DC Comics returns to Wednesdays: After four years, we know when DC will restart shipping comics on Wednesdays

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Following through on the most well-received announcement at February’s comics trade show ComicsPro, DC is moving back to Wednesdays as its comic book release day this July, with the first issue of event series Absolute Power being the first 'new' Wednesday comic from the publisher.

The return to Wednesdays brings DC back in rhythm with the rest of the comic book industry, which has kept the mid-week day as its primary release focus in the U.S. comic book market since the mid-1990s, when Diamond Comic Distributors became the de facto primary distribution agent of the industry after a number of exclusive deals with the major publishers at the time. One of those companies was DC, but in May 2020, DC broke with Diamond in a surprise move during the early days of COVID shutdown, forging a new relationship with Lunar Distribution (and, initially, a second company, UCS Comic Distributors) and shifting its release days to Tuesday in the process.

Related: DC makes another big comic store distribution move, and now has three Direct Market distributors

The Tuesday move made some sense from a publishing standpoint; outside of comics, the majority of bookstore on-sale dates are on Tuesdays, and moving comic and collected edition releases to Tuesday brought DC in line with the non-comics publishing industry. However, the discrepancy with the rest of the comics publishing industry proved to be a headache for comic retailers, who were suddenly faced with two separate on-sale days every week (and two different days to file final order numbers to distributors, as well), with many fans similarly upset at the concept of “New Comic Book Day” becoming two different “New Comic Book Days.”

As noted above, DC announced that it would be moving back to a Wednesday release day at ComicsPro this year; the cheer from the assembled audience of retailers was a loud, genuine sign of appreciation at the decision to undo what some had seen as an earlier mistake.

Absolute Power #1 will go on sale July 3, 2024… which is, of course, a Wednesday.

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