|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 13, 2017 15:42:19 GMT -5
Oh, of course. I just was talking about the fact that it was Plastic Man #1 that appeared without any knd of preview appearance at DC -- if you don't count the costume. So did Shazam Captain Marvel but he had another life in the Fawcett years. Also falls outside ish's 1970 line, too.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 13, 2017 15:51:24 GMT -5
Shazam #1 was published in February 1973. But I got your point.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 13, 2017 15:59:30 GMT -5
Just shows how conservative DC editorial was during the Golden and Silver Age with starting super hero titles. Even Lois Lane, for gods sakes, needed some Showcase appearances before getting her own #1. Good choices here, however I guess DC figured that if Showcase bombed six issues in a row, it was better than launching two or three not-so-hot series? I'd love to see the issue-by-issue sales on Showcase. In the late 60s, the old three-issue-tryout went by the wayside for a good while. Anthro, Bat Lash, Hawk and the Dove, Creeper, and Angel and the Ape all made the jump to their own books within two months of their one-issue tryouts in Showcase. The Phantom Stranger took three months. Binky took almost a year. Because fine-tuning the concept.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 13, 2017 16:04:38 GMT -5
Just shows how conservative DC editorial was during the Golden and Silver Age with starting super hero titles. Even Lois Lane, for gods sakes, needed some Showcase appearances before getting her own #1. Good choices here, however I guess DC figured that if Showcase bombed six issues in a row, it was better than launching two or three not-so-hot series? I'd love to see the issue-by-issue sales on Showcase. In the late 60s, the old three-issue-tryout went by the wayside for a good while. Anthro, Bat Lash, Hawk and the Dove, Creeper, and Angel and the Ape all made the jump to their own books within two months of their one-issue tryouts in Showcase. The Phantom Stranger took three months. Binky took almost a year. Because fine-tuning the concept. The thing is...by all accounts there is absolutely no way they would have had reasonable sales figures for those books in two months. They would have had very preliminary figures and only had reasonable figures in 4-6 months. So they had to have planned to have given those features their own books ahead of time...which raises the issue of why "try them out" in Showcase, when the books were already being produced. I base this on reading literally hundreds of interviews where the likes of Infantino, Kubert, et. al talked about when they received sales figures on books.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 13, 2017 16:07:29 GMT -5
Maybe they had the sales figures for Showcase and knew that it was a high selling book and that the previews were sure fire solo hits.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 14, 2017 15:57:34 GMT -5
I guess DC figured that if Showcase bombed six issues in a row, it was better than launching two or three not-so-hot series? I'd love to see the issue-by-issue sales on Showcase. In the late 60s, the old three-issue-tryout went by the wayside for a good while. Anthro, Bat Lash, Hawk and the Dove, Creeper, and Angel and the Ape all made the jump to their own books within two months of their one-issue tryouts in Showcase. The Phantom Stranger took three months. Binky took almost a year. Because fine-tuning the concept. The thing is...by all accounts there is absolutely no way they would have had reasonable sales figures for those books in two months. They would have had very preliminary figures and only had reasonable figures in 4-6 months. So they had to have planned to have given those features their own books ahead of time...which raises the issue of why "try them out" in Showcase, when the books were already being produced. I base this on reading literally hundreds of interviews where the likes of Infantino, Kubert, et. al talked about when they received sales figures on books. That's what I always thought. Unless some radical change in how quickly sales could be reported happened in 1968 or so. But I don't think so. And even when they had reliable figures in previous years, it still took months to get a new book out. Hell, Hawkman had two series of tryouts, as did Cave frikkin' Carson.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 14, 2017 15:59:36 GMT -5
The thing is...by all accounts there is absolutely no way they would have had reasonable sales figures for those books in two months. They would have had very preliminary figures and only had reasonable figures in 4-6 months. So they had to have planned to have given those features their own books ahead of time...which raises the issue of why "try them out" in Showcase, when the books were already being produced. I base this on reading literally hundreds of interviews where the likes of Infantino, Kubert, et. al talked about when they received sales figures on books. That's what I always thought. Unless some radical change in how quickly sales could be reported happened in 1968 or so. But I don't think so. And even when they had reliable figures in previous years, it still took months to get a new book out. Hell, Hawkman had two series of tryouts, as did Cave frikkin' Carson. That's not my understanding. And I've read a TON of interviews from that era and a lot with Infantino talking about how they got sales figures. I'm not an expert by any means, but I just can't see how they could have the figures that fast at that time.
