They're selling Batman comics at Walmart

Ahem.
FUCK DIAMOND
FUCK MARVEL

they're selling them packaged, which is smarter than trying to sell them individually

good for them, maybe they'll survive as a publisher until the end of the decade

they've been doing it with Marvel book for awhile.

Marvel's doing it, too.
Zig Forums doesn't actually know a damn thing about comics.
It's a revival of an old idea from before the speculator bubble. When I was a wee lad in the late 80s/early 90s I used to buy backissue three packs at Waldenbooks in the mall.

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What happens after

Same thing for me at places like Value City, and the thing is they were still making these multipacks even while DC was selling the 100 page giants, hell 5Below has an entire rack full of marvel and dc ones

They were also selling 100 page Giant editions that were exclusive to Walmart which pissed off LCS retailers something fierce.

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Walmart is already patronized by lower life forms. Buying a comic is hardly worth notice

the general trend for print is lower sales and has been for almost a century at this point in time

they may find that by the end of the decade demand for all print periodicals is so low that even big retailers can't justify the shelf cost of stocking them, which means either price rises well above normal inflation - which probably won't help sales - or returning to niche retail outlets, but probably something more like dollar stores than like an LCS; that would hit print quality and quite significantly, because those outlet chains are really sharp on keeping costs down for themselves which means anybody they're contracting to produce for them does it down to a price of the retailers' choosing

but the way DC's sales were going over the past decade and the fact that from the 1960s to the mid 1990s they were simply a much smaller publisher, in terms of unit sales, than Marvel, reflects an underlying and counter-intuitive lack of public engagement with DC Comics characters and storylines by comparison to the market leading publisher; some of that in the past decade has possibly been caused by the negative perception of DC films and tv shows (more the films if we're honest, though some of the shows have been stinkers too) on the part of even core DC readers, and some of it has been down to ageing audiences for comic books generally and for DC specifically, so getting out into bigger stores is a good thing - kids go there and kids buy comic books in places that don't look like rape dungeons from the outside and also sell candy you can trust - and means that, if things go well they can grow their audience well above the levels the Direct Market could ever have given them (it services between 100 and 500 thousand readers in the US and Canada every year, but it's hard to say how many exactly)

if it works out DC will be leading the return of other publishers to the general retail market, which in turn could slow down the decline of print demand

It seems like they are doing this so they can catch up on the new comics for the 100 page giants

malls are a functionally dead concept

It's true malls are dying, but I doubt they are going to completely disappear.

>DC don't even make 100 page giants anymore, they just pack the old comics and sell them as is

I think it's worth noting that Dark Horse has been quietly side-stepping Diamond and self-distributing to other retailers for a while now, especially with their licensed properties. Anons are always confused because their numbers on Diamond's rankings are always shit but they never seem to lose their position in the market. But in some cases Diamond US doesn't even make up half of the total orders. Diamond US ordered 60,000 copies of Stranger Things #1, but the total print order including international distribution and retail-direct buys was 162,000. You know who ordered most of it? Game Stop, DH cut a deal with them for
a run exclusive variant covers.

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Why are they still so white? This is problematic.

is this even a good entry comic, why not be the first issue in tynion's run and not just a random one?

Because these packs are mostly books they printed too many copies of and need to unload with the occasional 2nd printing reusing interior art that sells to speculators for $20 because they print less than 2000 of them.

Bleeding Cool has a complete list of all 5 packs and the comics inside, Im just to lazy to copy and paste...

bleedingcool.com/comics/the-walmart-report-new-4-packs-dc-supply-diamond-demand/

Hahahaha holy shit the poster is from the General Mills Cereal promotion a few years ago fucking lazy as shit.

Also why are they ending the 100 page giants those things sold extremely well?

From what I gathered they sold really well at some Walmarts but very poorly at others so it averaged out to "just okay" sales in total.

That’s weird I usually go to like 3 different Walmart’s and they are usually cleaned out

>partnering with Game Stop
that's a dumb move there.

It's worked well so far. There's 4,400 Gamestops in the US, that's twice as many LCSes.

The thing is magazines are a rapidly dying business already. Nobody buys shit off newsstands anymore except lunatics getting gun mags.
Even gaming mags and porn mags are all out of print now. Manga which is supposedly so much more popular can't sell in physical magazines. Trying to get floppies in retailers is a losing game, though the 100-page Giants are actually a sort of clever idea by essentially being just advertisements instead of meant to keep you coming back every month.

Digital + TPBs are the future of comics. That's the only way you can make monthlies work outside of a comic store.

This is why I'm astonished that DC or marvel hasn't put a comic reader app on the switch. Considering how many kids have them you'd think they would jump at the opportunity to expand their reader base like that

As far as I know they're still selling them, it's a pretty good deal all in all.