Yep. DC is at it again. Their annual September event (tying in with their Futures End weekly series) will see the entire New52 jump ahead 5 years. And since last year's 3D covers did "extraordinarily well" for them, they're doing it again.




Plus, along side Futures End and Batman: Eternal, DC is planning a third weekly series.


Newsarama

I tried to get back into monthlies, but I'm out again. Trades only for me, with some movement into digital.

"Potential futures."



Of course none of these will stick. DC barely knows what's it's going to be doing next month, let alone five years from now.

I just couldn't get into trades and digital. I did try but I always end up getting back into the monthlies.

I wish there were more monthlies I was interested in. But with decompressed storytelling being the norm and floppies going for four bucks a pop, I'm content to tradewait for most of the series I follow and more likely to give a new tpb collection a try than a single issue.

Since Young Avengers and Fearless Defenders have been cancelled, I am down to Hawkeye, Batman '66, Astro City, and IDW's Thunder Agents. I am enjoying Red Circle's Fox series, but I'm pretty sure it ends it run next month. I'm following Walking Dead, Invincible and Invincible Universe, Mark Waid's Daredevil, and now Edison Rex in trade form. This week I decided to give Superior Foes of Spider-Man a go.

Yeah trades are so much more convenient, I rarely buy single monthly issues.

I wish I could get into trades, but the gutter loss is a deal breaker for me. It bothers me that much. It especially completely ruins the effect of double page spreads.

And your surprised? Disappointed? Angry?

DC is a business and they are in the business of making money. No idea why this is "surprising" in any way.

Same here. I hated years back when DC did their "one year later" stories.. it got very confusing and all of a sudden I had no idea what was going on. Worst of all there didn't seem to be any reason I could figure on why they did it. Now it's five years..? *sigh*

Image did it a long time ago, and while at the time I thought it was pretty cool, their scheduling problems made it almost impossible them to really follow through.

When DC did their one year later story, at least they just did a timeskip (and allowed the excellent weekly 52 series unveil what happened). Then the individual titles could just move on creatively. I'm assuming this is not a permanent 5 year skip?

The real question is, how severely allocated are these going to be this time, and are they going to offer the "normal" covers up front this time, or wait until the last minute like last time.

I'm sorry, Mr. DiDio. I'll re-phrase accordingly next time.

Don't see anywhere in my original post where I came off as "surprised." Posted this as news that I thought the Forum would be interested in. Nothing more.


The allocation is the biggest question this go around. Did DC learn it's lesson from the last time? They're soliciting well in advance this go-around with a cut-off in May. Hopefully, more people will get their hands on the covers they want.

For Villain's Month, I opted for the 2D covers and ended up with four 3D ones because their regular versions sold out. I pushed away my OCD and let it slide.

One of the articles I read said they were going to offer 2D covers as well. Searching again, I can't find that info now. So... maybe?

Only $3.99? I'm impressed that they refrained from price gouging.

Yeah, I remember that. They released the #25 issues of certain books a year or so early. It was Stormwatch, Brigade, Bloodstrike, and Supreme.

The Stormwatch one was actually kind of cool because Stormwatch and WildCATs built toward the future shown in SW #25, and it worked.

The other three were Liefeld titles, and well...

I think Chew recently did something similar.

I understand your point but to me trades are just so much easier. All the titles of a particular storyline in one convenient to read book rather than having a bunch of single issues around and especially for some of the longer multi-book arcs they can be a bit of a clusterfuck to figure out the reading order at times. Plus trades are so much cheaper.

As for the jumping ahead five years idea, I guess I don't really see the point to it. They just did a reset of the universe not long ago and now throwing a story out there like this just seems a bit odd. I'm assuming it's not a permanent story change but it seems like stuff like this is what throws casual readers off. Whatever I guess.

The remaining people buying monthlies clearly fall for these gimmicks. Both Marvel and DC have given up on expanding the actual customer base of readers, instead preferring to target the same group of collectors over and over again.

I really thought the industry would get healthier after the massive success in recent years of the Batman and Avengers movies, but I think there are too many external factors that have permanently handicapped the industry for future growth.

I also hate losing the gutter when reading TPBs, so I still end up buying more floppies from the dollar bins at the quarterly comic show in town. I only buy TPBs when I missed the boat and the floppies are exhorbitantly expensive (i.e. Saga).

So that's where the story went! I was only picking up a couple of titles at the time, and totally ignored the 52 stuff. No wonder I was so confused.. sadly that whole confusion was another nail in the monthly coffin for me. Why do comic companies have to make buying and reading books so difficult? If I read Nightwing, I don't want to have to buy a years' worth of other books to find out what was going on.

Even the 52 series didn't have all the info, they skipped over a ton of stuff, some were in other miniseries, some were hinted at in the regular books. I never did find out why Hawkgirl became a giant or how she went back to normal. But it was a decent, weekly series of books that followed a bunch of side characters and thus had good character growth. Sadly, it's popularity made them think Countdown was a good idea.

So they're basically jumping five years and staying there? After wanting to deage the characters (to the point that they got rid of most of their sidekicks and by proxy, the New Teen Titans)? Or am I misunderstanding what they're doing?

If only they could pull it off as well as Stormwatch did back in the day.

I don't think it's a permanent jump. My understanding is that it will just be a one month event that will explore a "possible" future. Kind of like 2012's Zero Month was a one month event that explored the origins of all the New 52 characters.