|
|
|
Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 14, 2017 16:13:35 GMT -5
I've read many times the same info that Slam alluded to for 1960/1970 sales tallies. It would take about 4 months to get the preliminary sales figures of a particular newsstand comic. 6 months to get the final sales figures
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 14, 2017 16:15:33 GMT -5
I vaguely remember reading that a comic book writer, perhaps of Daredevil, hanging out on top of a building all night because he wanted to see what if was like since he was writing that in his story. Anyone know anything about this? I don't know but I'm curious now. It sounds like something a more recent writer might have done - you hear about Grant Morrison doing things like this when he was writing Batman, for example. If it was a writer from a earlier era my guess would be Steve Gerber. But this is the first I ever heard of the story so I really have no idea.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 14, 2017 16:19:50 GMT -5
That's what I always thought. Unless some radical change in how quickly sales could be reported happened in 1968 or so. But I don't think so. And even when they had reliable figures in previous years, it still took months to get a new book out. Hell, Hawkman had two series of tryouts, as did Cave frikkin' Carson. That's not my understanding. And I've read a TON of interviews from that era and a lot with Infantino talking about how they got sales figures. I'm not an expert by any means, but I just can't see how they could have the figures that fast at that time. Oh, I'm sure they didn't. No computers then. One of life's little mysteries, I guess. Of course, there's also this story, from Don Markstein's Toonopedia, and which I have also seen in an interview with Joe Simon, too., related to the infamous cancellation of The Geek with the second issue. The story, which attributes the title's cancellation to Mort Weisinger, always includes the bit that the sales were not bad, raising (not begging) the question of how quickly DC was getting sales results in that era. "In a 1998 interview, however, artist Carmine Infantino (The Flash, Adam Strange), who had been DC's editorial director at the time, told a different story. That's when the fact that sales, while not high, were improving, became public knowledge — as well as the fact that Brother Power's fate had been sealed the moment Mort Weisinger, editor of DC's Superman line, got a look at him. Weisinger very strongly objected to anything depicting hippies as less than thoroughly loathesome, and said so to publisher Jack Liebowitz. Despite the fact that the first issue described Brother Power's relatively human companions as "a rag-tag bunch", "the unkempt brood", living "useless lives" — and at one point clearly depicted one of them eating out of a garbage can — it was very definitely an Establishment view of hippiedom — Weisinger caused the series to be shut down as quickly as could be. The second issue ended in a cliffhanger, and that was that. A third was in production but never finished." The first issue came out in the time we're talking about, July of '68, the second in September, yet they already knew sales were improving on the title? Is that Carmine and Joe Simon saving face or might they really have known something about the sales? Could Mort have gottten a title cancelled even if the sales were okay? FWIW, after the "Windy and Willy" issue, Showcase went back to the three-part tryouts for the final four try-out features (Nightmaster, Firehair, Jason's Quest and Manhunter 2070), none of which went on to its own series. Curiouser and curiouser.
|
|
|
Post by Farrar on Mar 14, 2017 22:16:51 GMT -5
The Secret Six was a team and non-super powered too. Obviously inspired by the TV show Mission Impossible... SS also reminds me of the Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None"
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Mar 15, 2017 5:59:32 GMT -5
The Secret Six was a team and non-super powered too. Obviously inspired by the TV show Mission Impossible... SS also reminds me of the Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None" Hmm, fairly certain Agatha didn't write a book with that title, actually...
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Mar 15, 2017 7:53:36 GMT -5
SS also reminds me of the Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None" Hmm, fairly certain Agatha didn't write a book with that title, actually...
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Mar 15, 2017 8:51:39 GMT -5
Hmm, fairly certain Agatha didn't write a book with that title, actually... Oh, I don't dispute that that is what it's now called. It's just not a title Agatha Christie ever put on it. Though I was surprised to learn it was apparently always the title used when it was reprinted in America.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 15, 2017 10:58:44 GMT -5
Oh, I don't dispute that that is what it's now called. It's just not a title Agatha Christie ever put on it. Though I was surprised to learn it was apparently always the title used when it was reprinted in America. Come on, don't be coy and pedantic. Maybe some of us don't know the original title, but those of us who do are glad it was changed. If you know more than another poster, use it as an opportunity to enlighten rather than appear supercilious.
|
|