. But traditionally, the editor was more of an "accomplice," with the writer being the actual perpetrator. Editors could, sometimes, alter the outcome of a story, but they rarely were directly involved in the plotting.
A great example of how it used to work comes from the first death of Jean Grey/Phoenix in Uncanny X-men #137. As originally plotted, writer Chris Claremont and artist (and co-plotter) John Byrne had scripted Jean's loss of her powers at the end of X-men #137. This story made it all the way to then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's desk, and had already been penciled, inked, and perhaps even colored by that point. However, Shooter, reading the story, decided that losing her powers was not sufficient punishment for Jean, who had, as "Dark" Phoenix, destroyed an entire world, killing hundreds of millions of innocent sentient beings. Shooter requested that the story be re-written so that Jean died for her crimes; it was the only fitting punishment.
This anecdote shows how influential an editor can be on the final product. However, it also shows how "hands off" most editors were at the time. Claremont and Byrne were allowed to tell the story they wanted, and they only got interference when there was disagreement over a large, important issue. Here again, the editors assisted with the story and had to agree to what was written and drawn, but generally, creative teams were given a free hand unless something peculiar happened.
If the M.O. I described for the Jean Grey story were still in effect, then I would lay the blame for all the idiotic plot and story decisions at the feet of writers and artists. However, at least in DC, it apears the writers and artists no longer control their stories. Indeed, it seems as if the plotting role has been turned completely over to editors, and the writer has been demoted to a "scripter" (writer of dialogue, not planner of plots). DC's editors are exerting more and more control, and the writers are starting to find their style so cramped that they are beginning to jump ship.
Probably the most significant recent example of this writer/editor conflict, and a perfect illustration of the iron control editors seem to have over plotlines, was the resignation of writer Joshua Hale Fialkov from DC's Green Lantern series. Original reports were that Fialkov resigned from the book over vague "creative differences" with the editorial team. However, recently confirmed reports now indicate that Josh resigned because the editors wanted him to kill off Green Lantern John Stewart, one of the most famous African American superheroes in comics lore, and Fialkov refused to write such a story. According to CBR, Fialkov seems to have had two main reasons for quitting the book. First, he didn't agree that Stewart should be killed off. And second, he didn't want the comic fans to blame him for killing off one of their favorite characters, and one of the only prominent minority characters in DC.
Leaving aside the utter stupidity of the "kill of John Stewart" idea in the first place, this incident clearly demonstrates that the editors are exerting far too much control over the plotlines in DC's comics. The editor should be there to assist, guide, and help the creative team tell the best story, but the editor should not be coming up with large plot elements all on his or her own. Editors should not be handing down plots and telling writers to script those stories. They should be letting the creative teams do their work, and stick to editing.
The evidence that the iron-clad editorial control is a disaster is all around them at DC. Book after book is being canceled. Writers and artists are coming and going from books like they're playing musical chairs. Other than one or two signature titles, hardly any series from DC has been able to really hold onto an audience -- most series are bleeding readers month by month. All these things are happening because DC's editors are trying to be plotters, and that is not their role. It's not what they are good at. It's not where their talent lies. Rather, the people with the talent for good storytelling are the writers and artists. The stories were clearly better when writers had a free hand. And in the few cases at DC where you can tell the writer does have a freer hand than most (such as the first year of Batgirl by Gail Simone, or Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello), the stories and plots were clearly far superior to those books where the editors were micro-managing and interfering.
I've suspected since getting back to reading comics this past winter that the editors were strongly controlling everything in comics, but I had no direct evidence. Now I have proof, and now I can lay the blame for fiascoes like H'el on Earth squarely on the shoulders of the editors. It's not longer just enough to ask, "Why did the editor let the writer do this?" because writers are not the ones making the plots. The editors are not letting the writers produce these dumb plot elements -- they are making them produce these elements.
+DC Comics, if you ever read this blog (I know you won't; you don't care about fan feedback unless it's a +1 or a +like), take some advice. Go back to the days when you let the writers write, and the artists draw, and stop putting these people under the thumbs of the editors.
All these, and many more, examples of head-scratching plotting decisions -- these story directions that make no sense to any reasonable person -- are written out by the writer of the comic. Traditionally, when head-scratchers like this are printed, the writer is blamed. After all, it was his plot, and his dialogue, that produced the poorly-thought-out plot element. There have, of course, always been editors, and we have always known that any plot point must be approved by the editor, so the editor was to blame as well. But traditionally, the editor was more of an "accomplice," with the writer being the actual perpetrator. Editors could, sometimes, alter the outcome of a story, but they rarely were directly involved in the plotting.
