Tag Archives: Digital Comics

This Week: Digital Flash Back Issues – Wally West #7-12 & Adventure Comics #461-466

DC and ComiXology have added six more issues of the 1987 Flash vol.2 starring Wally West, all at the 99-cent price point.

These issues introduce Red Trinity and Blue Trinity, two teams of ex-Soviet speedsters, as well as Chunk, who would go on to become a regular supporting cast member. Issue #12 begins the Vandal Savage/Velocity 9 story that straddles the transition from Mike Baron to William Messner-Loebs.

70 issues out of 249 (including #0 and #1,000,000) are now available digitally, including the complete first year. Mike Baron’s run is almost complete, with just two more issues to go. It’s not clear whether DC has a regular schedule for these digital back-issues, but the last time they added to this series was January’s addition of #1-6. This suggests that they’ll be adding six issues every few months, starting at the beginning and working forward, filling in around the issues released as part of the Flash 101 promotion last year.

» The Flash (1987-2009) on ComiXology

They’ve also added six issues of Adventure Comics from its 1970s run as an anthology book. Issues #459-466 featured eight Flash solo stories starring Barry Allen. During the heavily serialized Bronze Age, these were throwbacks to the more goofy done-in-one Silver Age stories. I didn’t even know about them until I read one of Mark Waid’s interviews in The Flash Companion, then I started tracking them down on eBay. I’ve read the lot of them, and wrote about the stories here a couple of years back. ComiXology has Adventure Comics #461-466 online at $1.99 each.

Only a handful of the Silver/Bronze Age Flash series are available, most posted during the Flash 101 sale mentioned above.

» The Flash (1959-1985) on ComiXology
» Adventure Comics on ComiXology

New 52 Month 5: Flash still in the Top 10

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Five months into the New 52, the latest relaunch of The Flash is still a top 10 seller, with Flash #5 taking the #8 stop in Diamond’s sales rankings. ICv2’s estimates put it at 71,611 units sold*.

Comichron points out that January is usually low, but this isn’t bad for a January. (via The Beat) And if January is usually down overall, that means the 7.4% drop for The Flash — the lowest drop since the relaunch — may be exaggerated itself. Could the audience for the series be leveling out near 70K, or in the upper 60s? If so, that’s a big win for DC, because the last volume, written by superstar Geoff Johns, stabilized at sales of about 55,000 copies a month.

Digital Difference

Interestingly, while The Flash is holding steady in the top 10 for North American print sales, it doesn’t appear even in DC’s top 10 digital sales for the month. This could mean that digital readers are less interested in the Flash than print readers, but I don’t think the market is quite so simple as having digital readers and print readers. I suspect that most people who buy digital comics still buy at least some of their comics in print form, and with the art being a big selling point for the book, I’d imagine a lot of them are choosing to keep The Flash on the print side of their list.

Numbers

Issue Rank Month Units Sold % Change
Flash vol.4
Flash v.4 #1 4 September 2011 129,260
Flash v.4 #2 5 October 2011 114,137 -11.7%
Flash v.4 #3 9 November 2011 90,417 -20.8%
Flash v.4 #4 8 December 2011 77,336 -14.5%
Flash v.4 #5 8 January 2012 71,611 -7.4%

A few key articles covering past sales (with lots of numbers):

*What these numbers measure: US-only sales, wholesale from Diamond to comics retailers. They don’t count sales through bookstores, they don’t count international sales, and they don’t count how many copies were actually bought and read…but they do measure the same thing every month, which means they can be used to spot trends.

Flashpoint Digital Discount

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It must be a week for sales. ComiXology is holding a 3-day Flashpoint sale this weekend, offering each issue of Flashpoint, its related miniseries and one-shots, and the Booster Gold tie-in issues for just 99 cents. That’s the whole thing for around $30, the cost of two trade paperbacks.

For the most part, I’ve already read what I wanted of Flashpoint. (Well, technically, I’ve read more than what I wanted, for the sake of completeness. I really could have done without Legion of Doom) But I think I may pick up Batman: Knight of Vengeance. From what I hear, a lot of fans agree that it’s the best of the lot.

