The Evils of Titan

Wow I've been gone from this a while (lots of uni work) but I was drew back when I saw the announcement of a JLA Collectors' Edition from Titan. Not only content with stealing the success of Panini's Batman Legends, Titan are now attempting to launch their own successful run on the UK market. Launching shortly are both Superman Legends and JLA Legends. I've never thought Legends was an entirely appropriate title anyway, seeing as it doesn't really convey much. The fact that the stories being printed are far from legendary negates the whole concept entirely. What Titan have failed at is establishing a good selection of material. They seem to want to be up to date printing entirely new stories some of which are so delayed that they mess up their own title. Where Panini succeed is they print comics from 2-3 years ago. No comic (expect a Kevin Smith one) is ever delayed that much so they can churn out the material with no worries. Anything they do print that's recent is generally a mini series, or a self-contained arc. Titan have already reached issue 4 of All-Star Batman and Robin and issue 5 isn't even out yet. How they will deal with #4's 6-issue pull out spread is also anyone's guess. Well we'll see on Thursday.

Collectors' Edition has always referred to the comic's goal to present material worth collecting. Not only modern stuff but classic comics. Under Panini's banner BL displayed a nice selection of the biggest modern tales along side the biggest classics, as well as rarer ones. Titan have 3 stories, All-Star is delayed (and a load of rubbish), Batman is only a few months behind the US and Batman/Superman is an obvious way to attempt to gain Supes fans. Incidentally this is their next CE. Well hey! Whaddya know? Now, I'm a massive Supes hater, so I obviously want this to fail, and I have little doubt that it won't. Superman isn't designed to have a UK following. I don't know whether he has held a UK comic book but if he has it was an obvious failure. SL will supposedly print All-Star, For Tomorrow and Last Son. Any Superman fan is likely to have all them anyway.

JLAL (god that sounds awful) will likely print the only-up-to-issue-6 JLA series, JLA: Classified and possibly Grant Morrison's realaunch from a few years ago. Which is stupid, they could get classics in ther. Still it sounds a lot better than Superman does.

The problem with all this is that WH Smith will be turned into a comic shop. Some may argue this is a good thing. Me, I see it as flooding of the market. Panini has 7 CEs plus Ultimate Spider-Man/X-Men. Titan will have 3. That's 11 comics. £2.60 a piece for Titans, £2.50 for Paninis (x2 for Spidey). There aren't many people who usually buy the CEs who could afford that. A lot of buyers of US comics probably don't get that many a month. Sure they are more expensive, and a CE has more stories, but they are 2 years old. This will cause people to pick and choose. One company will lose money another will possibly gain. Both could lose. It's speculation but this could burst the bubble.

Evil might be a bit strong but I don't like this at all.