I have a guess that one of the reasons that the corporate heads at DC don’t want to make more back issues available to us is that they assume this will force us to buy either copies of these back issues in bookstores or online, thus improving their profits. Maybe others will do that, but I think all of us feel this to be a bit like the drug dealer in the elementary school playground. The first taste is free and you pay for the rest…
For me (and I’d encourage others to do this), I am happy to go on eBay and Amazon and other places (the place I live has lots of used bookstores) and buy any back issues or trade paperbacks related to DC in such a way that DC won’t ever see any profit from it. What I won’t do is buy those comics in such a way that DC gets a dime more of my money. Amazon has a lot of 3rd party resellers willing to sell me old comics. And just yesterday (because you only seem willing to put the first issue of the Dark Knight Returns online) I was able to run to Half Price Books and pick up a pristine copy of that whole collected mini-series for $10 (likely less than I’d pay to buy issues 2-5 online).
I’m not sure if I’m the only one doing this. And if I am, that’s fine. But I hope others feel the same with me. DC wants to give us this service and then not try to use it to get more and more money out of us, that’s fine. But I’m not playing that game. I don’t have to. I might spend money on back issues or collected storylines like Crisis or The Watchmen. But I won’t be letting DC get any revenue from my doing that.
And just in case someone says I’m whining, I really am not. All I mean by this post is to say that there are other ways to get what DC wants us to buy from them. And because DC has decided to try and take our money in this way, they should be aware that while many of us might buy trade paperbacks and back issues, we have avenues available to us that don’t line the pockets of WB and DC Comics.
I doubt this will weigh heavily on their thinking but I decided to raise the point that we have alternatives and I, at least, will use those if I ever need to buy anything from DC Comics. I’m happy to have this subscription. But for anything else, I’ll find alternative (and by that I include both legal/ethical) means to get what I want.
It is quite true that WB/DC gets no profit at all from us buying back issues that’s all profit for you LCS or used book store or eBay seller etc. that is why it makes no sense at all for this service to be used as bait for us to purchase these complete story lines…
It gets a lot of profit from Graphical Novels, they sell, paper or digital.
That is why there was so many number 1 issues in our library before.
With single issues, the comic book store already paid DC for the back issue comic when they ordered those issues several months before the comic actually appeared. They are not returnable. DC gets no additional profit.
DC gets no income from back issue sales but they do rely on the stores who do to buy their new product so it is in DC’s best interest to keep them solvent. Selling back issues is a big part of that since they have a better margin than regular issues and are more easy to judge demand for. One hand washes the other so to speak.
There are also trade sales to consider. DC has made more money off Watchmen collected than they ever made off it when it was released in single issues. Its unlikely you’ll ever see anything with that long of a shelf life on here for more than a month at most.
Honestly? It kind of strikes me as kind o a weak tea moral stance. Worst case, if everyone here does it, DC gets their money from third party sellers instead of direct consumers and is just as happy.
If you really felt strongly about it and wanted to have impact, you’d be better off buying only from another publisher and sending DC corporate copies of the receipts, or get an article written up on CBR and similar sites calling them out…something that doesn’t just move around their source of the same revenue.
Is this post a joke or are you that stupid? Marvel has a more complete library of comics but has a six month delay so they don’t put every comic shop and their comics division out of business? Why would dc do otherwise?