Did DC screw themselves?

As most of you know, I have a very small pull list. When 52 ended, I switched over to Countdown. However, the price is higher, instead of the 10 a month that I spent on 52, I am now spending 12 a month. Now in the grand scheme of things 2 dollars isn’t all that much, but it’s a portion of the comic book budget.

To make room for the added expense, I decided that I was going to have to drop a book. To be fair, I would drop a DC book. There’s no reason why Marvel or any of the indies should pay the price. I decided on dropping The Flash. Unlike others, I don’t see Marc Guggenheim as the savior of the title (link: AboutHeroes.com) and therefore it was expendable. However, shortly after I made that decision, I found out that Justice League of America and Justice Society of America were going to have a crossover (link: DCComics.com). I don’t like multi-title crossovers. It feels like they are trying to trick me out of more money when they do things like that. So I dropped two more. That left me with just Checkmate and Countdown.

Then I found out that Checkmate would be crossing over with The Outsiders (link: DCComics.com), a book that I have no intention of buying. Goodbye, Checkmate.

I will probably pick up the JLA/JSA/LSH and Checkmate/Outsiders crossovers when they come out in trade because I am interested in those particular stories, but by making it so easy to make the decision to drop those individual titles, I have to wonder if DC didn’t screw themselves out of a lot of potential revenue.

Not just from me, because the one thing that I have learned from doing this podcast is, I am not alone. No matter what I think, there is another comic book fan out there that thinks like I do. No matter what I do, there is another comic book fan out there that will be doing that same thing that I do. I used to think that the way the Nielsen ratings are compiled (link: NielsenMedia.com) was a load of garbage, but the more I interact with other podcast listeners, the more I am seeing that they make a lot of sense. I’m still not 100% convinced that there isn’t a better way of compiling the data, (link: NielsenMedia.com) but I can definitely see that the basic concepts behind it are valid.

Regardless of whether I am part of a small number of crackpots or the vanguard of a new revolution, the question must be asked: With all of the integrated storytelling that DC is doing where it is increasingly obvious that reading peripheral titles is quickly becoming a necessity and not an option, are they screwing themselves?