Wednesday is Comic Day!

This week, two comic books came out that could have sold many, many, many copies to people that normally never enter a comic book store. Marvel had Amazing Spider-man #583 and DC had Final Crisis #6. The Spider-man book featured a guest appearance by President-elect Barack Obama and a variant cover. Final Crisis had the "death" of Batman. Marvel cannot be faulted for not getting their story to the press, they certainly did that, and droves of people descended on comic book stores looking for the comic. Unfortunately, they didn't really give retailers enough information when they ordered the book, and they didn't order enough for the demand. My LCS was out barely after opening and had to put a sign on the door saying "We have no Obama books". DC screwed up by running the press story too early. They got the media interested in "the death of Batman" in the context of the Batman RIP story in Batman, that ended two months ago. Problem is - Batman didn't die in that story - because he had to appear in Final Crisis. Thus no press attention to the book that actually shows the death and the corpse.

I talked about these two events with the staff at my local comic store, on Wednesday - they definitely felt like they could have made a lot more money that day. This morning I read retailer Brian Hibbs' latest Tilting at Windmills column, and he makes the same point. Click here to read his take, over at Comic Book Resources.