Comic sales figures time again

[angelophile]

Month to month comparisons for Marvel's sales are up again, so time to take a quick peek and see just where things stand. Obviously the latter end of 2008 saw a decline in sales as economic troubles started to bite at people's pockets. However, some titles have held steadier than others and 2008 still only saw a slight decline in market sales over all, although individual titles may have dipped. However, across the month of January, sales were down again across the board about 9% in all.


I touched on Amazing Spider-man last month and how the now thrice monthly title needed to hit average sales of 63k to retain the readership the three separate Spider-man books did pre-One More Day.

Well, Amazing topped the sales charts with sales of a staggering 353k for #583. Not to be sneezed at. The reason being that it was the special Obama issue which got a lot of mainstream press.

After that issue, however, things don't look so rosy. Issue #582 hits the 63k on the nose, but after that #584 slumps to just under 60k. Not looking so healthy, especially as it's the first part of the much hyped "Character Assassination" arc. Just part of general sales decline or a faster slide for the title? We shall see. It's telling that the book picked up absolutely no carry on from those who picked up the Obama issue, though. You'd hope that a few people would get hooked, but that completely failed to pay off.

Astonishing X-men next and after a few months off the shelves when the Ghost Boxes spin off filled the gap, people seem to have lost enthusiasm for this irregular title. Which is a shame, but I admit to finding breaks mid storyline to be extremely frustrating myself. However, the slip is above average - a worrying 16% from 86k to 72k between issues. It's rare to see such a big slide mid storyline, so there's no doubt in my mind that the long gap between October and January has killed a lot of enthusiasm for the Ellis run. Given how prolific he is as a writer and that he managed to produce the two issues of Ghost Boxes to fill the gap, I don't think the blame for delays rests with the writer. Either way, Marvel have to be unhappy with this. The next issue's not solicited until April. It seems that the title's cursed to never hit a regular schedule whoever's writing it.

Uncanny X-men itself didn't ship, but an annual did, racking up sales of 62k. I'm not sure I see the point in this. The sales of the annual aren't adding to the sales of the main title, they're replacing them. And even at 77k, the lowest point of sales figures I could find recorded for the title, they're still higher than that 62k for the annual. However, the annual retailed for $3.99 and the regular title $2.99, so it probably makes sense somewhere.

X-men Legacy is still sliding, although the decline has slowed. Sales for #220 dip below 60k and a new low for a book that was selling 75-85k regularly before being relaunched as a Professor X-centric title. I've spoken before how this approach appears to be killing the book and I see no way forward without relaunching as a completely new team book with the same numbering. Supposedly it's continuing after the new Chris Claremont title launches, but I wonder if it will slip quietly away.

X-Force also continues a speedy decline. Even so, it's still selling better than I ever expected and the 11% drop in sales down to just shy of 52k looks worse because of the inflated sales due to the variant cover in December. It's still an average 5% drop per issue, but it's still selling enough not to have to worry just yet, especially with a big crossover coming up. It's still at 21 in the sales charts. Not to be sneezed at.

Curiously, no decline at all for Deadpool, holding impressively steady at 46k. The book may have fond its level.

X-Infernus sees a pretty steep drop down to 37k from the first issue of 48k, but not really unexpected for a miniseries and not terrifying. It'll be interesting to see how this compares to the New Mutants title it's helping to launch. Even if the book hits the same level it'll have reclaimed those readers that used to be on board for New X-men that bailed when Young X-men came along (see below).

X-Factor drops again, even with the much hyped #39 hitting the stands. Peter David's approach to killing spoilers doesn't appear to have paid off and belief that the lack of online spoilers will make it possible to triple sales seems to be, frankly, laughable. I dropped the book with this issue because of the content and the tone used promoting that content and now crossover free, it drops to 32k. I believe that's a new low.

X-Men Kingbreaker holds surprisingly steady, picking up sales of 31k for the second issue. Marvel should be content with that relatively small drop from 36k for issue 1.

Alas, another slide for Incredible Hercules. Despite the really good press, the book's not holding onto it's readers and with a slide to around 32k from 73k this time last year, it's not been the success the early figures would indicate. It's a shame as it's a great book with a smart attitude to crossovers. It's worth noting that the biggest recent drops have come when the title was crossover free. I wonder it the upcoming Dark Reign tie in may bring more positive news.