A great example of how it used to work comes from the first death of Jean Grey/Phoenix in Uncanny X-men #137. As originally plotted, writer Chris Claremont and artist (and co-plotter) John Byrne had scripted Jean's loss of her powers at the end of X-men #137. This story made it all the way to then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's desk, and had already been penciled, inked, and perhaps even colored by that point. However, Shooter, reading the story, decided that losing her powers was not sufficient punishment for Jean, who had, as "Dark" Phoenix, destroyed an entire world, killing hundreds of millions of innocent sentient beings. Shooter requested that the story be re-written so that Jean died for her crimes; it was the only fitting punishment.
This anecdote shows how influential an editor can be on the final product. However, it also shows how "hands off" most editors were at the time. Claremont and Byrne were allowed to tell the story they wanted, and they only got interference when there was disagreement over a large, important issue. Here again, the editors assisted with the story and had to agree to what was written and drawn, but generally, creative teams were given a free hand unless something peculiar happened.
If the M.O. I described for the Jean Grey story were still in effect, then I would lay the blame for all the idiotic plot and story decisions at the feet of writers and artists. However, at least in DC, it apears the writers and artists no longer control their stories. Indeed, it seems as if the plotting role has been turned completely over to editors, and the writer has been demoted to a "scripter" (writer of dialogue, not planner of plots). DC's editors are exerting more and more control, and the writers are starting to find their style so cramped that they are beginning to jump ship.
Probably the most significant recent example of this writer/editor conflict, and a perfect illustration of the iron control editors seem to have over plotlines, was the resignation of writer Joshua Hale Fialkov from DC's Green Lantern series. Original reports were that Fialkov resigned from the book over vague "creative differences" with the editorial team. However, recently confirmed reports now indicate that Josh resigned because the editors wanted him to kill off Green Lantern John Stewart, one of the most famous African American superheroes in comics lore, and Fialkov refused to write such a story. According to CBR, Fialkov seems to have had two main reasons for quitting the book. First, he didn't agree that Stewart should be killed off. And second, he didn't want the comic fans to blame him for killing off one of their favorite characters, and one of the only prominent minority characters in DC.
Leaving aside the utter stupidity of the "kill of John Stewart" idea in the first place, this incident clearly demonstrates that the editors are exerting far too much control over the plotlines in DC's comics. The editor should be there to assist, guide, and help the creative team tell the best story, but the editor should not be coming up with large plot elements all on his or her own. Editors should not be handing down plots and telling writers to script those stories. They should be letting the creative teams do their work, and stick to editing.
The evidence that the iron-clad editorial control is a disaster is all around them at DC. Book after book is being canceled. Writers and artists are coming and going from books like they're playing musical chairs. Other than one or two signature titles, hardly any series from DC has been able to really hold onto an audience -- most series are bleeding readers month by month. All these things are happening because DC's editors are trying to be plotters, and that is not their role. It's not what they are good at. It's not where their talent lies. Rather, the people with the talent for good storytelling are the writers and artists. The stories were clearly better when writers had a free hand. And in the few cases at DC where you can tell the writer does have a freer hand than most (such as the first year of Batgirl by Gail Simone, or Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello), the stories and plots were clearly far superior to those books where the editors were micro-managing and interfering.
I've suspected since getting back to reading comics this past winter that the editors were strongly controlling everything in comics, but I had no direct evidence. Now I have proof, and now I can lay the blame for fiascoes like H'el on Earth squarely on the shoulders of the editors. It's not longer just enough to ask, "Why did the editor let the writer do this?" because writers are not the ones making the plots. The editors are not letting the writers produce these dumb plot elements -- they are making them produce these elements.
+DC Comics, if you ever read this blog (I know you won't; you don't care about fan feedback unless it's a +1 or a +like), take some advice. Go back to the days when you let the writers write, and the artists draw, and stop putting these people under the thumbs of the editors.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
The flawed logic of the multi-title mega-crossover
One reason I quit reading comics in 1999 (and something I still despise today having gotten back to the hobby) is DC's and Marvel's tired, old, failed marketing strategy that I call the "Multi-Title Mega-Crossover", or MTMC for short. So what exactly is are MTMCs and why do I hate them so?
