Why DC's marketing strategy is only bound to fail
Comics Should Be Good wrote an entry about how, with at least 52 different ongoing books being published, DC is asking a lot of consumers, especially if the price for some of them is 4 dollars. And another problem:
And their alleged strategy also suggests that they really are hoping to chase away consumers in the long term.
DC is reshuffling everything based on… what? Internet gossip? Retailer grumbles? Blogger reviews? Can’t be. There’s no way you look at the internet and conclude, “From what fans and retailers are saying, clearly the thing to do is to give Rob Liefeld more books.”I think I can see what the problem is here: they're more determined to promote the books as "edgy" and even "pushing boundaries" than they are to promote them as entertaining and compelling, which they haven't been for a long time. And if Liefeld is one of the few they'll hire, since he likely has no problem with editorial mandates that probably favor him anyway, no wonder any book they give him is surely going to have a short shelf life.
And yet, that’s what DC is doing. Hell, to many jaded onlookers it looks like that’s the latest installment of DC’s master plan of trying to re-create the superhero comics scene of mid-1992. Certainly, that era is what springs to mind for most comics people when they see names like Bob Harras or Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld, especially when you couple those names with the launch of a bunch of new #1 issues that (according to press releases) are being promoted as “pushing boundaries” and “edgy.”
And their alleged strategy also suggests that they really are hoping to chase away consumers in the long term.
Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful artists
