Yesterday, DC announced on The Source that Flashpoint #5 and Justice League, Volume 2, #1 will be released at 12:01 AM on August 31. DC encourages you to "check your local comic book store for any special events that may be occurring." So the post-Flashpoint era begins with a yawn.

Locally, the last Wednesday of August has been a school night for decades, and I'm sure we're not the only area. That means the teenage and younger target audience that DC says it wants will be largely excluded from events that start after midnight in many, many locations. Sounds like DC is after a different audience for this launch.

If DC calculates the kids will just be downloading the books anyway, maybe the company hopes that this stunt will appease the rest of us who like going to comic shops. Most of the comic book readers I know have full-time jobs and the schedule to match. Some will be unable to attend, and others that do will be sacrificing sleep to do so, all for a few books most of them will be having their local comic shops pull for them anyway.

Keep in mind that this is no "Death of Superman" event: it's just an early on-sale date for a book that most Americans are going to completely ignore. But DC doesn't have to pay the employees who are going to hang around for those long hours, so what do they care? No, this burden is on the comic shop owners, very few of which would typically be open after midnight on an early Wednesday morning.

All of these facts seem to indicate that this artificial event is designed to fail. I had assumed that DC wanted comic retailers to be able to compete with Comixology.com, but I wouldn't have expected this to be the way they planned to do it.

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