A Multi-Title Mega-Crossover (MTMC) is a story-arc in which the various parts of the story are told in more than one series (hence "Multi-title") and have many parts. A recent example is the "Death of the Family" crossover spanning all the "Batman Family" books. This story-line hop-scotched across the Bat-titles, starting (sort of) in Batgirl 13, then moving to Catwoman 13, Batman and Robin 13, Suicide Squad 14, Batman 14, Batgirl 14, Detective Comics 15, Batgirl 15, Batman 15, Batman and Robin 15... and so on until issue 17 of these titles. It's so convoluted, the Superheroes List website has a whole article explaining the order in which to read these books. In all, there were 26 issues to read, spanning 10 different titles over 5 months. The only word I can find for such a story-line is "mess." (Hmm... I seem to use that word frequently in reference to decisions made by the front office of DC Comics.)
Reason #1: Fragmentary story-telling. No matter how good the writers or how good the overall plot of the crossover, the fact that a story crosses into several books with completely different creative teams gives the story a kind of 'multiple personality disorder.' Imagine you read a novel where every chapter was written by a different author. That is exactly what the MTMC is like. This leads to fragmentary stories that do not flow properly from issue to issue. Thus, every single MTMC that I've ever read has been vastly inferior to good story arcs produced within a single series.
Reason #2: I don't like being played. I don't like having my hand forced. I sample titles regularly on my own. I do not need Marvel or DC telling me what comics to try each month. The MTMC is blatant money-grubbing of the worst sort.
Reason #3: It utterly screws up the series that participate. Most (good) series have a long, interesting thread of continuity running through them. The MTMC usually has nothing to do with that thread. That means the MTMC is going to interrupt, often for 3-4 months, a long-running story that has captured my interest. Thus the MTMC forces each participant series to 'break stride' and then resume the longer storyline months later.
Reason #4: Inferior quality of stories. The MTMC issues of a series are never as good as the book's main storyline. Even the most talented writers struggle to make the MTMC fit into the general continuity of the book, and in many cases this simply cannot be done.
Another reason for the MTMC is that most families or groups of books have a "lead" book -- the headliner book for the family -- which is the most popular. Then there will be a bunch of "follower" books with a narrower readership. Again using our example, the "lead" book would be Batman, and the "follower" books would be the ones about the "second tier" Bat-characters (like Catwoman, Nightwing, and Batgirl). Lead books usually have more readers for historical reasons. For instance, Batman is one of the oldest heroes in all of comics, whereas Catwoman is one of his supporting characters. The MTMC's purpose, then, is to try to force people who read the "lead" book, but usually ignore the second tier characters, to sample the the follower books. DC of course hopes that some of these will stick with the follower series for the long term, but even if not, the follower books get a sales boost for a few months.
Finally, the companies hype MTMCs to Kingdom Come, with the apparent belief that crossovers win comic-book series entirely new fans (who hadn't been reading those books before). According to DC's logic, MTMCs will expand readership simply because "crossovers are cool."
The question we will ask and answer in this article is: does the MTMC really accomplish anything in terms of sales? Do MTMCs encourage readers of each book to cross "party lines" and read the other books? Do MTMCs cause readers of the "lead" book to pick up the follower books? And perhaps most importantly, are crossovers really "cool"? That is, do MTMCs boost readership in general for the series involved in the crossover by getting new people to read those books?
Although Superman technically appears in Action Comics, we will not count that as part of the family because it was not involved in the crossover. Thus, for our purposes, the members of this "Family" are Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy. Beginning with a "prelude" issue in Superman 13, the story arc spans 13 regular issues of the three series (plus at least one Annual), occurring in each issue 14, 15, 16, and 17 of the three series. This is a Multi-title Mega-Crossover in the most typical sense -- insanely long (13 parts, hence "mega" crossover), and hop-scotching across multiple titles (three, in this case).
The question we shall ask, now that this MTMC is nearly done, is did it "work?" Did it boost sales? Did it cause readers of the "leader" book (Superman in this case) to partake of the follower books, or vice versa? Did it attract new readers to the Super-family? To find out, let's take a look at the sales of the Superman family of books since the New 52 began (data come from Comichron).
Let's review these numbers a bit more closely.
