The News Blog of Comics Culture
The AGE OF ULTRON crossover anchored Marvel’s line in April, with tie-in issues spreading across a range of titles. As often happens when event titles are underway, it’s a quiet month for new releases, with the notable exception of the THANOS RISING origin mini. And of course, as the months roll on, we’re getting an increasingly clear picture of how the assorted Marvel Now launches and relaunches are working out.
David Carter is a librarian and a bestseller list maker. Every Friday morning he goes to Amazon an makes a bestseller list from their graphic novel listings, which you can read at his blog, Yet Another Comics Blog. David has agreed to let me share his charts here because of there’s one thing Beat readers love it’s sales chart.
Awfully unsurprising: Jeffrey Brown’s Vader’s LIttle Princess, a cute follow-up to Vader and Son, which imagines every iconic image in the original trilogy from the viewpoint of the father of a teenaged (or younger) girl—that dad being Darth Vader. It gives even the well worn tropes a fresh, human feeling and to the shock of no one…it’s selling like hotcakes:
Recent sales patterns continued in the April comics sales figures just released by Diamond. While DC had the top selling books with Batman #19. Marvel continue to dominate both units and dollars—especially units, where they opened up a 14% lead over DC.
In a month without a lot of strong graphic novels, The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye led the charts yet again. while Injustice: Gods Among Us, and DC Collectibles’ new Injustice: Deathstroke Vs. Green Arrow Action Figure 2-Pack led the video game and toy categories.
While Walking Dead and Saga lead the chart again, the big story this month is Jonathan Hickman’s East of West, blowing expectations out of the water with a strong debut. There aren’t that many new titles this month, although Image have four strong debuts, headed up by the infuriating Sex (you’ll see). Elsewhere it’s largely a month of consolidation, with many titles holding within a few percentage points of last month’s sales.
Chickens came home to roost in March.
With no gimmick-bloated #1 issues, strong crossovers or annuals of high-performing titles driving sales of the company’s periodical line, with the Before Watchmen project fading out on a whimper, and despite a deluge of high-selling issues tying in with a recent character death, estimated sales of the average new DC Universe comic book fell to 31,000, the lowest level since the big “New 52″ relaunch of September 2011.
The Marvel Now launches rumble on in March, with the first issues of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and the relaunched WOLVERINE, not to mention the long-awaited AGE OF ULTRON event. Meanwhile, as the first wave of Marvel Now launches start to settle into their runs, we’re beginning to get a clearer idea of which ones are working. (And which ones, well, not so much.)
Tweet Continuing a run of graphic novels on the bestseller charts, Batman Vol. 2: The City of Owls (The New 52) by Scot Snyder, Greg Capullo, Rafael Albequerque, Becky Cloonon and co debuted at #14 on the Bookscan/PW Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, with 5205 copies sold. The numbers con’t include the DM figures which are [...]
Walking Dead continues to dominate, but Star Wars and Saga both go from strength to strength. Strong debuts for Shadow Year One, Legend of the Shadowclan and the new GI Joe book are interspersed with increased sales for My Little Pony, Adventure Time and Hellboy. Elsewhere is the usual clutch of Image debuts, while further down a few series return to the charts after a period away.
As DC keeps clowning around and pushing hard to single-handedly choke the concept of irony to death by summer, the company’s average and total sales figures for new comic books performed solidly in the month of February.
After hiring Bob Harras, hiring Rob Liefeld, hiring every writer and artist who worked at Marvel in 1999, releasing a Green Lantern title especially for kids, releasing more Watchmen comics several of which written by J. Michael Straczynski, making a habit of hiring, promoting, then firing creative personnel on all kinds of titles every month, releasing Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill, hiring a raging homophobe to write Superman and announcing “WTF month,” in February 2013 DC released Justice League of America #1, a new high-profile Geoff Johns vehicle promoted with not one, not three, not 12, but 54 different cover choices, thus making it something like the lynchpin of gimmick-driven market gaming. I mean, the plastic-ring thing from a couple of years back was a fair stab, but this one is bolder.
Marvel Now rolls on into February. This month’s major events are the relaunch of UNCANNY X-MEN, the “Point One” prologue issue for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, the return of NOVA with Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, and a new take on SECRET AVENGERS. More generally, the first wave of relaunched titles have now been around long enough that we’re starting to get a sense of which ones are already settling down, and which ones aren’t.
Though DC had the top selling book of the month – JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA – Marvel still had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 38% to 33% in units and 35% to 29% in dollars.
Three pretty interesting posts on book sales and Amazon which, if you triangulate them, give you a good look at where the publishing business stands this Monday morning as Winter turns into Spring 2013:
Between “Death of the Family,” “Throne of Atlantis” and “Rise of the Third Army,” any DC title selling 60,000 units or more in January took part in one of the three current major crossovers, which means all 10 of the company’s Top 25 books. In other words: Scott Snyder and Geoff Johns are running the DC Universe right now — and not much that’s not within their reach is working all that well.
Walking Dead sees a big rise as expected, while Saga and Buffy sandwich the new Star Wars book, and Invincible’s one hundredth issue. Elsewhere, it’s a good month for all-ages comics, and Image have their usual batch of debuts. Dynamite have a poorer month than usual for sales drops, but a round of relaunches are on the horizon.
TweetThe February sales estimates are in over at The Comics Chronicles and what a strange February it was. DC papered over a decaying mess at the bottom of their New 52 chart with a whopping 307K for Justice League of America #1 and its state flag variant cover stunt. Variants are still the flavor of week. Marvel’s [...]
TweetBy John Jackson Miller via Comichron DC’s Justice League of America #1 turned in the strongest single-issue sales performance for a comic book in the month of February since at least 1996 — and the biggest single-month number for a DC title since that time, as well. That’s based on Comichron’s estimates of retailer orders from Diamond Comic Distributors. [...]
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