2013 Comic Book News Archives

February 12, 2013: DC Look at More Superman in 2013

Action Comics #20 ComicBookResources.com spoke with DC Comics SVP of Sales Bob Wayne and SVP of Marketing John Cunningham about the sales statistics for January 2013, and where things are headed for the remainder of this year, especially in regards to Superman and the upcoming "Man of Steel" movie. Here's a part of the interview...

    Let's look forward a bit because it seems like aside from more Justice League titles coming out, you've got a lot more Superman stuff on the horizon. The Free Comic Book Day special leads to Scott Snyder and Jim Lee's Superman book. There are new teams hitting the core titles. Traditionally, Batman has been a much bigger seller as a franchise. Are you looking for a way to raise the Superman titles on a different platform with a movie out this year?

    Cunningham: When we think about movie tie-ins, for the most part what we think about is graphic novels because of their widespread availability and the fact that we've been able to build really successful sales there off the Chris Nolan Batman movies and even "Green Lantern" to a good extent. Our book program around "Green Lantern" sold a lot of books. Bob and I were having this discussion earlier this week in that the key difference with Superman is that the last time we had a Superman movie with "Superman Returns," I'm not sure we had that aggressive of a backlist for Superman as a character. But in the last few years between the "Superman: Earth One" graphic novels and Grant Morrison's "Action Comics" and "All-Star Superman," we have a really strong Superman backlist that we just didn't have in 2007 that we can now market off of. So for us, that's going to be the big focus of how we're going to take demand for Superman and feed it back to the public.

    That's not to say that the periodical part won't succeed as well. If we're looking at the January performance on the charts where you see Batman books doing well and Avengers books doing well at Marvel, I don't think that's such a surprise given the movie landscape of last year.

    There's also a new "Adventures of Superman" digital series that you just announced. We've talked in the past about things like "Smallville Season 11" and "Batman Beyond" being a good bridge for more casual fans who may not go to comic shops but do have iPads and such. This new series seems more in like with the "Legends of the Dark Knight" Batman digital comic. Does that release have a similar broad appeal? Will this Superman book bridge that gap?

    Cunningham: I guess the answer to that is that we're still trying to find that out. I think there's a lot of experimentalism in what we're doing here in the best possible way. I really don't know how comfy I am talking about whether or not that tie-in will draw those same kinds of readers.

Read the complete interview at the CBR website.



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