Immediately apparent, is the fact that the Superman Family is in a tail-spin. Admittedly, the issue #1 circulation is an outlier, but even if one disregards the issue 1-2 decline in readership, Superman has lost roughly 47% of its readership since issue 3. Both Supergirl and Superboy have fared similarly, each experiencing about a 33% decline in circulation since issue 3.
This pattern had been going on for about a year before the H'el crossover, so we can imagine rather safely that the crossover is a ploy to boost sales.
This leads us to the question: Did the "H'el on Earth" crossover, which spanned issues 14-17 of all three titles, increase sales? There are several ways to look at the numbers, and I will break them all down, but the short answer is: no.
Crossover effect on total readership. First, let's ask whether the H'el on Earth multi-title mega-crossover increased total sales volumes (i.e., acquired new readers) across the family of books during the issues in which the crossover took place relative to the prior issues. We don't have the results of issue 17 yet (and won't for a while, since Superman 17 is being put out in March, and those sales results will not be posted until April). But we can compare the first 3-month period (issues 14-16) to the previous 3-month period. Now, we will not use #13, because for Superman this was a H'el prelude, but not for the other books in the Family. We also shouldn't count #0, which is an obvious outlier (DC's #0 books sold higher across the board, so it would be unfair to compare the sales of the H'el story to the #0s). Thus, we compare the last 3 "normal" months of sales in issues 10-12, with the total sales in issues 14-16. The answer is not good for the crossover mentality: The H'el crossover books sold a sum total of about 329,000, compared with the issue 10-12 books selling a total of 352,000. That's a decline of 7% during the crossover. Thus, there is no indication that the multi-book crossover did anything to boost sales across the family and acquire new readers. On the contrary, sales overall appear to be depressed, which means that the family of books lost readers, not gained them.
Crossover effect on lead-book readers. The "lead" book in the family is, of course, Superman -- he is the original, and also, his book sells more than the others. As the lead book, Superman in most months nearly equals the total sales of Supergirl and Superboy combined. Recently (in the last 8 months or so) Superman has had about 60,000 readers, and the other books about 30,000. The simplest assumption here is that 30,000 people each month read just Superman, and the another 30,000 read all three books. That means 30,000 readers could potentially be attracted to the follower books. Were they?
Here again, the answer is no. Both Supergirl and Superboy sold a few more copies of issue #14, but since then, their sales have gone back to pre-H'el levels (or even dropped a little lower). At best, out of 30,000 possible new readers from the lead book, the follower books picked up a few hundred. Thus, after 9 out of the 12 crossover issues have been published, we can safely assert that no Superman readers have bothered to pick up Supergirl or Superboy "just to get the rest of the crossover." Therefore, not only did the crossover hurt total sales for the family, but it also failed to attract readers of the lead book to the "follower" books.
Enticing cross-family readership. Above, I made the simplifying assumption that all 30,000 readers of Superboy and Supergirl also read Superman. But if we relax that assumption, then the crossover could possibly have attracted people who read just one of the follower books, to start picking up the lead book. This is a tougher row to hoe, because those books have half as many readers as Superman. But it's still possible that Superman's readership could have gone up. Did it?
Once again the answer no -- a resounding, deafening, unambiguous "NO!" this time. If readers of the other books had picked up Superman, his readership would have gone up. But it didn't go up -- in fact, the average readership for Superman dropped from 60,000 during issues 7-12 to just over 51,000 for 13-16. Thus, instead of Superman gaining readers, about 10,000 previously existing readers kissed that series goodbye during the crossover. In other words, Superman actually lost about 16% of its readers over the course of the story arc!
Overall Impact of the Crossover. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the 12-part, 3-series-spanning "family wide" H'el on Earth crossover, which was clearly produced as a pure MTMC marketing ploy, was an utter failure. It failed to gain new readers for the books in the family. It failed to entice readers from the lead book to try reading the follower books. It didn't convince anyone reading the follower books to partake of the lead book. And it caused nearly a sixth of the lead book's readers to walk away. The H'el on Earth story arc was, therefore, an unmitigated disaster for DC.
This analysis shows that the Multi-Title Mega-Crossover is a bad idea all the way around. MTMCs screw up the continuity of the existing books that participate. MTMCs produce inferior, fragmentary stories. MTMCs piss off any readers who do not want to, but feel forced to, read affiliated books. And in exchange for all those ill effects, they do very little to boost sales of the participating series (and indeed, as the H'el numbers indicate, they run the very real risk of pissing readers off so much that the series experiences a net decline in readership).
