Marvel & DC News from Retailer Summit
Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat has a nice breakdown of the various news nuggets that came out of the just-concluded Diamond Retailers’ Summit in Las Vegas. Here are some of the highlights from the two majors:
In addition to Dark Reign, Marvel announced that television ads will run to promote Secret Invasion and The Stand miniseries.
The company recognized the success of its Invincible Iron Man series and has planned one for next May when X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens, joining Wolverine, Wolverine: Origins and Wolverine First Class. Similarly, three new What If ?one-shots will explore fresh takes on major events.
Marvel is gearing up for its 70th anniversary and part of the plans will include a new Marvel Index, a second volume of Marvel’s Greatest Collections and the inauguration of trade paperback versions of their Masterworks, commencing in January and continuing with one title per month.
In storylines, the third Marvel Zombies miniseries will be set in the core Marvel universe and they promised the return of the mutant Psylocke. Teases included Sinister 666, a female Black Panther.
Additionally, they announced new printings of all four issues of their surprise success, Kick-Ass. On the other end of the scale, their adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, will be handled by writer Eric Shanower with art from by Scottie Young.
Hoping not to be outdone, DC Comics wrapped the event with several of their own announcements. Bob Wayne, DC’s Vice President of Sales, mentioned the wild sales success of Watchmen and Absolute Watchmen. He assured the retailers the consignment program which performed well during The Dark Knight’s run would be repeated next year for the Watchmen release. A fifth printing of the Absolute edition was also announced. The international edition of the trade will be available domestically as a Diamond exclusive and a $1.50 facsimile of the first issue will also be printed.
DC Comics Classic Library was the umbrella title given to a new archival series, retailing for $39.99 and series from throughout the years will be included such as the first eight issues of Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing (#20-27).
Diamond will begin carrying for domestic sale the fortnightly DC figure magazines from the United Kingdom. Each issue contains facts about a specific character and comes packaged with a painted metallic figurine. These piecework publications are very popular in Europe and may finally be taking hold in America.
Gene Ha is drawing the cover for the Diamond exclusive edition of Heroes Volume Two.