Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Didio Decided to Fire the Outsiders Instead of Himself

In January of 2010, DC Comics co-publisher Dan Didio took over as writer of The Outsiders series, a team of superheroes who do not fit the norms of the mainstream superhero community, namely the Justice League of America. You can no longer argue with the hard facts that Didio's run was a complete and total failure, even if he was too proud to admit it. 

In March 2009, before Didio took over, The Outsiders had monthly sales of roughly 28,000 copies, which was a typical sales figure for the title.

In the wake of Batman's apparent death in Final Crisis, a new team of Outsiders was created, and the title was "relaunched" to great success. Sales for the November release jumped to roughly 51,000.

Fast forward to June 2010, where the book first had to start relying solely on Dan Didio's storytelling skills, and you saw sales of a mere 18,000 copies.



As of December 2010, sales had plummeted all the way down to 13,000 copies, and now DC Comics has just announced that The Outsiders will officially cancel the title after Issue #40 in May.

Wow.  

So Didio not only lost every single one of the new readers who jumped on board for the post Final Crisis reboot, he's also lost more than half of the traditional fan base as well, who you used to able to count on to pick up the title month in and month out.

When Didio was first doing his press tour regarding his taking over of The Outsiders title he said "If I felt that the book was not achieving, I would not be on that book. As simple as that. I'd cancel myself."

Well, it seems that once again, Dan Didio has lied to the loyal fans of the DC Universe. The book did not achieve.  He didn't cancel himself as writer. He didn't bring in a qualified team.  Instead he canceled the entire book.  We feel sorry for the 13,000 of you who are die hard fans of The Outsiders and hung in there with this title while Dan Didio had fun pretending he was a writer.  Hopefully, he has now realized that he is not one.

5 comments:

  1. while i didn't read the book, i think your "facts" are off. didio took over the book in january 2010 when the sales were around 22k. and you conveniently forgot to mention that the sales spike of november 2009 was due to a blackest night ring promotion.

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  2. I did mention that he took over in January 2010. The ring promotion could have been more clearly pointed out, but we did try to acknowledge that those sales figures were due to all of the hype surrounding stories outside of the Outsiders comic at the time. I really don't think Didio should be held accountable for losing those readers, as they were somewhat of a one time promotional bump. The ring promotion was great for what it was, and should receive nothing but praise from a promotional and business standpoint.

    Historically though, the Outsiders title itself has had a fan base of around 28,000 give or take. Even if you want to say he started with a 22K base, he still lost a huge portion of those readers. And they weren't the Johnny come lately fans either -- Didio lost the core base Outsiders fans. You just can't do that. Didio did, and he lost them a long time ago. Would another writer have been replaced sooner? We will never know for sure, but its hard to think of a reason why he wouldn't be -- unless he was the boss.

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  3. Deep in the dark I don't need the light
    There's a ghost inside me
    It all belongs to the other side
    We live, we love, we lie

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