Doomed: A Look Back on Civil War
Well the dust has settled (sort of) and we here at the Legion of Doom have had our say on Civil War. While opinions have varied as time passed from issue 1 to issue 7, four of us have chimed in over the past week on how the series wrapped up.
Jean-Claude Van Doom wasn’t a fan, summing up the final issue by saying “…we get a truly fitting book end: an issue that’s all over the place, never quite sure where it’s headed and never transcending to the level of hype, much less approaching it.” Doom DeLuise felt it was “pretty good,” pointing out “DC advertised that Infinite Crisis would change everything. Civil War actually has.” I was somewhat disappointed with the book itself, but pretty pleased with the conclusions, while Fin Fang Doom referred to it “The Ending that Sucked,”providing a laundry list of problems and declaring the book “…didn’t really have any chance to be good.”
So while each of us have our own quite different opinions (some moreso than others), there’s one thing that really can’t be argued with – the sales patterns.
Criticisms lobbed at Civil War here on the net often make the obvious comparison to the last big event, Infinite Crisis. While some have argued that Civil War sales suggest readers are tired of big events, based on Comic Buyers Guide numbers, Civil War’s sales figures actually suggest renewed fan interest in big events if taken in comparison to IC.
Numbers for Civil War #7 obviously aren’t out yet, but take a look at how IC’s numbers from beginning to end compare to Civil War’s:
IC 1 – 249,100
IC 7 – 198,400
Civil War 1 – 260,700
Civil War 6 – 259,300
Those are the month-of statistics. Adding on sales from later months increases the divide for both, but those are arguably not “lost readers,” as they are people picking up earlier issues months later. The best measure for lost readers, by my estimation, would be sales the month the books came out. And as the numbers make very plain, Civil War has far outperformed Infinite Crisis when it comes to retaining readers.
That’s not to say that Infinite Crisis was a failure by any stretch of the imagination, nor would a similar decline in sales for Civil War mark it a failure. I haven’t made a hobby of analyzing sales trends for big events beyond these two, but I’m amazed that even a story as big and well-hyped as Infinite Crisis was able to hold that kind of number. It’s just human behavior to drop off of something as time goes by. I would imagine that Civil War’s retention of readers – particularly when faced with scheduling delays and internet vitriol – is probably fairly unprecedented.
I personally am pretty tired of big events, but as long as they’re going to perform like Civil War has, there are sure to be more coming. While folks at Marvel have inflated the impact Civil War has had on sales – and have rightfully so been called out on it – it’s unfortunate that their exaggerations take away from the fact that financially, Civil War has been a huge boost to Marvel’s sales all across the board.
I think the way the Legion felt about this series at its ending is kind of interesting when taking into account our review of issue four, way back in the second week of the Book of Doom: http://legionofdoom.cheeksofgod.com/?p=210
Fin Fang and I flip-flopped, with him saying it shifted from “awesome” to “bad,” and me saying it went from “boring and over-dramatic” to “pretty good.”
Meanwhile, Van Doom said it stank then and it stinks now. Jim Doom also had similar thoughts then as now, saying that it was good, not great, had its moments, but still had its letdowns.
Interesting stuff.
I also predicted it would be bad before the whole shebang even got under way, so maybe I was jaded from the get-go.
As for the sales figures, I’m not surprised. Marvel has a larger fan base than DC, and Civil War is the kind of event that can grab new readers, whereas IC was more aimed at DC’s existing fan base.
What really disappoints me about the figures is that it’s just another sign that comics readers don’t understand that they vote with their wallets. So many have been bitching about this thing since issue four or earlier, yet so many still bought it. I didn’t. I bought a couple because I had to for reviews here and for my other gig, but none outside that.
But so many did, which only shows DC and Marvel that “Hey, let’s do this a bunch more!” And we’re already seeing that coming into play with a bunch more mega-events in the hopper, and we’re looming ever closer to another escalation age. And we all know how the last one of those turned out.
Here’s to World War Hulk!
And World War Hulk: Frontline!
And World War Hulk: X-Men!
I think that we as internet-comics-junkies overestimate our ability to reflect the general population of comics readers. I think internet fans tend to be more cynical as well as being much more interested in the creators rather than the creation, which allows fan biases to creep into our assessments of books. When we can’t understand why things we dislike keep selling so well, or why things we do like don’t sell well, or why people keep giving Michael Turner cover work, it’s because we think we’re a much more representative sample than we are.
I think the primary point of confusion here is that the people who kept coming back to Civil War didn’t hate it. Sure, some guys buying comics are going to keep picking up things they hate so they can complain about it, but it’s pretty undeniable that there just simply are people who like this stuff.
You know what I hated most about Civil War? I felt forced into buying it, because since I already buy Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Captain America and many other titles on a monthly basis, I wouldn’t have any idea what the hell was going on if I didn’t read the main mini-series. If I read the next issue of Cap and he was in jail, or read the next issue of Fantastic Four and Reed or Sue wasn’t in it, I wouldn’t know what to think.
Best thing to come out of Civil War, though? Punisher War Journal.
Not unlike the Uncanny X-Men or Nova, I feel like I bagged out into space until this Civil War business was over…
Recently bitching about it, I realized I remembered the Crossing, or Heroes Reborn, and how much those sucked, yet the books eventually got better. Just have to ride out the downturn.
[…] The book is an epilogue to Civil War, and we at the Legion of Doom have had plenty to say about that. So, you can imagine that we’ll have plenty to say about the biggest event of Civil War, now that it’s finally happened outside of Civil War. Will this be the moment that spurs Jim Doom to actual violence against his fellow Doomers? Will I continue my unadulterated Marvel-bashing? Will Fin Fang Doom be able to hold off until Saturday to totally trash this book? Will Doom DeLouise drink so much he forgets that Civil War ever happened? All questions will have answers, come Saturday, so come on back and weigh in yourself. […]