by Paul O’Brien

Welcome to the calm before the storm. Or, in Marvel’s case, the calm before more calm. September will all be about the DC Universe relaunch, and it’s going to be a little while before the news cycle comes back round to anything Marvel have to announce.

In the meantime, this month we have more “Fear Itself”, more “Spider-Island”, and the relaunch of the Ultimate imprint with ULTIMATE COMICS HAWKEYE and (ahem) ULTIMATE COMICS ULTIMATES.

Once again, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 42% to 35% in unit share and 37% to 31% in DC. Needless to say, it’ll be a huge surprise if that holds up next month.

Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

3.  FEAR ITSELF
04/11  #1 of 7 - 135,746
05/11  #2 of 7 - 105,359  (-22.4%)
06/11  #3 of 7 -  99,501  ( -5.6%)
07/11  #4 of 7 -  93,435  ( -6.1%)
08/11  #5 of 7 -  90,914  ( -2.7%)

Levelling out quite comfortably as the series goes on. I’ll come to the performance of the tie-in issues later.