Obviously, I’ve been devoting too much mental energy to DC’s IDENTITY CRISIS lately, but I can’t seem to stop myself from squandering synapses in that direction. At the moment, I’m wondering about it in juxtaposition with that same publisher’s ANOTHER NAIL.
Why, for example, did they publish these two titles at the same time? Both are essentially genre pastiches that rely heavily on Silver Age DC. But only one has gotten a slavish promotional push, that being IC.
I can see a number of reasons why IC would get preferential marketing treatment. It’s in continuity, so it “matters.” It’s got a “real” writer, who actually might have a public profile outside the comics subculture (though I’d never heard of him prior to his work for DC, and I consume a fairly large number of mysteries and thrillers in the average year). And it’s just enough of a (misguided) navel-gaze at comic storytelling conventions as to generate a couple of inches of column space for journalists who might not otherwise care.
So, that explains why IC got the lion’s share of DC’s marketing effort, but it doesn’t clear up for me why AN didn’t seem to get any promotion aside from a few house ads. The first series sold extraordinarily well and was lavished with critical praise. While the central premise isn’t as strong (“What would the world be like without Superman?” obviously trumps “What would Superman be like if he were raised by the Amish?”), AN is still a sequel to a hit with the creative team intact.
Maybe DC figures it will sell to its intended audience without any huckstering. That’s kind of a shaky assumption, given the high cost of individual issues. Given the length of time between THE NAIL and its sequel, I’d think demand would have waned. Memories are short, and DC apparently can’t pimp two big “events” at a time.
So why not push back publication of AN until they could roll it out properly? It isn’t a great book, by any means, but it might have made a tidier profit if it wasn’t treated like IC’s poor relation.
I’ll have comments on this week’s stack over the next couple of days.