Comics sales
SolitaireRose
Posts: 1,445
The sales figures for August are starting to come out, and despite what Brietbart's "news site" says, record sales are being set with sales to shops up 31% over last year.
DC is leading the pack with their Rebirth selling a LOT of comics. Part of this is another onslaught of #1 issues, but also, the Rebirth did what the New52 didn't: Got people interested in what DC was up to. Marvel, on the other hand, seems to have dropped off after Secret Wars, which is odd to me, since I am liking what they are doing as well. Maybe more people are becoming cheap bastards like me and are just using Marvel Unlimited to keep up with their excessive output.
It's funny that for the last four months since that "news" story saying comics sales are tanking, sales are higher than they have been since 1997 and growing.
Do you think DC will keep up the momentum? I remember that the New52 moved a lot fo comics as well for the first 6 months or so.
DC is leading the pack with their Rebirth selling a LOT of comics. Part of this is another onslaught of #1 issues, but also, the Rebirth did what the New52 didn't: Got people interested in what DC was up to. Marvel, on the other hand, seems to have dropped off after Secret Wars, which is odd to me, since I am liking what they are doing as well. Maybe more people are becoming cheap bastards like me and are just using Marvel Unlimited to keep up with their excessive output.
It's funny that for the last four months since that "news" story saying comics sales are tanking, sales are higher than they have been since 1997 and growing.
Do you think DC will keep up the momentum? I remember that the New52 moved a lot fo comics as well for the first 6 months or so.
Comments
After a few minutes of searching and then perusing the only article I could find regarding comic book sales on their website, the only thing they commented on sales-wise was the huge drop off for a feminist-centric title, Angela: Queen of Hel, which was cancelled after losing 65% of it's sales in only 7 issues. The article also repeated concerns from retailers that were brought up originally by BleedingCool back in January of this year. This was several months before DC's Rebirth was launched. I'm very glad to see this turnaround, driven in large part by DC's recent sales. I expect it will continue for a while. Although some characters aren't really being handled much better at DC than they have been in the past. My personal experience is that I'm seeing less and less output from Marvel that I'm actually interested in buying/reading anymore, other than the occasional omnibus or trades. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but it's probably less about their political science and more about biology, meaning me aging out of the demo they're appealing to. I think there's probably very little overlap between those buying Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur (I stopped at issue 3) and those ordering volume 3 of the Master of Kung-Fu omnibus line, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that you're in that thin margin, Cory.
And yes, Marvel is pushing into new markets because they realize that growth in the direct market is limited and dependent on events more than anything nowadays. Moon Girl sells HUGE numbers through Scholastic Books according the Marvel's press people, and the reason it and Squirrel Girl are still going are because of the sales in those markets.
The demo of comics readers from a decade ago is moving is shrinking, and Marvel actually positioned themselves to have product in the larger markets (libraries, book stores, etc...) started with Quesada coming to power and moving them toward a trade paperback approach rather than the "endless soap opera" approach that dominated the 90's.
And here's the whiny, terribly inaccurate article at Brietbart where the author talked to a single comics shop: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/07/07/marvel-social-justice-insanity/
(By the way, blaming poor sales on an obscure character that wasn't hyped on "feminism" shows me that the author has no facts and an axe to grind)
The WEEK the article was published, Diamond announced that they had their biggest sales since 1997. And sales have gone up ever since.
For ME, the important number is the #300 book and how many copies it sells. Why? That shows the health of the marketplace in a huge way. Back in 2001-2, the #300 book was selling around 900 copies. Now, it sells around 4500 copies. This means that there are MORE people buying a much more diverse stock of comics rather than everything being clumped at the top. A book like Saga is selling better than most Marvel and DC books, and a lower end title like Velvet can be VERY healthy with sales that would lead to cancelation at Marvel.
The comics market is doing better than it has in years. Any shop that isn't doing well...probably should close and go away.
Marvel is VERY smart to be reaching out to new consumers through Scholastic. Hopefully they're ready to play the long game though, instead of simply hyping when they peddle 400,000 copies of an issue #1 through that outlet, though I'm a little surprised they'd be doing a floppy single issue that way (maybe it's a give-away?). I'm much more impressed when an issue #9 is hitting 35k or more. Good on them for trying to get kids back into comics, because they can only appeal to middle-aged men for so long. Expanding their market should be their number one goal, and quality control secondary. As for looking to Huffington Post or Breitbart for comic book sales diagnosis, you'd do better to use a resource like ComiChron.com to get hard numbers and data, not spin. And speaking of "spin," while I frequently read Comics Beat, I'm super happy that you've been turned-on to Ms. MacDonald, because from what I can tell she's probably just the kind of perspective you like.
Of course there's always click-bait central if you want rumors and comics/movie/game news. They already ripped up that silly Breitbart article over two months ago when it came out.
I try to avoid that place though.
My question is how much of the relaunch and alt-cover craze is playing with numbers? If you listen/read Mayo's report you'll see a comic that launches with 100k(+) copies but within in a few months it's dropped like a rock. He'll say something like, "This month the numbers dropped and it also happens to be a month when the variant covers for this title ended." We get new number ones, dozens of incentive varients, they go away, the comic tumbles, it's canceled, and a new number one is launched. Is this really healthy sales?
Obviously I'm pointing the finger more at Marvel here than anyone else. I'm not saying that comics aren't selling well as a whole as the top 300 is selling better. I just think the launch big with variants, cancel, relaunch big with variants, repeat, etc just seems like it would mess with numbers and isn't good in the long run.
'Course, what do I know? I'm just throwing that out there :)
I'm pro comics selling well. Especially when the kids are buying them like crack in the 80s