A few weeks ago, we sold our most expensive comic book, the first appearance of The Governor in
The Walking Dead. The gentleman that bought it was giddy beyond imagination, and you know what? I'm not going to mock him. Even though I can think of about a thousand other things on which I'd rather spend $300, he has every right to use his hard-earned money on a piece of comic history. But there's another big difference between me and a stereotypical comic buyer: I'm not purchasing books with the hope that, one day, that single issue I got will be worth thousands of dollars. As I've stated before, if I enjoy a comic enough to buy it, I'm going to wait until the trade paperback comes out. With the sheer number of releases that come out each Wednesday, it would be nearly impossible for me to afford my hobby, but by God, certain publishers aren't going to stop trying to entice me.
And by certain publishers, I am talking about DC. Last year, they did 3D covers with prominent villains that sold incredibly well, so this September, they figured that they'd put out 3D-cover one-shots again, this time focusing on the
Future's End storyline. Only two of the covers so far really drew my eye -
Green Lantern: New Guardians and
Trinity of Sin: Pandora - with the rest of them just ... blah, I guess. I am not really convinced that it's worth it to spend $1 more for a lenticular cover, and it seems like the majority of the people, at least at my store, are as ambivalent about them as I am. According to
Bleeding Cool,
Batman,
Batgirl, and
New Suicide Squad are on the bestseller list, but we have
so.
many.
left. Sure, there are the die-hard fans who oooh and aaah at the artwork, but Marvel, Image, and Boom! are performing much better in terms of numbers.
It has everything to do with the stories inside, because whoa, are they all pretty bad. For a few of them - like
Birds of Prey,
Red Hood and the Outlaws, or
Green Lantern: New Guardians - I think a few more pages would have done some good; the concept was strong enough that I at least didn't want to shred all the copies - and we have copious amounts - so no one else would have to suffer. But the others? Oh, my
God, was I eye-rolling through most of them.
Batwoman was just ridiculous with this whole new vampire story going (and of
course Kate is staked through the heart by her sister - sorry, spoiler alert), and
Batgirl? It doesn't seem like Gail Simone actually wrote it. Babs' entire reason for going rogue is because her new husband - also a ginger, just in case that matters to you - jumps off of a roof? And then she's Beefcake McGee, a student of Bane's? It just screams "phoning it in."
Supergirl actually had the dialogue, "Cyborg Superman, what have you
done to her??" and it wasn't for the purpose of parody. And if I wasn't annoyed with the book, I was bored with it, which pretty much sums up the rest of the available ones. All in all, this is a pretty big fail for DC.
There's one more week of the New 52 one-shots, and yes, I'm going to read all of them, just so I can say that I did. I'm not expecting much, but then again,
Green Lantern: New Guardians did surprise me enough that I actually may start to read the series next month. So who knows? Maybe something good will come out this week? If nothing does, maybe it will convince DC that gimmicky stuff can only work for so long (cough Death of Wolverine cough).
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