by Ryan Higgins

Week -3

For the past 2 years, DC Comics has built a level of excitement for their books unseen since they killed Superman in the early 90's. From Identity Crisis to Infinite Crisis, not only is fan interest the highest it's been in forever, sales are through the roof, with Infinite Crisis the best selling comic book since Jim Lee's run on Batman a few years ago. While there are those among comic fans who are not interested in big mega crossovers, many readers love them. And why shouldn't they? Characters are killed, relationships are destroyed, villains are beaten down, and the good guys win in the end.

Don't they?

"A year without Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. But not a year without heroes." This is the tag-line for 52, the weekly series from DC that launches in 3 weeks. The "real-time" series tells the tale of the entire DC Universe over the course of an entire year, from the (assumingly) shocking ending of Infinite Crisis to the beginning of One Year Later, the one year jump every DCU book took a few months before the Infinite Crisis miniseries even finished. But what happened to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman? We'll find out in the next few weeks, as both Infinite Crisis #7 and 52 #1 are scheduled to ship on May 10th.

Many of you, however, already know all of this. The real point of this blog isn't so much to talk about spoilers and theorize about future events (although that will happen quite a bit), but it's more for an inside look into the thought process on a retailers ordering, promotion, and fan interest of 52.

My name is Ryan Higgins, and welcome to 52: The Blog.

Since 1997, I’ve worked at Comics Conspiracy, a comic book shop located in Sunnyvale, California. My job has changed over the years, from the guy behind the counter that rings up customers, to what it is now, which is pretty much the guy in charge of everything: ordering, reordering, organization, dealing with customers in the store and online, manager, window cleaner, webmaster, and everything else in between. It’s a challenging task, but one I’ve done for a few years now, and I’d never give it up.

Sunnyvale is a fairly large city, over 130,000 people. Much smaller than big cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles, but still, a fairly populated place. I’ve heard many stories of other parts of the country with only one comic store per town, or even less, but Sunnyvale, and the neighboring cities do not have this problem. Within 25 miles of us is at least a dozen other stores, with a good number up the coast and into San Francisco. The Bay Area is home to, personally, the greatest selection of comic book stores in the country. There is literally a store for every type of comic book reader throughout the Bay Area. With this much competition, we’re still able to sell tons of copies of Infinite Crisis. I hear cries of the comic industry dying, and that no one is interested in mainstream superhero comics, but I sure as hell don’t see it!

The hardest part of the job is the initial orders comic stores place every month through Diamond, the largest (and, really, only) comic book distributor for new material. In the case of 52, this was even harder than normal. How many copies of a weekly series, without Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, would people buy? Infinite Crisis is the single best-selling book we’ve sold since I’ve worked here, and I’m sure it’s giving books like the Death of Superman and Turok #1 a run for its money. The great thing about Infinite Crisis, though, is that it’s actually a good book. Sure, it’s not everyone’s cuppa tea, but personally, IC is just about the best thing ever. How do I order a follow up book to a best-selling book? A 52-issue weekly book, at that?

Each issue of Infinite Crisis sold about 160 copies here. We’ve moved over 200 copies of #1, but that is the first issue of a major Event Comic with 2 covers by arguably two of the best artists in all of comics. 52 looks to be a little more…personal… than the massiveness that is Infinite Crisis. With a few weeks before #1 ships, the store already has 20% of it’s subscribers signed up for 52, and I know for a fact that more than half of them are down for the entire series, for better or worse. As is usual with these types of things, I expect at least a dozen or more subscribers to sign up for 52 once the first issue ships.

My initial thought was 100 copies. That’s on par of New Avengers, Civil War, Astonishing X-Men, and other high-end books. Clearly less than Infinite Crisis, but that’s to be expected. I don’t think any book released any time soon will sell in the same league as IC.

Then DC turned around and gave me a reason to increase my orders even higher.

To be continued…