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Yesterday, Bleeding Cool broke news of a Scott Snyder showrun line at DC Comics, called Absolute Comics, as part of DC All-In.
Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, dc, marvel, MVL, page count
A Campaign For An Accurate Page Count In Solicitations
For years we knew the rules. A solicitation for a comic book that was 32 pages long, meant 22 pages of story, the rest taken up by advertising, editorial, that kind of thing. While a 40 page book meant 30 pages of story. It was easy. Sometimes you might get an extra page of story, sometimes even two. It happeneed.
Then DC brought in the Hold The Line At $2.99 and we knew their page counts would drop to 20. Well most of them, some still had 22 pages of story, they were prepared so far in advance.
In January we pointed out that Marvel would be dropping the page count of some $2.99 books to 20 pages, while increasing others. That kicked in over the last month.
But you only know which comics have been affected after they've arrived in shops. The rules are broken. The rules are gone.
So this is a call, a campaign if you will, for some kind of transparency. The August solicitations will be available soon, and they will all be wrong when it comes to page counts of the actual stories. And there's little or no way to know what the actual page count will be.
It doesn't have to be made available in the Previews solicitation, the Final Order Cut-Off notices (FOC) should be sufficient.
But right now, consumers and retailers aren't being given the relevant information about the comics being ordered. A simple "how long is the story" line should be sufficient. But it's time for people to know what they're buying, in amount if nothing else.
Neither Marvel and DC chose to comment when approached today. Maybe another publisher would be interested in taking a lead when it comes to transparency of story content in the comics they are soliciting?
CAPCIS are watching. And counting.
Say, anyone fancy setting up a Facebook group? That's what the cool kids are doing these days, right?
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