I really don't know what the people in DC's front office are smoking, but based on these numbers, if I were they, I would hand down a company-wide edict right now banning the MTMC forevermore. MTMCs are at best a huge risk with very little chance of a solid payoff. You might wonder why companies still produce them so much. I confess, I really don't know. The numbers speak for themselves. Maybe some day, one of the people running DC will explain why they keep employing this high-risk gamble in an effort to boost sales, instead of just doing what they did years ago, and producing solid quality month in, month out, in each individual series.
A Multi-Title Mega-Crossover (MTMC) is a story-arc in which the various parts of the story are told in more than one series (hence "Multi-title") and have many parts. A recent example is the "Death of the Family" crossover spanning all the "Batman Family" books. This story-line hop-scotched across the Bat-titles, starting (sort of) in Batgirl 13, then moving to Catwoman 13, Batman and Robin 13, Suicide Squad 14, Batman 14, Batgirl 14, Detective Comics 15, Batgirl 15, Batman 15, Batman and Robin 15... and so on until issue 17 of these titles. It's so convoluted, the Superheroes List website has a whole article explaining the order in which to read these books. In all, there were 26 issues to read, spanning 10 different titles over 5 months. The only word I can find for such a story-line is "mess." (Hmm... I seem to use that word frequently in reference to decisions made by the front office of DC Comics.)
Why I despise MTMCs
I have always hated the multi-title mega-crossover, for a variety of reasons. I will list them here briefly.Reason #1: Fragmentary story-telling. No matter how good the writers or how good the overall plot of the crossover, the fact that a story crosses into several books with completely different creative teams gives the story a kind of 'multiple personality disorder.' Imagine you read a novel where every chapter was written by a different author. That is exactly what the MTMC is like. This leads to fragmentary stories that do not flow properly from issue to issue. Thus, every single MTMC that I've ever read has been vastly inferior to good story arcs produced within a single series.
Reason #2: I don't like being played. I don't like having my hand forced. I sample titles regularly on my own. I do not need Marvel or DC telling me what comics to try each month. The MTMC is blatant money-grubbing of the worst sort.
Reason #3: It utterly screws up the series that participate. Most (good) series have a long, interesting thread of continuity running through them. The MTMC usually has nothing to do with that thread. That means the MTMC is going to interrupt, often for 3-4 months, a long-running story that has captured my interest. Thus the MTMC forces each participant series to 'break stride' and then resume the longer storyline months later.
Reason #4: Inferior quality of stories. The MTMC issues of a series are never as good as the book's main storyline. Even the most talented writers struggle to make the MTMC fit into the general continuity of the book, and in many cases this simply cannot be done.
Why companies publish MTMCs
I've always despised MTMCs, and I have had many fellow comic-book lovers say the same, so why do companies even do them? There's only one reason to have a 10-title, 26-issue crossover story in all the Bat-titles: it's a marketing ploy. DC clearly intends to entice readers who are only buying one title, say Catwoman, to buy all the others so they can follow the story. If the reader doesn't do that, then he ends up reading only, say, parts 3 and 11 of a 26-part story, and winds up confused. The company is trying to force the reader's hand, much like Microsoft tries to force their PC users to browse with Internet Explorer rather than Chrome or Firefox. This is an apt analogy: just as Microsoft doesn't try to win IE users by making it better than Chrome, instead relying on the brute force of their operating system, DC doesn't try to make the stories in Suicide Squad or Batman and Robin any better -- they try to make Catwoman readers buy the other books because that's the only way to finish reading the story.Another reason for the MTMC is that most families or groups of books have a "lead" book -- the headliner book for the family -- which is the most popular. Then there will be a bunch of "follower" books with a narrower readership. Again using our example, the "lead" book would be Batman, and the "follower" books would be the ones about the "second tier" Bat-characters (like Catwoman, Nightwing, and Batgirl). Lead books usually have more readers for historical reasons. For instance, Batman is one of the oldest heroes in all of comics, whereas Catwoman is one of his supporting characters. The MTMC's purpose, then, is to try to force people who read the "lead" book, but usually ignore the second tier characters, to sample the the follower books. DC of course hopes that some of these will stick with the follower series for the long term, but even if not, the follower books get a sales boost for a few months.
