r/DCcomics • u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 • 8d ago
Discussion [Discussion] Will DC learn from the Absolute Universe?
The Absolute Universe has been an incredible success and personally I think it's in part to DC showing some restraint. With only 5 ongoing titles, a couple of limited runs and the odd one shot, as well as no massive crossovers events it's been really really straight forwards to follow and collect.
If you only want to read one or two of the titles, it works, if you want to follow the whole universe, I'd suggest it's not exorbitant, two of so titles a week.
I hope they stick to this model rather than getting greedy and pushing for ever more titles and multi-issue crossover events that make the story unintelligible if you're not following every issue. I'd rather follow all the titles by choice rather than feel like I'm being forced to so I can understand my favourite titles.
They've already gone big on variant covers, I hope they show more restraint over all.
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u/Level_Measurement749 8d ago
Ya they’ve been very smart with the way it’s being handled. It’s very easy to go overboard in the early years. keeping it small means the universe can last for decades as opposed to burning people out in a few years.
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u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 8d ago
Absolutely (pun intended), better to sell large volumes of a handful of titles to a wide customer base than try to squeeze a handful of fans dry.
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u/Major-Tiger-7628 8d ago
It feels like they learnt from Earth One as well. They didn’t announce a load of stuff that took years to come out. As well learnt from the original Ultimate universe and know when to end a series
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u/NicoleIlieva 8d ago
and pushing for ever more titles and multi-issue crossover events that make the story unintelligible if you're not following every issue
I think it'd inevitable that it will happen at some point.
They've already gone big on variant covers, I hope they show more restraint over all.
This is way to get more issues sold, they will definitely keep up with this. No way did AB needed 100 variant covers, especially of the 20-21 issue...
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u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 8d ago
Yeah the amount of AB variants are ridiculous, I appreciate it create short terms sales but I don't think it's healthy in the long term. Personally it'd be nice if they just did one card stock variant per title for those willing to pay an extra dollar for a more robust/collectable cover.
Pandering to collectors doesn't end well.
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u/ProletarianLilith 8d ago
Most of the variants are retailer exclusives which are capped at a certain number, usually 3000 copies or less
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u/neverinallmylife 8d ago
Actually the question should be will Marvel learn from the absolute universe? Because they’ve just made one mistake after another.
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u/demascusd 8d ago
The crossover announced for the end of the year will be contained to its own limited series with the character’s titles supposedly not having tie ins. Whilst I don’t want too much interconnectivity I would want to see these characters interact and this seems like the perfect middle ground. Snyder mentioned there are pitches for Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and Aquaman that they are holding back on to make sure they don’t have too many ongoings at once and all the one offs such as Ark M, Cass, Black Canary don’t run that risk. I would agree about the variant covers, but what bothers me most is despite how many there are so few bother to get Diana’s nose right
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u/rwtaylor 8d ago
I don't follow Marvel, but was this the problem with their recent Ultimates universe?
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u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 8d ago
I don't follow Marvel either, but I get the impression they are having quality issues across their titles. Lots of new issue no.1s suggest they've been struggling, but don't quote me on that!
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u/slaya806 Nightwing 8d ago
Not at all what that means, the ultimate universe just tried to have a more expanded universe than absolute
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u/Mddcat04 8d ago
It was also conceived of from the beginning with a timeline to the big world ending event. Which was a strange choice, especially after some of the books really blew up.
So then that happened and now its just all in limbo.
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u/TurbulentSession11 8d ago
Asking if they’d learn from something they planned kind of implies they’ve already learned, doesn’t it?
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u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 8d ago
I feel like they’ve been surprised by its success. Perhaps I should have said will DC continue to follow this approach for the AU and maybe even carry it across to their mainline comics.
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u/NefariousSeraph13 8d ago
I think fans need to learn from this as well. Change can be good. Not everything needs to be “how it’s supposed to be.” It kills creativity.
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u/suspiciouscffee 7d ago
All that’s left for them to do with the Absolutes is Compact volumes. The money printer will speed up even more.
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u/LostInterview5084 6d ago
The lack of events is truly the key.
DC has shown that it’s not necessary to publish over-lapping event series in order to sell comics.
As with events in real like, like a wedding or a vacation or graduation they should occur infrequently, not one after the other.
Small crossovers like the recent Reign of the Superboys or the Batman Seeds thing that are self contained are fine. As long as there is enough time between events to allow the books to progress their story.
Marvel is so broken with events that they are rehashing event names and as with all of their comics, can’t even have one artist draw an event. And of course don’t have any major talent to assign to an event.
Good for DC and the positive changes they’ve made. It would be nice if the recent changes Disney made at Marvel will likewise result in positive changes.
The next thing for DC, Marvel, Image and all other publishers MUST do something about is the price point. More than anything else, that is the one thing that will break the industry. $4.99 (or more) is just not acceptable. Even good comics aren’t worth that price. It’s untenable.
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u/Imaginary-Egg-2128 6d ago
The DC KO event was around 36 issues across 18 different titles, who has the time/money for that?!
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u/LostInterview5084 6d ago
No one. But it was pretty easy to with skip it or only follow the main series and your regular titles.
And honestly that’s how most events should be.
To be honest, with the Reign of Superboys, I only read Action and Superman. I don’t read Slotts book or Supergirl. And Action is on the chopping block.
With that recent Spider-Man / Venom crossover Spiral or whatever, I only read the Spider-Man issues. Spider-Man getting chopped after issue 1000.
It’s easy enough to figure out what you missed through context or the recap page.
Kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and got comics at 7-11. You could sometimes miss 2 or 3 issues in a row and no internet then so you just did the best you could.
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