Closing Time

Last week ComiXology, the leading distributor of digital comics and the maker of both Marvel and DC’s official digital comics applications, announced their Digital Storefront Affiliate program for brick and mortar comic shops. The idea would be that these brick and mortar shops can add a ComiXology digital storefront onto their websites. From these digital storefronts, customers can buy digital comics and the brick and mortar store would get a kickback. This way brick and mortar stores can help to usher in the digital future that would ultimately kill them. We warned you that something would die this week.

We at Ret-Conned HQ have looked at this and really scratched our heads about it. As Gnome pointed out, it would be no different than an independent book store posting Amazon affiliate links on their site. Sure, they’ll make some money from it, but would it really balance out the business they’d lose from people not going to their shop? The only owners of physical comic shops I’ve seen discussing this in any way are in ComiXology’s official announcement, who of course think it’s a great plan. I’d love to hear what other shop owners think or if the reason that we haven’t heard anything form other owners is because they’ve already decided this is a bad enough idea that it’s not worth commenting on.

Back far enough ago that Ret-Conned HQ remembers the discussion but can’t find a link to it, DC had a big discussion about their events for 2011, namely War of the Green Lanterns and Flashpoint. We swear that as part of that discussion it was stated that these events would actually take place within their respective books without additional mini-series to buy. For War of the Green Lanterns this appears to be the case as that story is jumping across the three GL books: Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Emerald Warriors. Friday DC announced that Flashpoint would not be self-contained within the Flash book, but instead it would be a five issue mini-series with 15(!!!) spin-off mini series plus multiple one-shots. They’ve released a list of 14 of the mini series with each having three issues. For those mathematically disinclined, that’s 47 issues so far announced with more to come. It’s really intimidating to think about. As Kris pointed out, Blackest Night was a huge selling opportunity for DC during 2010. If a Geoff Johns run event provided last year’s Christmas bonus, why not go whole hog on the next one? It definitely has the potential to be epic.