I think the current market is more sustainable (with a caveat, which I'll come to in a sec) because the increased sales aren't based on cosmetic stunts so much as storytelling stunts. This isn't the old market, with foil-embossed, multiple-covers obsessed marketing stunts that make the more obsessive readers and speculators buy loads of additional copies. It's more based around epic (or at least voluminous) stories that require the reader to buy more comics than usual, but at least they're comics that the audience are reading, as opposed to bagging and waiting a few months to try and sell them. It's a reading boom, not a speculation boom, so yeah, I guess it is more sustainable.
The only problem would be (and is, according to many vocal readers) when the stories aren't actually very good. In this case, you'd get a big boom when many readers are buying tie-ins but a massive slump when the company drops a clunker and alienates the readers. Actually - this just came to me - it probably isn't sustainable, because it requires the big two to have a constant stream of these books coming out, otherwise you'd have readers like myself suddenly buying 4 books less a month if they stopped with the weekly comics, or buying some 20-30 less books every summer when they roll out the next event. If they stop these, then whammo, the lose out on all these sales, and the accompanying internet buzz that goes with it, which I think is where at least 60% of the enjoyment of the comics reading experience is nowadays - online picking the issues apart. Even a really shit issue can recoup its entertainment value by ripping it apart online.
This doesn't really matter so much for me at the moment. I have enjoyed 52 immensely so far (and the attendant internet reading that I do after finishing an issue), found some parts of the 8C business to be really enjoyable, and the continuity geek in me enjoys seeing all the titles that I'd buy anyway linking up and telling a (mostly) cohesive story in a way I've not really seen before. The DCU has become a much richer universe than many of us give it credit for, familiar with it (gaffes and all) as we are. I was explaining the DCU to an interested friend recently, and it blew her mind, she found the interconnectedness really exciting, and I think it's something we take for granted. All I care about is that I've read some solid stories and some great and surprising stories and these outweigh the clunkers thus far, for me at least (because it's all subjective, innit?).
As for Barry Allen and Jason Todd... who cares? If it's a good story, it's a good story, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until they show their hand, because all we have so far is a teaser image and an editor who loves attention putting on a little theatre for some excitable fans. |
