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DC Comics has announced a new line of digital comics sold as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and the publisher is receiving mixed reactions on social media.
DC Collectible Comics (DC3) will launch Friday with Superman #1, limited to 3 thousand minted editions, which will be sold on the blockchain. A new title will be released each week from either the "Legacy" or "Modern" category, with the former including classic comic issues that could be out of print and the latter including more recent titles. Issues "will feature rare variant covers and grading that physical comic book collectors have enjoyed over the years."
At time of purchase, each DC3 will be randomly assigned one of five levels of rarity: "Common," "Uncommon," "Rare," "Epic," or "Legendary." These will affect the appearance of "Legacy" titles, with "Common" graded copies looking more faded and aged and "Legendary" copies looking more pristine. "Modern" DC3s will feature variants for each level of rarity.
"We want to take the physical, real-world experience of collecting comics that so many of our readers have loved over the years and expand that into a new digital community," says DC senior vice president and general manager Anne DePies. "We want to build that community aspect that everyone has been so proud to be a part of, in our digital ecosystem to make comic collecting more available and accessible than ever before."
DC3 expands DC's already-existing line of NFTs, which included free NFTs given to fans ahead of DC Fandome 2021. More recently, the publisher launched Bat Cowl NFTs on April 26, which gave purchasers the ability to shape the digital comic Batman: The Legacy Cowl #1 through a series of votes. That issue was released today, exclusively to Bat Cowl NFT holders.
For its NFT releases, DC partners with PalmNFT, which claims its proprietary NFTs built with Ethereum are better for the environment than conventional NFTs - which use enormous amounts of electricity and resources. According to CNBC, in September Ethereum "migrated to a system known as proof-of-stake, which swaps out miners for validators. Instead of running large banks of computers, validators leverage their existing cache of ether as a means to verify transactions and mint new tokens. This requires far less power than mining and experts say it will make the protocol both more secure and more sustainable."
Following its announcement of DC3s on Tuesday morning, DC received mixed feedback on social media that seems dependent on the audience viewing the tweets. The company created a DC NFT account in May 2022, which at the time of writing has 1,610 followers. There, the DC3 announcement has been met with hundreds of likes and retweets, most of them positive.
Reactions to the post from the DC Comics Twitter account - which has 5.2 million followers - are very different, however. Replies include several tweets that simply say "no," while others tell DC it "should be ashamed." Others point out the availability of digital comics through platforms like comiXology, which does not depend on blockchain technology.
According to DC, titles including Black Adam #1 by Priest and Rafa Sandoval are among the upcoming DC3 releases. Prices, quantity, and rarity of each weekly drop may vary, but collectors can read purchased DC3s at nft.dcuniverse.com.
These are all the new Batman comics, graphic novels, and collections from DC in 2022 (and 2023).
