The upcoming tie-in to the Supergirl TV series with the digital-first comic book series has an interesting angle to it that was a bit under the radar but gaining a bit more traction among some writers and artists in the past week. The new series, which debuts on January 25th, 2016 through various digital platforms including ComiXology, is being written by Sterling Gates with artwork by Bengal, Jonboy Meyers, Emanuela Lupacchino, and Emma Vieceli.
What DC Comics has done with other digital-first series like Bombshells and Arkham Knight is to bring every few digital chapters together into a print book a few weeks or a month later. With this series, they’re skipping print entirely since it’s not expected to be a big seller to begin with. instead, they’re going straight to a trade for it when it’s all said and done. The series is getting thirteen chapters in bi-weekly form as it does side stories within the world created by the TV show. The focus will be on the DEO and events in National City while including characters like Rampage, Vril Dox, and Psi.
As various writers and artists are noting, the skipping of the print version is part of the trend that we’ll see more and more of in the next couple of years. While no date is set for the trade at the moment, DC Comics gets some good positioning for this series as it’s available through Amazon’s Kindle via ComiXology and the ComiXology platform itself.
The shift to more digital distribution as the primary phase and then slowly pulling back on print is expected to hit with more lower selling titles that can sustain a digital run and find additional life through graphic novel collections.
