Rumor: DC Cutting New 52 By 12 Titles, Adding Four Weeklies

With June 2013 being the first month since the launch of the New 52 where DC won't actually publish 52 monthly superhero comics branded with the New 52 logo, a new rumor has surfaced that perhaps DC has come around to one of the criticisms voiced frequently by fans online: that there may simply not be 52 monthly books worth publishing. Their solution, without sacrificing the branding? According to Bleeding Cool, the plan is to cancel 16 titles by this fall and replace them with four weekly titles. This will mean that the publisher will continue to publish 52 actual comic books every month, but they'll do so with forty titles, four of which will publish four times monthly, adding up to 52. "As I understand it, the plan being discussed is to cancel sixteen of the poorer performing titles in the New 52, and replace them with four weekly titles, one for the different families of Superman, Batman, Justice League and Green Lantern, with rotating creative teams," says the report. DC has had more success than has Marvel with weekly comics; both 52 and Countdown to Final Crisis were closed-ended, year-long stories, though, and it's been decades since anyone did a full-length weekly ongoing series. At present, DC has a number of digital-first series that publish three times monthly, with a print edition coming on the fourth week of the month; Marvel will launch a digital weekly titled Infinite Comics in July.