Finally, the companies hype MTMCs to Kingdom Come, with the apparent belief that crossovers win comic-book series entirely new fans (who hadn't been reading those books before). According to DC's logic, MTMCs will expand readership simply because "crossovers are cool."
The question we will ask and answer in this article is: does the MTMC really accomplish anything in terms of sales? Do MTMCs encourage readers of each book to cross "party lines" and read the other books? Do MTMCs cause readers of the "lead" book to pick up the follower books? And perhaps most importantly, are crossovers really "cool"? That is, do MTMCs boost readership in general for the series involved in the crossover by getting new people to read those books?
Do MTMCs boost sales? A case study
As a "case study," I will use a currently ongoing MTMC from DC's Superman family of comics. Please keep in mind that, because this crossover is not done, the data are preliminary. However, I would be very surprised if, once the final numbers are in this April or May, the conclusions will be any different, based on the pattern so far.Although Superman technically appears in Action Comics, we will not count that as part of the family because it was not involved in the crossover. Thus, for our purposes, the members of this "Family" are Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy. Beginning with a "prelude" issue in Superman 13, the story arc spans 13 regular issues of the three series (plus at least one Annual), occurring in each issue 14, 15, 16, and 17 of the three series. This is a Multi-title Mega-Crossover in the most typical sense -- insanely long (13 parts, hence "mega" crossover), and hop-scotching across multiple titles (three, in this case).
The question we shall ask, now that this MTMC is nearly done, is did it "work?" Did it boost sales? Did it cause readers of the "leader" book (Superman in this case) to partake of the follower books, or vice versa? Did it attract new readers to the Super-family? To find out, let's take a look at the sales of the Superman family of books since the New 52 began (data come from Comichron).
| Issue No |
Total Sales |
Total Sales |
Total Sales |
% change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superman |
Supergirl |
Superboy |
Super-Family |
|
| 1 |
118,376 |
54,052 |
50,000 | --- |
| 2 |
94,000 |
55,249 |
51,682 | -10% |
| 3 |
77,747 |
45,706 |
42,698 | -17% |
| 4 |
68,879 |
39,762 |
36,002 | -13% |
| 5 |
73,719 |
37,301 |
33,975 | +0% |
| 5 |
69,633 |
34,847 |
31,068 | -7% |
| 7 |
66,588 |
33,337 |
29,789 | -4% |
| 8 |
64,486 |
32,438 |
28,830 | -3% |
| 9 |
62,232 |
35,129 |
34,838 | +5% |
| 10 |
59,081 |
33,309 |
31,358 | -6% |
| 11 |
56,066 |
31,879 |
29,677 | -5% |
| 12 |
53,326 |
30,420 |
27,518 | -5% |
| 0 |
60,493 |
34,457 |
31,840 | +14% |
| 13 |
52,155 |
29,450 |
25,726 | -15% |
| 14 |
52,572 |
31,270 |
28,017 | +4% |
| 15 |
51,252 |
30,814 |
27,619 | -2% |
| 16 |
50,621 |
30,350 |
27,110 | -1% |
Let's review these numbers a bit more closely.
Immediately apparent, is the fact that the Superman Family is in a tail-spin. Admittedly, the issue #1 circulation is an outlier, but even if one disregards the issue 1-2 decline in readership, Superman has lost roughly 47% of its readership since issue 3. Both Supergirl and Superboy have fared similarly, each experiencing about a 33% decline in circulation since issue 3.
This pattern had been going on for about a year before the H'el crossover, so we can imagine rather safely that the crossover is a ploy to boost sales.
This leads us to the question: Did the "H'el on Earth" crossover, which spanned issues 14-17 of all three titles, increase sales? There are several ways to look at the numbers, and I will break them all down, but the short answer is: no.
Crossover effect on total readership. First, let's ask whether the H'el on Earth multi-title mega-crossover increased total sales volumes (i.e., acquired new readers) across the family of books during the issues in which the crossover took place relative to the prior issues. We don't have the results of issue 17 yet (and won't for a while, since Superman 17 is being put out in March, and those sales results will not be posted until April). But we can compare the first 3-month period (issues 14-16) to the previous 3-month period. Now, we will not use #13, because for Superman this was a H'el prelude, but not for the other books in the Family. We also shouldn't count #0, which is an obvious outlier (DC's #0 books sold higher across the board, so it would be unfair to compare the sales of the H'el story to the #0s). Thus, we compare the last 3 "normal" months of sales in issues 10-12, with the total sales in issues 14-16. The answer is not good for the crossover mentality: The H'el crossover books sold a sum total of about 329,000, compared with the issue 10-12 books selling a total of 352,000. That's a decline of 7% during the crossover. Thus, there is no indication that the multi-book crossover did anything to boost sales across the family and acquire new readers. On the contrary, sales overall appear to be depressed, which means that the family of books lost readers, not gained them.
