I like DC characters; I just hate DC

So, the DC Retailer Roadshow in New York has just wrapped up and here are some of the big things that were revealed during the presentation to comic book retailers: DC Comics did a little bit of flexing over their sales trends since the inception of the “new 52” phenomenon two years ago and showed a sales chart that drastically spiked after the launch of the “new 52” with a slight dip in sales since last year.  The chart also indicated that there was steady, upward growth after the shock value of the “new 52” dissipated with an upward rising trend over their sales average of 30,000 units per title.  What was interesting was that DC also addressed their infamous quote of “Drawing the Line at $2.99” by admitting that the line isn’t as clear as it used to be. About ~65% of DC’s current titles are still at the $2.99 price point, while Marvel only has ~30% at $2.99. Artist and DC co-publisher, Jim Lee had followed this up with a break down of all the mixed media […]

This is well worth the read. Two particularly interesting key points:

After that, one retailer expressed her concern over the promises that were made by DC two years ago and her difficulty in instilling confidence to her customers with so much inconsistency over creative teams at DC.  Co-publisher, Dan Didio gave a boisterous speech about admitting that DC’s “new 52″ had only been planned up for a first act, and they had all been surprised that the “new 52″ would have garnered so much momentum two years ago.  He also confided that with any raising momentum, there inevitably a decline in momentum and DC is now prepared to unveil their second act.  He also addressed that creative changes are common place in the business of comic books and the seeming severity of it now is only much more apparent due to social media.  Didio’s admission and affirmations had re-instilled confidence amongst the retailers, but only time can officially tell how successful this “second act” will be.

And - and this one is particularly interesting to me:

 The chart also indicated that there was steady, upward growth after the shock value of the “new 52″ dissipated with an upward rising trend over their sales average of 30,000 units per title.

Why is that interesting? Well

Remember that sales chart of all the Batgirls that Saphire-dance, Alex and I did?

The average sales from Steph’s Batgirl run: 29,113

The average sales from Babs’s Batgirl run: 56,900

56,900 - 29,113 = 27,787

So that means that the New 52 Batgirl run has a sales increase of slightly below the average sales increase.

(Also: Cass’s average numbers were better than Steph’s, but came at a period of differing enough sales that I don’t think these results can be applied to it. It’s likely that Cass’s run would have done as well as or better than Steph’s by these metrics, though.)

Now, Batgirl is one of the higher-ranked DC titles, which makes me wonder where they’re getting their numbers from, and further investigation may be required, but you know what?

There is now absolutely no evidence that a Stephanie Brown (or Cass) Batgirl book would have sold any worse than Barbara’s.