If are just joining us, we are breaking down some of the must have things to prepare yourself for DC Rebirth which kicks off in just a few weeks. Yesterday, we took a look at some of the plot points and the list of all the titles. Today, we round out the list with some of the most important things.
3. A Bigger Wallet (Maybe?) and a Calculator
One of the most hyped parts of the Rebirth news coming from DC has been the price point of the new titles. DC has stipulated and underscored that the price will be $2.99 uniformly across their entire line of offerings regardless of how often a title is published and regardless of title length. So, the twice monthly Batman will be $2.99 per issue. The once monthly Batgirl will be $2.99 per issue. And the oversized DC Universe: Rebirth Special #1 will still be $2.99. It sounds like we’ve heard this before from DC…
But this $2.99 price point might be a little bit deceiving if you do not look carefully. The concern here is not that the price will eventually creep upwards as we saw with the original “Drawing the Line” days or that we’ll see certain issue with more pages sell at higher prices as we’ve seen with the last few years of the New 52 era. Instead, the concern here is that depending on what you buy per month, you may end up paying more money as many series are now publishing twice monthly rather than just monthly.
For example, the $2.99 price for Batman #1 in June 2016 will be cheaper than the $3.99 price for Batman #49 in February 2016 or the $5.99 price for the oversized Batman #50 in March 2016. However, when you consider that you will begin to get two issues of Batman each month once Rebirth begins, that price becomes $5.98 per month rather than $3.99. Now, you will probably get more content overall for a better price given that the number of pages you’ll get for $5.98 in June will be more than the number of pages you got for $5.99 in March. But, you will still end up paying more overall on a monthly basis to keep up with a single title once Rebirth starts even if you are getting marginally more for your money. So, in order to find out if Rebirth will actually save you money for the comics you buy with the cheaper price point, you’ll have to consider the total amount you spend to read the comics you like now and compare that to the same total after Rebirth begins.
A few things become clear once you begin doing this:
- If you only buy monthly comics, you’ll come out cheaper.
- If you only buy twice-monthly comics, you’ll spend more.
- The more TBU comics you buy, the more likely you are to come out cheaper.
- DC is probably hoping you won’t do all of these calculations anyway.
But, here at TBU, we want to help you figure all of this out, not as a way of either encouraging or discouraging you from purchasing whatever comics you might be interested in once Rebirth starts, but as a way of making sure you know what to expect going into things.
4. An Open Mind
This may be one of the most important things you’ll need to survive Rebirth. There are going to be a lot of things happening. Some of your favorite old things may be coming back. Some of your favorite new things may be retconned. Some things may take some time to figure out if they even make sense. You may be really excited about the involvement of some creative teams (Geoff Johns on the Rebirth title and Scott Snyder on All Star Batman are my favorites) and you may be really skeptical about some creative teams (I’m looking at you Scott Lobdell on Red Hood and the Outlaws). We’ll know more and more a little bit at a time as we go through the next couple of months and a lot of it may be difficult to take in even as other things are very exciting. But, at the end of all of this, I’m optimistic about what Rebirth will bring, and I hope that this guide has given you all the information you need to survive Rebirth as we get into it starting in a few weeks.
Stay tuned in the coming months as not only will we be reviewing these titles, but we will also be highlighting some of the changes in continuity as the first issues being to release.
