DC Comics Releases Statement Over Batman # 50 Spoilers

Everybody’s pissed with the recent Batman # 50 spoilers thanks to DC Comics and those fools at NY Times but the publisher has gone into record explaining their actions via an interview with Comicbook.com

Here’s what DC’s senior vice president of sales, John Cunningham stated about the issue.

1. DC Sales strongly advocated getting the news out ahead of the OSD, so that the Moment of Realization did not occur hours before events began. We even did our level best to try and spoil it here on this page over and over again (and failed). The NY Times article was posted here at 630 a.m. PST not out of “Pride” — please — but to get you the information as soon as we could.

2. In the abstract, we believed the news would break on Monday morning, given the arrival time of physical copies in store and the reality that a copy or a scan would end up being passed to uncontrolled comic book outlets (much like Marvel’s wedding issue last week and every other major comic book event in the lat decade).

3. As mentioned here before, any discussion about financial remedies for problematic DC product must occur after the product is on sale.

4. While The Times piece is more fulsome that [sic] some might like, it does not spoil the shock ending of the book for fans. We’re working on getting this posted here for you.

5. I stand by my belief that BATMAN #50 is one of the best single issue periodicals of the last decade, that it is a special moment in comic book history, and that if it’s not the book we (think) we want, it’s the book we need.

There’s some truth to what Cunningham stated and I’d like to think though that it would still gain traction which can be converted into sales. And they were certainly right about the X-Men wedding… well, half right anyway.

This move was frowned upon by a lot of fans including the current Batman writer Tom King and Scott Snyder.