DC and the Villain Month Problem

I spent a lot of time trying to gather information from you guys regarding DC’s Villains Month offerings. Finding out what you wanted and what you didn’t want. Even putting them into the computer took a while because I had to adjust subscriptions, add requests and such. It means nothing to you, but it took quite a while per person. Then I went over the numbers agonizingly because my DC order was $5000 more than normal. Do I really need this many of this and that. Back and forth before finally committing my order to DC.

Because of the long lead time to make the Special 3D Covers, DC had to set their print runs well before they even offered the books to us. They had 4 roadshows where the heads of DC spoke to retailers to try to get us to order lots of the books. They were trying to sell the sizzle of how cool the 3D covers are. Someone made a checklist and I ran with it. Doing it for the New52 was very successful, so why not try it again.

Well, apparently DC underestimated what we would order. While on vacation, word of severe allocations on titles came out. On Tuesday, Dan DiDio said, via a retailer email, that allocations would be between 50 & 100%. Instead of even looking at our order numbers, they just went off of our aggregate numbers for the parent titles (Justice League, Batman, Green Lantern)for the last few months.  On Friday (while still on vacation with spotty internet) we got our final numbers. Here they are:

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Every red number is a problem for me. That means I don’t have enough coming in to cover requests. Now in some instances I might be ok. Every hold for a parent title may not be accurate for the villain title. I doubt every person that gets Justice League actually will want Lobo or Dial E. Every JLA hold may not want Killer Frost or Shadow Thief. But I am willing to bet that every Green Lantern Hold will want Relic and Sinestro.

The reason the number of initial numbers and holds are close in some instances is that I had a lot of requests after initial orders were submitted. I hadn’t even created the complete set promotion before that. For the most part, I tried to base my order on my regular holds for an issue. How many people would want First Born that weren’t already getting Wonder Woman. 19 people adding full sets messed up some of my numbers. But my numbers became moot when they had to allocate. I am only getting the numbers I ordered on 5 issues.

I am going to be short on 25 of the 52 titles in September. Some a little, some a lot. But even 1 copy is a problem for me. Friday they announced 2D versions of the books. So that will help some. But the entire promotion of these books was based on the cover. “The covers are so cool!” was all we were hearing from DC. Nothing about any of the contents of the books. Just how cool the covers were. Even in the email telling us how screwed we were Jim Lee had this to say:

“It’s very exciting to see how much interest there is in these 3-D covers, which are latest in a long line of innovations from DCE, like the fold-out poster in SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #1 or the die-cut covers from the Death of the Family issues,” said Jim Lee, DC Entertainment Co-Publisher. “Our goal every September has been to create great, new ways to draw attention to our entire DC universe line and the reaction to Villains month capped by the launch of our first universe event ‘Forever Evil’ has been just incredible.”

So they are excited about creating interest in something that they failed to meet demand on. I will not have shelf copies for half of the issues and another 19 will only have single digit copies on the shelf. After all of their hype, they failed to create enough product and now I am left holding the bag. Luckily, I should completely sell out of every book I get. But leaving people wanting more is not always good.

Now, they are doing 2D regular covers for all of these books. They are making them returnable at a future date. So I able to order them to have them on the shelf at the same time the 3D books come out. But which customers are going to want these? The whole point was the super cool covers. And the 2D ones obviously don’t have them. Now they are nice and will let me return them “at a future date”, but I still have to pay for them when they arrive. I am having to order them today, 3 days after they announced them with zero time to see what my customers want.

They are also offering us a “One Time Only Print to Order complete set of 2nd prints that will arrive in December, but they need our final orders today. Well, without being able to talk to anyone about it, I am comfortable ordering zero.

Now, I understand the problem DC had here. Because of the production involved in making the special covers, they had to set the print runs long before getting orders from us. They apparently estimated very poorly (how am I getting more copies of Man Bat than Harley Quinn?). There is nothing I can do but complain a bit and let you know exactly what’s going on. Why they didn’t ask us for numbers earlier, I have no idea. I realize that they are looking very bad here as well. But this is going to have a lasting effect on me. I’m not going to cut my orders on what I think I can sell, but you won’t see any more checklists from me. You won’t see me standing by them during their creator shuffles anymore. They’ve made a big promotion into a headache. I won’t let them do it to me again. I don’t know what tey have planned for next September, but they are going to find retailer response to be poor. Once bitten, twice shy.

If you normally get, say, Justice League and don’t want the tie in issues, please let me know. If you want the 2D covers instead, let me know. This is a headache and I am going to try to cover things as best I can, but I can’t make books appear like magic. And getting them from other stores is unlikely because we are all in the same boat. We’re getting what we’re getting no matter what we ordered.