Change Is A Sound

According to DCWKA, DC is canceling Tiny Titans.

To elaborate, DC is canceling one of the only truly all-ages comics in the business and one that used its intellectual property broadly, introducing readers of all ages to characters taken from the entire DC universe, often represented in canonical forms but also making sure to include more recent characters like Cassandra Cain.

Without checking the pull list that I share with my little girl, I’m pretty sure it’s the only DC comic that she reads right now.

Assuming for the purposes of this post that DCWKA is correct and it is, in fact, DC canceling the book and not Art Baltazar deciding not to continue, that means that the last non-licensed property in the Johnny DC line is gone. The remaining comics are all based on cartoons which do not feature DC heroes.

Tiny Titans is one of the few comics which, as a parent, I knew I could rely on every month to offer fun, entertaining content which was also age-appropriate and awesome. Seriously - comics fans of any age who don’t like Tiny Titans likely hate fun and life, probably in that order.

More importantly for DC, it was a gateway book - a book that parents could buy their kids and hand to them without reading it or being concerned about whether Starfire is dressed like an especially immodest stripper or if it contains graphic violence (depicted in, for example, Green Lantern books). It introduced kids to DC characters across a broad spectrum of titles, helping them learn who the characters are so that when they began buying titles in the DCU proper, they knew who Cyborg and Starfire and Cassandra Cain are, as well as Robin and Batgirl and other, more widely-known characters.

While Tiny Titans was an awesome comic on its own, the larger business idea behind it was getting kids accustomed to the DCU and how it works and who’s who. It was, from a business perspective, a brand-building tool. With something like that, it doesn’t matter if it makes money as long as it doesn’t hemorrhage cash. It is, in the parlance of business, a loss leader - it is a product or sale or price strategy which exists to draw people in and get them to buy other stuff, or to build the business.

Back in college, one of the jobs I held was working at Office Depot making copies. Office Depot did cheap copies - 100 double-sided copies on 8 1/2 x 11 paper ran $3.50 plus tax at the time. We did church programs, flyers, whatever. If someone needed a copy or two, there were the self-serve machines. Anything bigger, we ran on the monster Xerox POS 9000s (note: not an actual Xerox model) that were forever breaking down and making us jerry-rig solutions that would hold until we could get the non-weekend service call rate on Monday morning.

On a slow day, we could turn around 100 copies for someone in about 5-10 minutes, assuming nothing went wrong. We encouraged them to browse for a bit while we ran their job, and let them know when it was done over the intercom. Generally, when they returned, they had a basket. Pens, Post-It notes, a notebook, etc. Simple things, small things, but things they remembered they needed to buy while their copies were being run - or that they picked up as an impulse purchase.

On busier days, that turnaround time could increase to 20 minutes or so - not long enough to go elsewhere, but too long to stand at the counter.

None of this was some calculated plot on our part as people making copies - that’s just how long it took to get a job done and throw the next one in. I think everyone who worked there eventually timed the machines to figure out how long each one took to make a copy, and most of us timed how long it took for single and double-sided copies at every paper size we offered so we could tell people how long it would take with a fair degree of accuracy, assuming nothing broke down and all we had to do was add paper.

But the fact of the matter was that making copies took time and it got people into the store for something that wouldn’t take too long, but would take enough time that picking it up later wasn’t sensible.

And they bought stuff.

Presto. Office Depot lost money on the copies, but was able to sell higher-margin items.

And that’s the point of a loss leader.

Even the regulars would buy stuff - people who came in every Saturday night to do their church programs would buy things. People who came in to get fliers done needed rubber bands or time cards or whatever.

And that is the same way you think of a comic like Tiny Titans from a business perspective. You don’t consider it as a revenue stream - any revenue it generates, any costs it offsets are incidental. You chalk it up as a business development expense because you aren’t selling a comic like Tiny Titans, you’re creating a customer. Anything else is gravy. It’s a good comic? That’s awesome. It pays for itself? Fantastic.

But at the end of the day, the point isn’t the comic, it’s the customer that the comic is developing.

In a sensible business analysis, everything else - costs included - comes second to that, particularly when it’s creating a customer at such a young age and the potential lifetime revenue from that customer is so significant.

And canceling a title like that? Cuts off every single one of the revenue streams it was creating.

Here’s what my little girl will take away from DC’s decision: BOOM! publishes kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Image, of all publishers, is making kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Indie publishers creating titles like “Scratch 9” and “Princeless” obviously want her as a customer.

But DC? DC is canceling one of her favorite books. Why should she care about the larger DCU? It’s too “mature” (read: violent and sexualized to pander to some men) for her to read right now.

I don’t know whether she’ll still read comics in five years, much less ten, but I do know that it’s unlikely that she’ll be reading a DC book at any point in the next few years because the content simply isn’t appropriate.

But I also know that she’ll be conditioned by the market, and that in those few years when she can’t read DC titles due to their “adult” nature, a number of other comics publishers will clearly say that they want her to read their books, and that they want her business and value her as a customer as she is.

They won’t ask her to overlook costumes or characterization or stereotyping. They’ll tell her good stories that she enjoys and that don’t rely on objectifying a gender. She’ll get used to publishers telling her that she is important to them because they will tell her stories that don’t depend on sex or violence to make a point.

And by the time she’s old enough to read a DC comic again? I don’t know if she’ll care about the stories that DC is telling, particularly if those stories are the ones we’re getting right now.