Lit The Future of Dark Horse Comics

Bumping so licensing talk doesn't take over the new Legacy thread.

 

It's one of those coincidences that will always be a conspiracy theory, isn't it? Since it's officially been in the makings before they knew about the ST, there's enough stuff to think the opposite... I'll just list them for fun's sake, not to attack the official statement:

- Nobody mentioned that something big was in the works, especially not around the time of "holy PANTS will DH lose the license"
- DH kept awfully quiet after their first reaction to the announcement - did they need time to come up with a secret plan?
- Reviving their biggest hit might both prove their worth to any future contract negotiation, and no matter how that plays out, it's the best way to make money before the ship sinks
- Which would make sense as a reason for reviving this because with the ST around, doing something post-ROTJ and actively staying loyal to the Legacy storyline might be a strange thing to do
- Especially if you had to go out of your way to cancel Legacy, something that could, in a really good conspiracy theory, have been due to the ST entering basic planning
- Finally, having a new team work on a comic that is pretty much tied to two people still working at DH might seem like they needed an emergency team that had time on their hands (no disrespect to the artists who are actually working on this now)

So, all the elements are there. Finally a new good conspiracy theory in SW EU?


What do I really think? I'm not sure how sales are doing, but they are doing pretty bad with me. I have to check if I've still got Dawn on order (I think we said "just one arc to test the waters" back then), otherwise I'm not buying any series right now. Seeing how KE didn't work out and had very little discussion going on, what is DH doing right now? Lost Tribe would probably have been a trade buy for most who were interested. There's two Ostrander series and the new Vader stuff. Did Maul, Fett, and Dark Times do any business at all? Otherwise, there's only waiting for the back to the roots series to kick in.

Based on that, and no matter whether there's a ST or not, a new Legacy series might just be the big push they need right now. That and Knights of the Old Republic: The Mandalorian War, of course.

 

Ditto, i totally agree with that one. DH 's timeline would be too complicated for any other company to overtake.

Regards,

LJ

 

If Dark Horse stops publishing SW comics and the licence goes to Marvel, I will probably quit being a Star Wars fan.

About ten years ago, I started collecting SW Comics and I love them even more than the books, video games and all the other SW stuff that has been churned out. Comic books such as Dark Empire and Crimson Empire just can't be tossed aside. They are THE classics every SW fan should have read. Hopefully episode 7-9 won't tread them with disrespect.

 

Grey1: I can't speak to any other figures but apparently Maul sold crazy well, per Tom Taylor's Twitter. If anyone knows how to embed these, go for it (my Twitter-Fu is pretty poor) but here are the links.

9:29 AM - 13 Nov 12 "Just saw the Diamond sales, & our last Darth Maul: Death Sentence issue is the top selling #StarWars book again. Thank you, everyone!"
https://twitter.com/TomTaylorMade/status/268375018436710400

9:34 AM - 13 Nov 12 "Thanks so much for making every issue of our Darth Maul miniseries @DarkHorseComics' highest seller after the Buffy books (@ScottAllie wins)"
https://twitter.com/TomTaylorMade/status/268376277776465920

 

Maul selling well doesn't surprise me really.

How sustainable it would be in the long term would be the bigger question, as TFU was a major hit too, but the masses aren't always as easy to appease on their second helping after the initial novelty of "omg this so cool!" wears off a bit.

 

That would be the worse thing to ever happen in the history of Star Wars............

 

Indeed! Chaos!

 

i actually think them releasing more star wars comics every month is a bad thing. it's why marvel is so damn hard to get into. they release 30 titles a month.

 

And the bulk of those books are $3.99 and double-ship!

 

Indeed!

 

And not good.

 

Oh, I don't know - I'm hearing some good comments about some of them, but will I buy the trade? Well, that's the kicker.... I'm becoming more cheesed off with Marvel's TPB policies and so buying few in response. I have been a sucker for their OHC editions but those seem to be reducing greatly and with it my interest.

 

What are Marvel's TPB policies?

 

Of course there is some good stuff, just the bulk is not.

 

How does $25 for a 4-issue standard-size hardback TPB sound? Factor in that the usual size, in issue terms for a trade, is 5-6.

