fubarthepanda wrote:
indy81000 wrote:
I wonder if DC is going to stick with the $75 Silver Age titles from now on. In other words, is this it for Golden Age Archives?
I expect we'll see more Golden Age books, but they probably won't be double-sized due to the restoration costs.
Given how well Batman Volume 8 performed (1660 units between June and July) compared to other recently released Archives, I have no doubt that we'll see more Golden Age books.

I can offer a hypothesis regarding the recent tilt toward Silver Age / Bronze Age books in the DC Archives (and, by extension, to Bronze Age books by the Masterworks). I think it comes down to a matter of budget.

My caveat: To illustrate my hypothesis, I'm going to draw simple numbers from the air to represent reality rather than use a bunch of x's and y's and make peoples eyes glaze over any worse than I usually do . I'm not saying these are the real numbers or even numbers in the same ball park as the real numbers. Reality is really complicated sometimes. I'm just trying to keep this simple.

Let's assume that it costs $100 to prepare an Archive using material that has already appeared as a Showcase Presents, and it costs between $150 to $200 to prepare Archive material that has never been previously reprinted (i.e. Golden Age material) to restore it for publication. And we'll assume that the Collections Division has a budget of $1,100 for the 2012 production year.

There's all sorts of combinations we could come up with, but we'll assume the Collections Division plans to do 5 Archives of previous Showcase Presents material (at $100 each to prepare, $500 total), and 4 Archives of never-before-reprinted Golden Age material (at $150 each to prepare, $600 total). By a remarkable coincidence, this mirrors the original 2012 distribution of DC Archives, not counding MAD.

Along the way it turns out the Golden Age books are going to cost $200 each to prepare. To stay within budget, one of the Golden Age books gets dropped, and the line-up now sees 3 Golden Age titles ($200 each to prepare, $600 total).

Come to the 2013 production year, and let's assume the budget gets cut. The economy is bad, the company is cutting back across the board. The budget is now down to $900. So, with limited resources, you focus on producing more books with the cheaper-to-produce repackaging of Showcase Presents material rather than fewer books with the more-expensive-to-produce Golden Age material. The expanded size and higher price-point offset each other to keep your budget in line. You front load the lower-cost material in the line-up, giving you time to work on preparing the Golden Age material. Shifting things around, you produce 8 Archives, the same as the previous year, only this time with a distribution of 7 volumes of repackaged Showcase Presents material and 1 volume of Golden Age material.

As a good manager, you hope that the budget cut is short lived and you get additional resources back for the 2014 production year to publish more books and cover a greater variety of eras. In the interim, you've kept the line alive, you've kept your staff working, and (hopefully) you produce some books that people will enjoy reading.

The Collected DC Universe Website!

Your one-stop resource for information on all the various collected editions produced by DC Comics, spanning the decades from the Golden Age to The New 52 Era: Archives, Absolute Editions, Classics Library, Omnibus, Showcase Presents, and more!
Last Edited By: Matthew McCallum Nov 13 12 8:10 PM. Edited 1 times.