Coming soon to a 50-cent box near you: BEFORE WATCHMEN

BEFORE WATCHMEN: MINUTEMEN
06/2012: Minutemen #1 of 6 -- 119,463
07/2012: Minutemen #2 of 6 -- 76,409
08/2012: Minutemen #3 of 6 -- 57,208
Drop in orders: 52 percent

I'll go ahead and predict that by the end of this silliness, for all the heavy-breathing hype of Dan DiDio & Co., most or all of the BW projects will be selling in the range of 35,000 to 45,000 copies.

Which is to say, about what a DC comic sells these days.

So DC will be peddling this sorry crap to the same dwindling pool of schmucks who buy a half-dozen Batman comics and a half-dozen Green Lantern comics every month.

Also known as it's remaining fanbase.

There will be few new readers, if any.

And all those comics pros who signed onto BW over Alan Moore's protests will have sold out for ... what?

Probably for the money DC offered them to do it in the first place.

HA!

BW is the ultimate example of the type of product that the Direct Sales Market was created to peddle. Niche interest material presented in serialized format hyped three months in advance. Thus, it's the ultimate example of what's wrong with the Direct Sales Market distribution model. When DC finally collects this material together, it will certainly be able to squeeze out some more sales through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but a goodly chunk of the interest in BW is being sapped by getting to see it piecemeal.

1. Such sales drops are entirely deserved.

2. All BW comics last month still charted in the top 26 in the Direct Market, with Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan making it into the top 10.

3. If there have ever been comics where it was the trade sales that mattered more than initial monthly numbers, it's BW. Though as awesomely bad as the line has been so far, outside Silk Spectre and the first issue of Dr. Manhattan, it's hard to imagine it even being able to manage meager sales as an add on to the original in comic shops and bookstores.

Mike

There are a total of 37 issues to all of Before Watchmen. And I believe DC's current price is $3.99 a pop?

Perhaps there were some people who realized that "Before Watchmen is a bad idea" wasn't a lesson that was worth a hundred and fifty bucks to learn.

Isn't it the case that most new books have a drop in sales by a significant percentage over the first few issues?

I've not bought a single copy of BW but from what little I have seen of it is that it's all been very safe, bland and dull.

It's true there's often a big drop in order numbers between the first and second issues as retailers try to assess what the demand will be for a title. You really can't tell what the market demand proved to be until the fourth or fifth issue.

So yeah, a drop isn't uncommon.

In this instance, though, DC hyped the holy living crap out of BEFORE WATCHMEN, and retailers, responding like Pavlov's drooling dog, ordered 120,000 copies, which is -- in 2012 -- a huge seller. It's a major deal. Very few comics hit 120,000 anymore. And DC used that to further hype the project.

Now we're learning what market demand was.

Less than half that.

And I predict demand will continue to fall.

My own local retailer, who devoted an entire display at the front of his store to BEFORE WATCHMEN, is sitting unhappily on a shitload of unsold comics, destined to rest in a 50-cent box by year's end.

He fell for it, hook, line and sinker, sucker.