Last week we learned that DC Comics was making the entire run of the Man Of Steel weekly mini-series by Brian Bendis and selected artists returnable for retailers if the retailers upped their orders considerably. The trick is used to inflate order numbers by retailers and ensure that there will be more comics in print for all six issues.
Also it is noted that there may be some problems giving all the different quality artist the time they need to finish the page count that they were given for the project. DC may have had to give pages to others artists to meet deadlines.
Our friends at Bleeding Cool say they have been tipped off by DC editorial sources that the order numbers that DC Comics received were a lot lower than expected. Certainly a lot lower than expected with the Superman 80 year celebration spinning out of Action Comics #1000 with a closing story from the new Superman writer Brian Bendis of Marvel fame.
The Man of Steel series by Brian Bendis just has not excited retailers to provide many copies for their shelves. It could create a low print run for the customer requests or retailers are not sensing much of a demand for the series and it won’t sell in high numbers. As a result, Man Of Steel #1 has probably dropped out of the top ten. Add it all up and you might get 100,000 orders for sale on May 30th.
What this means to the popularity of the Bendis Superman remains to be seen. I have not finished my review of Action Comics #1000 and I will post it soon but I will say that as pleased as I was with most of the Stories in 1000, I was not impressed with Bendis’ story introducing Rogol Zaar the new Superman villain but I reserve my final judgment till I find out more in the Man Of Steel series and regular monthly comics.
While I am encouraged by some of the great stories at DC with story arcs from Scott Snyder, Tom King, Geoff Johns, James Robinson and others the Superman stories and how they develop will be interesting with Brian Bendis running the show. You can bet we will be there for more about the comics you love here at Comics Talk. 🙂 Walt