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Has DC Changed The Comics Industry With DC Super Hero Girls?

Published Mon, 17 Jul 2017 09:00:23 -0500

The DC Super Hero Girls is a publishing line from DC Comics that includes comics, cartoons, books, toys, clothing and other spinoff merchandise, with DC superheroes and villains recreated as school girls and teachers. My girls love it. I never thought there would be a day when they might know more about Katana than me, but there you go.

The Hollywood Reporter (and old friend Graeme McMillan) has taken a look back at the development of the line. Including the numbers…

John Cunningham (another old friend) now DC's Senior VP Sales, knocks out some stats.:

Books shipped to bookstores — DC Super Hero Girls: Finals Crisis was our No. 2 book on units. Our No. 1 book was The Killing Joke. So our list goes, Batman: The Killing Joke, DC Super Hero Girls: Finals Crisis, Suicide Squad Vol. 1, Watchmen, Preacher. And what that number doesn't include is our Scholastic Book Club sale, which is of a quantity which is greater than what I show shipping out of Penguin Random House.

Which means that DC's biggest selling book in 2016 was DC Super Hero Girls: Finals Crisis.

But what about comic stores?

If I look at my direct market sales, Finals Crisis is my No. 19 book, with a number attached to it that makes my eyes pop every time I look at it. We did estimates here about how much we expected it to sell [in comic stores], and it has completely exceeded that.

Unlike similar properties, there's no sense of the series slowing down with subsequent releases.

DC Super Hero Girls: Hits and Myths, which is the second book in the series, was my No. 8 book for [2016 in the bookstore vertical]. There was a number of months' difference, but if you look at the rate, there's no drop-off in sales that we're seeing.

Which may underline and prop up DC's previously mentioned plans for a "brand-new Young Readers' imprint scheduled to launch in 2018."

Could everyone be going back to school? DC's characters, their creators and editors, publishers, distributions, stores… and readers? Time to change the comic book industry one more time.