Then they've recently decided to issue their core line in hardback format, 3-4 months after an arc, with paperback to follow 6-9 months later. So, the average time gap between trade and comic will likely be a year or more - so the notion of using trades to catch up goes straight out the window! This is very similar to DC where the gap is 12-18 months, but look elsewhere and you'll find much smaller ones. For instance, the second Agent of the Empire mini is coming out in issues, the trade for the 1st series is out - you can buy that and then grab only a couple of comics to be up to speed. The other, smaller, often creator-owned titles (more and more frequently published by Image) do similar - why? Because they know the markets of monthly comic and trade are not mutually exclusive but separate and, to a degree, complimentary.

I'm still, just, getting the Marvel paperback TPBs I'm still buying for under £10 but it's getting harder to do all the time. I go back 2-3 years and the standard TPB:Issue ration was 1:5 or 1:6 not 1:4 or even 1:3!

 

This is first-hand experience G or going by net reviews? At $3.99 per issue the former is going to cost you!

 

Hardbacks routinely collecting just four issues? What an absurd idea. Those must look very, very weird on a shelf. (And yes, I consider books a form of artefact whose paratextual composition is just as important -- if I didn't care, I'd just buy digital copies.)

And I agree with you about the bleeding effect across trade collections and individual issues: that was how I got into Legacy and. KOTOR. I originally was put off by the ideas, so waited for Broken and Commenment -- then BAM, I jumped right Into buying monthlies (the first series I'd ever done that for!) and ordered several back issues to catch up to date. But that'd have been much harder with the publication delays you've described under Marvel's way of doing things.

From what I've seen discussed in other recent threads, I understand Marvel also pull trades back off the shelves if they aren't picked up quickly enough? So I dislike that too, especially given the way Star Wars works, with a person not always wanting to read a certain story until they've read everything preceding it -- which would be kinda hard for, say, KOTOR if you wanted to read TOTJ the first: bit difficult if they didn't remain in permanent circulation!

Case in point, I only last week finally bought the first volume of A Long Time Ago... because for some bizarre reason I'd only ever had Volumes 2-7, and somehow had missed 1. I'd have been really upset if it had been impossible to find one on Amazon.

 

Oh, that happens more often than you'd think Zorr - not all volumes of a complete story being in print! For instance Nikolai Dante Volume 3 is infamous for just that reason!

Years back, when I was still able to buy stuff from Orbital Comics (if you're ever in London, pay a visit, it's a great shop), I overheard a conversation one of the counter staff was having with a customer. Customer had found Daredevil: The Devil Inside & Out Volume 2 and wondered if they might have a copy of Volume 1. Counter guy, knowing he was going to loose the sale by being honest about it, explained that they didn't - because Marvel had let it go out of print! Bang! Guaranteed 2-TPB sale gone up in smoke!

Then there's OHC / Omnibus editions. These oversized hardbacks tend to collect 3-6 TPBs at a time, but tend to follow the TPBs so you end up assessing the likelihood of a certain set of stories getting OHC staus, because you don't want to buy the TPBs and upgrade do you? But, if you gamble there will be an OHC version and there isn't and the trades you were gambling on have since gone out of print.... Yep, it all gets very messy.

Oh and Marvel's OHCs are very much a case of find out when they're due out, pre-order with fat online discount and grab. Why? An Omnibus of Frank Miller's Daredevil run was done, very, very good collection but did you have to be fast to get it!

 

Friend of mine co-owns a comic store so I get to flip through a lot of stuff for free, though not a lot of it catching my interest is more likely do to me never much caring for classic caped and masked heros.

 

From Bleeding Cool:

Rich Johnston has...let's say, misinterpreted things before, but this seems like a reasonable set of statements. Though it's disappointing to hear that Gabriel Hardman may only do six issues of Legacy at a time--that's one I wouldn't mind them refuting.

 

Interesting stuff. In regards to the potential of switching artists every six issues, that is the best way to ensure that the series stays on track. Artists can get burned out and need breaks. Plus it allows for some other talent to jump into the series, or perhaps old talent.

I for one would love to see Duursema or Francia take a stab at the new series, for example.

--Adm. Nick

 

I don't mind this at all.

 

I approve.