Digital Comics, Wally West, and the Forgotten Gold & Bronze Flash Archives

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I hope today’s release of Flash vol.2 #2-6 on ComiXology signals the beginning of a complete digital release of the Wally West Flash series. This brings the total to 63 issues scattered around the 249-issue series (including #0 and #1,000,000, both already available), mostly from the Waid and Johns runs, but there are still a lot of gaps…and most of the material is out of print.

»Flash comics at ComiXology.

The Mike Baron (#1-14) and William Messner-Loebs (#15-61) runs on The Flash have never been reprinted in trade paperback, and only the highlights of the extensive Mark Waid/Brian Augustyn run (#62-162, minus a year off for Morrison/Millar) have been collected. A lot of that is due to the changing market during the 1990s. When Waid started, collected editions were rare. Vertigo was seeing some success, but the idea that people would shell out for a whole series in graphic novel form hadn’t yet sunk in. (These were the days when studios weren’t sure there was a market for complete TV seasons on home video, either.) By the time Geoff Johns took over the title, DC was collecting full runs of a few high-profile series, but not all, or even most of their books.

Now, of course, everyone expects most comic books will be collected, and waiting for the trade is actually a workable strategy. But it’s not often that DC Comics goes back to fill in the gaps in their library — at least, not in print.

Gold and Bronze

With any luck, digital releases will also be the way we’ll finally get the Bronze Age and the Golden Age re-released. I’ve grumbled on a number of occasions that DC seems to keep reprinting the same early years of the Silver Age every time they come up with a new format, and never seem to get past the early/mid-1960s on Barry Allen’s series. (Even the upcoming Flash Archives vol.6 brings that series up to…1964.)

I’d really like to see more Golden Age Flash Archives. DC has only gotten as far as issue #24 out of 104, and the first super-villain (The Shade, as it turns out) doesn’t appear until #33…but these volumes seem to come out so rarely that I expect to die of old age before DC finishes collecting the series. In print, anyway. This is one of the reasons I went forward with my effort to hunt down the original comics, or at least as many of the key issues as I could find in my price range. Continue reading →

This Week: Flash #5 & Digital Wally West

The Flash #5

Written by FRANCIS MANAPUL and BRIAN BUCCELLATO; Art and cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL; Variant cover by GARY FRANK; 1:200 B&W Variant cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL

Central City in chaos! Iris West captive in Iron Heights prison! And as Flash tries to deal with all of it, he must also try to save the life of his old friend Manuel Lago from Mob Rule, DC Comics’ hottest new Super Villain!

DC Universe 32pg. Color $2.99 US

Preview at IGN.

DC is beginning to roll out digital copies of the Mike Baron run on Wally West’s Flash series through ComiXology. Issue #1 was released during the Flash 101 sale, and issues #2-6 will be available today. Issues #1-6 feature three stories, each a two parter, with Wally West facing off against Vandal Savage, the Kilg%re, and Speed Demon, and introducing Dr. Tina McGee to the supporting cast.

»Flash comics at ComiXology.

More thoughts on this in the next post…

Also this week: Teen Titans #5, featuring Kid Flash vs. Superboy on the cover.

Edit: And Justice League #5, with the Flash featured heavily in the preview.

DC Comics’ New 52 – Time to Go Digital?

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The DC reboot is here, and it’s time to make some decisions:

  • What new series should I buy?
  • Should I stick with print, or go digital?

I’ve figured out the first question, but the second one — brought on by the fact that DC has finally started releasing digital and print comics on the same day — is a bit trickier.

I love books. Print is familiar. I don’t have to worry about batteries, or restrictions on lending, or format-shifting as technology changes…

And yet…

I’ve got 10 long boxes sitting in my bedroom, and another dozen or so sitting in a storage unit, and I’d estimate that at least half of them are comics that I’m never actually going to read again. Even if I salvage one box worth of kid-friendly books to save for my son, that’s still 9 or 10 long boxes that might as well be filled with junk…and I could really use that space. (Incidentally, I’ve got some trades and stuff up on eBay. Why do I mention this? Oh, no reason.)

Digital files take up a lot less space than physical comic books. Continue reading →