Sales trends May 97

I love to look at past figures. It gives you some perspective and allows for a more reasoned debate about sales versus “Look, (insert random book) sold out!” I do have one minor complaint (even though it was addressed in the entry where it was said that this month was chosen “because it was there”):

These figures are for Marvel’s “Flashback” month. That month, Marvel’s sales went into the toilet as a lot of fans either didn’t like the concept or didn’t mind missing an issue since it wouldn’t leave a hole in their collections (that damn -1 number!). So while it’s nice to look and see how The Long Halloween or Grifter were doing, it doesn’t give us a real glimpse of how Marvel’s titles were doing at the time.

Also, because it’s based on pre-orders, this chart lists Avengers #-1, a comic that never actually came out. At this point, the core Marvel Heroes titles were in their Heroes Reborn phase, and I believe this issue was, for one reason or another, a casualty of Liefeld’s titles being moved under Jim Lee’s stewardship.

“Also, because it’s based on pre-orders, this chart lists Avengers #-1, a comic that never actually came out. “

I thought these lists were books ordered and then shipped to retailers. Were they handled differently ten years ago? That would mean late books would show up as a top selling book for a month even though it never came out that specific month.

The chart format changed a few years ago, Rick. Previously, it was just the initial orders, ignoring any variations and re-orders, and regardless of whether the book shipped or not. Books which were resolicited sometimes appeared several times.

They changed it when Marvel started allowing retailers to vary orders until weeks after the intial order date, which made their initial order figures meaningless.

Flashback Month was indeed a disaster – a line-wide event that caused almost every single book to go down aside from a couple of low-selling stragglers. It’s arguably the least successful direct market promotional stunt in history, so it’s not the best month to choose for comparison purposes.

“Were they handled differently ten years ago?”

Yes.

11 books selling over 100,000. #100 selling 27,000. Not much different than today.

70% of the market held by 4 companies. 93% today—oddly enough, the same 4 companies: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Image.

Also, part of the decline might have been because readers were upset that many of the Image originators gave up on their own creations and sold their souls back to Marvel.

I suppose that’s one way of looking at it, but I don’t think it’s accurate. Many of the Image originators did stop drawing/writing their own books and I suspect a lot of it was because they wanted to expand. Their books were doing great in sales and they had more ideas they wanted to do, so they hired artists and writers to take over their original books and launched other characters they had ideas for. I think they all wanted to be Stan Lee-ish and build their own little universes.

And It should be said that Marvel went to Jim Lee and Liefeld, not the other way around. Marvel offered them a whole lot of money and a lot of freedom to re-create some main characters.

I don’t understand, what point are you trying to demonstrate?

Not trying to be snarky, but I would like some clarification as to what you’re trying to show us and how it’s backed up by the sales chart.