Crossover effect on lead-book readers. The "lead" book in the family is, of course, Superman -- he is the original, and also, his book sells more than the others. As the lead book, Superman in most months nearly equals the total sales of Supergirl and Superboy combined. Recently (in the last 8 months or so) Superman has had about 60,000 readers, and the other books about 30,000. The simplest assumption here is that 30,000 people each month read just Superman, and the another 30,000 read all three books. That means 30,000 readers could potentially be attracted to the follower books. Were they?
Here again, the answer is no. Both Supergirl and Superboy sold a few more copies of issue #14, but since then, their sales have gone back to pre-H'el levels (or even dropped a little lower). At best, out of 30,000 possible new readers from the lead book, the follower books picked up a few hundred. Thus, after 9 out of the 12 crossover issues have been published, we can safely assert that no Superman readers have bothered to pick up Supergirl or Superboy "just to get the rest of the crossover." Therefore, not only did the crossover hurt total sales for the family, but it also failed to attract readers of the lead book to the "follower" books.
Enticing cross-family readership. Above, I made the simplifying assumption that all 30,000 readers of Superboy and Supergirl also read Superman. But if we relax that assumption, then the crossover could possibly have attracted people who read just one of the follower books, to start picking up the lead book. This is a tougher row to hoe, because those books have half as many readers as Superman. But it's still possible that Superman's readership could have gone up. Did it?
Once again the answer no -- a resounding, deafening, unambiguous "NO!" this time. If readers of the other books had picked up Superman, his readership would have gone up. But it didn't go up -- in fact, the average readership for Superman dropped from 60,000 during issues 7-12 to just over 51,000 for 13-16. Thus, instead of Superman gaining readers, about 10,000 previously existing readers kissed that series goodbye during the crossover. In other words, Superman actually lost about 16% of its readers over the course of the story arc!
Overall Impact of the Crossover. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the 12-part, 3-series-spanning "family wide" H'el on Earth crossover, which was clearly produced as a pure MTMC marketing ploy, was an utter failure. It failed to gain new readers for the books in the family. It failed to entice readers from the lead book to try reading the follower books. It didn't convince anyone reading the follower books to partake of the lead book. And it caused nearly a sixth of the lead book's readers to walk away. The H'el on Earth story arc was, therefore, an unmitigated disaster for DC.
Conclusion
We can see from the above that, if the companies think the Multi-title Mega-Crossover is going to boost sales, they're sorely mistaken. The lack of any significant boost to sales for MTMCs is not unique to Superman. The numbers are similar for the JL/Aquaman crossover "Throne of Atlantis." There was one issue of Aquaman where sales went up dramatically (by almost 20,000 readers), but the readership crashed back down to the pre-crossover levels on the very next issue (while the crossover was still going on). Justice League's sales remained flat the entire time. Thus, at best the MTMC sold some extra issues for one series on one month. It's hard to argue that this was a tearing success, or that the MTMC is even worth it if that's the best for which DC can hope.This analysis shows that the Multi-Title Mega-Crossover is a bad idea all the way around. MTMCs screw up the continuity of the existing books that participate. MTMCs produce inferior, fragmentary stories. MTMCs piss off any readers who do not want to, but feel forced to, read affiliated books. And in exchange for all those ill effects, they do very little to boost sales of the participating series (and indeed, as the H'el numbers indicate, they run the very real risk of pissing readers off so much that the series experiences a net decline in readership).
I really don't know what the people in DC's front office are smoking, but based on these numbers, if I were they, I would hand down a company-wide edict right now banning the MTMC forevermore. MTMCs are at best a huge risk with very little chance of a solid payoff. You might wonder why companies still produce them so much. I confess, I really don't know. The numbers speak for themselves. Maybe some day, one of the people running DC will explain why they keep employing this high-risk gamble in an effort to boost sales, instead of just doing what they did years ago, and producing solid quality month in, month out, in each individual series.
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