“How do you sell a superhero comic these days?” is a question a lot of publishers and comics retailers are grappling with, but apparently at least in some very specific cases, the answer is “have James Gunn tweet about it.”
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In his tenure as the new co-head of Warner Bros.’ DC movie efforts, Gunn has already drawn a lot of clear lines between the inspiration he wants to take from the comics material and his plans for a whole swath of movies. He’s also made it apparent that if he tweets to his faithful social media audience about those comics, they will go and sell them out sharpish. But it’s not just fans eager to see what’s inspiring Gunn and co-lead Peter Safran’s plans for the DC cinematic universe, apparently—people in general are just hanging on to Gunn’s every comics rec.
As was the case earlier this week when Gunn tweeted about how much he was enjoying Wonder Woman: Historia, the 2021 DC comics series by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artists Phil Jimenez, Nicola Scott, and Gene Ha, as well as colorists Hi-Fi, Arif Prianto, and Romulo Fajardo Jr. While it is being pointed to as an inspiration for Gunn’s plans for a Wonder Woman prequel TV series at Max, Paradise Lost, his recommendation this week came seemingly out of nowhere—and immediately sent hardcover collections of the book out of stock on Amazon.
It’s honestly kind of wild—the same thing happened shortly after Gunn and Safran revealed their revamped movie and TV slate, causing multiple collections to rise up Amazon’s bestsellers lists. But after decades of comics publishers struggling to capitalize on the symbiosis between the source material and the billion-dollar Hollywood era they’ve helped create, it turns out the answer all along was simply to get the people involved actually reading and talking about those comics.
Who’d have thought? Maybe DC should just get Gunn to start tweeting his weekly pull list and see the impact.
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