Post by Icctrombone on May 5, 2024 9:48:09 GMT -5
Just was reading Mark Evanier's blog the other day and a reader asked him if he had any insight into the quick cancellations of so many of the titles that originated during the Infantino years.
Excerpted from his response:
ME: "I've discussed this at length with a lot of folks who were around then, a few of whom are still around and we're still discussing it. My answer is that there were many problems but I would put "panicked employees" pretty high on the list. When a bi-monthly comic ran 5-7 issues, that generally means that they gave up on it after seeing the early sales figures on the second issue.
I also think that kids were increasingly non-captivated by bi-monthly books, which is the way DC tried launching almost everything that was new. Most of the Marvel books were monthly and interconnected so you could get a couple visits to that world every week, whereas you had to wait a long time between issues of Anthro. Kids raised on television didn't like to wait for their entertainment."
PH Reaction: Evanier's mentioning the bi-monthly publishing schedule hadn't occurred to me as a reason, but it makes sense given Marvel's commitment to monthly publication. And since the sales numbers took four months to come back for two bi-monthly issues, DC could have gone monthly with at least a couple of those titles and actually saved money by cancelling them if needed before publishing seven issues.
Not sure, though, that I buy the idea that kids raised on TV didn't want to wait. I always preferred monthly or the eight-issues-a-year books to bi-monthlies and I was part of that generation. We were used to waiting a week or even more, depending on the season, for the next installment of a show we liked. But, to start a new comic as a bi-monthly definitely didn't make sense then given the increase in the number of Marvel monthly titles. A new bi-monthly risks dying on the vine. It's why it was smart for DC to turn Showcase from a bi-monthly into a title published eight times a year. Although when that happened, DC published a series of one-time appearances and launched a batch of number ones right away, as if the Showcase issue were the real first issue (Or Number 0?)of titles like Creeper, Hawk and the Dove and Bat Lash.
I'm guessing they wanted to get the titles out to fill the shelves and see what the sales were like more quickly than if they'd done the traditional three-issue debut. Also made it seem as if things were hopping at DC.
They returned to the traditional three debut issues approach with # 82 (Nightmaster) so that at least two of the three issues would come out out right after the other. This format continued until Showcase folded its tent four series later with #93. (When it returned briefly, it followed the same three-issue format with the Doom Patrol, Power Girl and Hawkman features.)
ME: "In the late sixties/early seventies, the system via which comic books were distributed was crumbling and Marvel was gaining a headlock on what was left of it. Fewer and fewer stores had comic book racks. In 1970 when my pal/partner Steve Sherman and I visited DC Comics for the first time, the guy in charge — Carmine Infantino — kept quizzing on where we bought our comics in Los Angeles. He was asking us if we had any ideas of how DC could get comics to more potential buyers in our town. He wouldn't have been asking us if Independent News — a division of the same company that was the major magazine distributor in the U.S. — had any ideas."
PH Reaction: This squares with something shaxper mentioned about DC talking to kids/ readers about what comics they bought, etc. because they had few ways to dig into the numbers, and with Marvel increasing the number of titles, DC was on the defensive for the first time. And I'm guessing Independent wasn't going to do much to help the comics, which had a lower profit per book than the slick magazines (girlie books and others) that were way more profitable and therefore were better to push for valuable newsstand space.
ME: "But they clearly didn't. And what we learned was that the folks over in [the] Independent office had very little confidence that the problem could be solved… or was worth solving. It was rumored around the DC office that some were suggesting that DC just scale back to the few properties that had merchandising value — Superman, Batman, a few others — and just publish those books, maybe as reprints, to keep the properties 'alive.' "
PH Reaction: Licensing was/is always a driver of any company's comics-based profits and now that DC was no longer a sorta/kinda family business, it was even more so than it had been.
ME: "Infantino was a wonderful artist. If you only know his later work, seek out what he did before he was elevated into DC management. Brilliant designs, brilliant storytelling. And when he was moved from drawing comics into the editorial division, he greatly improved the look and feel of the DC line, especially the covers… but only for a while. Others may give you other views of this but mine is that Carmine's skills were largely creative and he was installed in a position that required more of a head for business and marketing than he possessed." (BF mine)
PH Reaction: That's what I said about Carmine's rising to a position for which he was essentially unsuited. Further proof that Evanier is a brilliant man.
ME: "When a TV show is canceled, that doesn't always mean it was a show no one wanted to watch. It may have been a case of someone in management panicking or making a bad call and dropping a show that would have built up a solid following if it had been given more time. There are plenty of examples of programs that were almost canceled but were given enough time including M*A*S*H, Cheers and Seinfeld. I don't see why anyone would think that the decisions to cancel certain comics after a few issues couldn't have been bad decisions."
PH Reaction: Yep. And in the wake of the cancellations of all those new titles DC published in '68 and '69, they were replaced not by more experiments but by safer titles aimed at the burgeoning horror market and various less costly reprint titles -- Westerns, sf, humor, etc.