Strong Start for DCYou

The new DCYou launched in the comic books in June 2015, with a batch of free sneak peeks released earlier in May. It's a soft relaunch of the New 52, with several books carrying directly over into DCYou following Convergence, but lots of other books are starting up and there's a new freedom of continuity across the whole DC Comics line.

I have been very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the books in the DC You. I've especially enjoyed all the books in the Superman family, both Justice League and Justice League of America,  and some of the more unique additions to the line including The Omega Men, Prez, and Martian Manhunter. (You can get recaps of all the books at the DCR podcast.)

But it's not just me reacting positively toward these books. I decided to analyze the comic book reviews thus far, comparing the DCYou reviews to those of non-DC comics in the month of June.

Compiling all the June comic book reviews from IGN, I found 16 reviews of DCYou books and 14 reviews of other books. On a 10-point scale, the DCYou books averaged 8.5! The non-DC books only brought in an average of 7.6. The standard deviation of all the scores was 1.0, so DC brought in ratings roughly one standard deviation higher than the competition. That's impressive! And in fact, only one DCYou book (Batman Beyond) scored lower than the overall IGN average of 8.1.

• IGN DC average: 8.5
• IGN Non-DC average: 7.6

 I wanted to corroborate these very positive findings so I went to ComicVine. They reviewed 10 DCYou books and 26 non-DC books in June. And although the DCYou books got high marks (4.2 out of 5 stars, with no book receiving lower than a 4), they were basically the same as the non-DC books (also 4.2 average). So basically ComicVine wasn't especially helpful because they give almost everything a 4 out of 5, and they never gave any 1's or 2's at all in June. But we can at least say that the DCYou books reviewed just as well as the competition.

So overall, DC should be fairly happy with the start of DCYou because the fans and critics seem happy with the new direction. I know I'm definitely looking forward to a batch of July books from DC, and I'll also be curious to see if the DC June sales are as strong as the reviews.