I doubt that a new #1 brings in new readers. I suspect it brings in investors who are still clinging to the hope of an Action Comics #1 phenomenon. Opening the bag and reading it would defeat the purpose of buying it in the first place.

People in the industry keep their jobs based on quarterly earnings reports, not on retention of readers. As long as the quarterly earnings reports look good enough for them to keep their jobs, they are satisfied, and the earnings reports make no distinction between people buying multiple copies of new #1s and variants and people buying issues #17 of a series. Their job is to move product, not build long-term readership. They are a business that is predicated on moving product. As long as the customer base buys more units of #1s than of #17s, they will produce more #1s than #17s. Again, comic fans get the comics their buying habits deserve. If you have a sales strategy to get consumers to buy more copies of #17 than #1s on a regular basis, maybe you can pitch it to them. Until then, there will continue to be more #1s than #17s because people's jobs rely on moving units and #1s move more units than #17s. Quality of story, retention or units etc. are irrelevant if units are not being sold. You don't focus on quality of life issues until survival is ensured because quality doesn't matter if you are dead. Business operates on the same principle. Until such a time as enough units are moving to ensure job survival, companies will do whatever they need to do to ensure economic survival. In the current market, #1s provide more of what is needed for survival than #17s do because consumers buy more of them. Until you change that basic equation, numbering practices are NOT going to change. If you want to change numbering practices, you have to change the market conditions which drove them to become what they are now. Treat the cause, not the symptoms. #1, variants, numbering schemes etc. are symptoms not causes. You can change them all you want but unless units moved for higher numbers increase to the level that #1s move, the fix will be abandoned when those who make the change lose their jobs and new folks are hired and come in with a mandate to make a quick fix to falling sales and look at what types of things increased unit sales-#1s, variants, etc. and put them back into play to get that quick fix. No business (and comics publishing i a business pure and simple) can implement a plan that has long term benefits without ensuring short term success as well because the people who implement the plan won't be around to see it through if the short term doesn't live up to expectations and new people will be put in place who will scrap the old plan for a new one. You have to get rid of any romantic notions about how comics operate and understand it all comes down to quarterly earnings reports and balance sheets. Not that this is a good thing, but it is the cold hard reality and any potential solution has to take that into account or it is doomed to failure.

So if you want a different numbering scheme, how do you suggest they go about reforming the market and changing customer buying habits so that can become a viable option?

-M

addendum:



-M

Look at the bolded, underlined words.  I'm not trying to be an asshole...but your feelings on business matters don't mean a thing.  Barring some sort of empirical evidence this is the functional equivalent of "I feel that rainbows are made of fairy dust."  The companies are making their decisions based on sales data and profits not "feelings."  And honestly...what "Goodwill" are they eroding in your example in the last paragraph?  When has any comic publisher given two shits about someone trying to find a back issue on a secondary market?  That should be the last concern that should ever cross their mind.  Admittedly you're mixing apples and oranges by citing to eBay and Comixology because those are two completely different things.  

That issue of Hulk #324 was purchased 33 years ago.  Not only was the market for comics completely different then, as well as the distribution system, the demographics of the buyers was different as well.  

It would be impossible for me to care less at this point if comics have high number, low numbers or no numbers.  Actually I'd kind of prefer they just have a month and year...it would short circuit a lot of the fan whinging.  Good stories are sufficient.  

One, the UK market is not the US market and weekly comics have not done well in the US market though DC has tried several times. So the market factors for the UK market are vastly different than the US market, so what Rebellion does has little bearing on US publishers for the US market.

And here is the crux of the issue-in the US direct market since the ascendance of the direct market as the primary market for the sale of comics, titles lose and average of 3-4% of sales per issue after the third issue (it's higher between 1-3 where retailers are ordering before any issues hit the stands. That attrition rate runs across all titles, all publishers. While there are exceptions, it's pretty much the standard attrition rate. So a title that sells 50K units for issue 3, will sell about 48K for issue 4, 46.1K for issue 5, etc. ad infinitum until it falls below a publisher's cancellation threshold or until they do something to correct it-new creative team,new direction, cross-over, reboot/relaunch, go back to "legacy" numbering for a few months then relaunch again, etc. The longer a title runs, the less it sells per issue with very few exceptions (though there are exceptions, books that have gained readership like Walking Dead but usually the exceptions have outside forces affecting sales to counter the standard attrition rate). That is down the the buying habits of the customer base and is borne out in sales data since the 90s. Unless and until you correct that kind of attrition rate high numbering becomes untenable in the current marketplace. Despite what fans say about wanting high numbers, they do something different because they buy more of lower numbers and #1s than they do of high numbers, and their wallets speak louder than their internet postings.

Find a way to change the attrition pattern and high numbers would be more tenable in the market, but until you do, calling for them is just empty words.

-M

Well that's just part of the direct market currently being essentially a zero sum game. A gain on one title is matched by a loss on other titles as customers flock to the "ooh new and shiny" book but don't have a budget to add books without cutting somewhere else.

This leads to the big publishers worried about who has the biggest piece of the existing pie and re-slicing the pie every few months with launches of new #1s, events or variants rather than looking for ways to grow the pie, because growing the pie requires investment (and a corporate owner willing to make such an investment) and a customer base willing to change its buying habits, and neither of those currently exist in the market. So it remains a zero sum game.

That said, I'l give DC a few points for trying recently-the development of the Ink and Zoom lines to court young readers outside the direct market, the idea behind the Black Label line (rather than its execution) in an attempt to produce books that could become evergreen sellers in the book trade rather new releases with 2 week windows of sales, putting marketing money behind the New Age of Heroes launch complete with TV spots, and yet none of that moved the needle in the direct market customer base. New Age of Heroes flopped hard in the direct market, Black Label got derailed by the batwang reaction and Ink and Zoom releases are just now hitting the market way too long after they were announced at the national librarians convention so any anticipation for them fizzled because they weren't ready to reach the marketplace to capitalize on the buzz the announcement created.

-M

FWIW I used to have a Batman obsession. I owned every issue from #110 up. Didn't matter if I hated the creative team; I continued to buy the book. I knew it was ridiculous, but I didn't really feel like I could stop. Then they reset the series to #1. I cancelled my pull after the first issue and have never looked back.

On the one hand, I agree that renumbering is a business decision and that is where the market is at right now.

On the other, I absolutely agree that larger numbers implied a small part of a greater legacy. I used to truly believe Batman#457 was 1/457th of a continuous, ongoing saga (which, of course, wasn't actually true -- but the illusion was appealing).

So I personally pulled up my stakes and walked out on the modern comic book industry. I will still pick up an odd book or two based upon recommendations or content, but the age of countless #1 issues is an absolute turn-off for me, suggesting no sense of permanence/legacy, and so the companies that do this are no longer receiving my money.

And really, renumbering is indicative of a larger phenomenon where past legacy really doesn't matter at all. Everything restarts with a new creative team. You can keep restarting at #1 because what happened in the previous volume won't matter in a year's time, and what happens in the current volume won't matter in two. It's a world of disposable stories and disposable runs, and that flies in the face of everything I find magical about comic books.


To quote myself from a long while back:




So the comic industry has lost me. Maybe that doesn't really matter to them, but I think that's the true crux of this discussion: if you don't like it, you don't buy it. If enough people do that, the renumberings will cease to be profitable.