DC Comics and Archie Comics — more specifically, Dan Jurgens, Ron Maz, Tom King, Dan Parent and about eight other creators — gave me my first Stepped into a comic shop for…I don’t remember how long…? Probably early Sophie Campbell ninja turtles While I was still trying to read it every month and constantly running into the vagaries of ordering and shipping issues with the direct market and local comic shops.
How did they do it? An appeal to nostalgia is undoubtedly a factor, as Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 Pairing some of my favorite creators and characters from the publisher’s decade, the result is 80 pages of content paired with some of my favorite crossover stories from my youth.
But, I think, more important than that, at least in these two cases, is the publisher’s decision to publish individual, independent works. comic bookrather than a miniseries or series that consumers might be very confident would end up in a commercial collection, which has now become my favorite way to consume comics (partly because it’s easier and cheaper, and the larger portions It’s because I just have too many damn comic books in too many damn long boxes and I don’t need to add any more to the pile of fantastic comic books that are now actively factoring into the life choices I’ve made.
In other words, I have Buy these comic books, when they are soldinstead of waiting for a transaction to buy or borrow from the library, since in both cases they don’t seem to be collected (the former is an 80-page tome that is actually already a trade, has a spine and the latter is A simple 20 page gag strip, apparently designed so that the author (an Archie fan) could add Archie comics to his bibliography). (Compare these to IDW Publishing’s two one-off specials, and I’m pretty excited, Ninja Turtles 40th Anniversary Comic Collection and Godzilla’s 70th Anniversaryboth of which had deluxe editions listed for solicitation on Amazon even before comic stores released the direct-sale books).
Should comics publishers do this more often? I mean, personally, I hope they don’t (see the point about me not wanting to buy more new comic books to add to my already too-large collection), but I think it’s worth watching if publishing One way dealers can sell more comics worth paying attention to Publishing comic books instead of comic collection…At least occasionally, anyway.
As for my thoughts on these comics, I will be reviewing one of them in my next monthly review column on the 6th of this month, and the other may appear in Good comics for kids in the near future. Can you guess which is which?