Ouch. Young X-men suffers far worse and this title has been sales poison. It's axed with #12, but #10 limps in with sales of just under 27k. That's around 10k down on the average New X-men issue. A complete failure as a relaunch and people clearly didn't take to the creative team and seeing the cast culled yet again and replaced by limp new characters. I don't know what lesson Marvel will learn from this. They've gone back to the original New Mutants characters, so the idea of a young X-men book seems dead in the water for now.

Even worse is Runaways, struggling to reach sales of 20k and now below even the original BKV run which had the advantage of performing well in digest format. Despite the push from Marvel, the book's really struggling to hold its audience now. Short of drafting in another named writer like Whedon, I'm wondering whether the new creative team for issue #10 will really make a difference. Maybe those digest sales are still healthy. Let's hope so, because if not, it could be we're looking at the beginning of the end. The lack of news on the creative team might be cause for concern, looking at those figures. Maybe #10 won't materialize at all and we'll see another relaunch sometime down the line. I guess we wait and see.

The sales for Captain Britain and MI:13 make for even more depressing reading. The final part of the "Hell Comes to Birmingham" arc limps home with sales of 18k. Below that there's only the all-ages stuff, miniseries and cancelled titles, so it's small wonder the rumor mill had the book cancelled. However, there's been a big push in publicity for the book for #10, which features Doom and Dracula, a bunch more good press and, according to Paul Cornell, healthy sales outside of the US, including UK reprint titles selling out. It may simply be, as I've said before, that the poor US sales recorded in the chart are buoyed up by healthy above average sales in the rest of the world, which means a future for the title. News from the editor and writer is still positive and so I wouldn't write the book off yet.

Best not mention NYX. The miniseries finally wrapped with sales of 12.3k for the final issue. Even the initial figures of 30k were well down on the previous series, but it's hard to imagine that Marvel will touch this series again. A pity, as it completely failed to wrap up in anything like a satisfying way.

Elsewhere, Marvel bumped the price of New Avengers from $2.99 to $3.99. And promptly lost 5000 readers. Still means more cash in Marvel's pocket, however, so I doubt they're too upset.

Comments

[julia-sevin.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm one responsible for RUNAWAYS' suffering. That Whedon bit was too great a departure for me, and the new team seems like it's really trying to recapture the flair of Vaughn's origin but... it's just not working out. It's cute but not worth the cover price for me. And my husband is really put off by the art. So we dropped it.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the book's always been hovering between 20-25k range (I had to check and they did actually dip a little below that back in the day) so this isn't as unheard of as I might have painted it. But it initially survived on those figures because of excellent word of mouth and very healthy sales in other formats.

The New York Times has Runaways/Young Avengers as number 2 in its current Graphic Novels sales charts, so that's positive news.

Personally I think the Whedon run was good and bad news. It brought on a lot of new readers in the short term, but seemed to dive off a lot of regular readers in the long term who were frustrated by the direction or the delays. So, a bit of a mixed bag there.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Astonishing's delays _might_ be Ellis after all. As I recall, the reason given for newuniversal being put on hiatus was that Ellis had a major HD crash and lost a lot of his work on the title. I don't think they specifically mentioned Astonishing, but if he lost work on that too it might have taken him a little while to catch up to where he was. (I think he wrote newuniversal farther in advance though, waiting on artists and interest and such). Of course, I could be wrong on that being a factor at all.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

It's a possibility, but it seems like (from the various comments I've read) the Ghost Boxes one shots were set up to give the artists a chance to catch up as progress had been slower than expected and rather than change the creative team, it would give them an opportunity to plug the gap without changing horses mid-stream. However, instead of the two months in hand giving the artist an opportunity to notch up the issues they hoped for, they only got the one that came out in January, meaning yet another delay until April with no stopgap in place to plug the hole.

It may be that Ellis' situation factored into this, but I recall him mentioning he had to recreate New Universal scripts from scratch, but not that any other titles were affected.

[distractedone.livejournal.com]

Decline, decline, decline - yay, yay, yay.

Hey - did you hear about Marvel releasing their sales figures? I have a feeling they released them because of a bunch of complaining fans blogging about declining sales.

Marvel claims their sales figures are rising - which is true - but they're rising only because of movies.

They aren't admitting that comic sales are declining. It was a bit of a deceptive article, and they were totally ignoring the comic sales.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

I think it was just that Peter David posted these figures after claiming that Scans_Daily was ruining comic sales, wasn't it? And then it was pointed out sales have gone up and he posted figures admitting he was wrong.

Which they have, between 2001 and 2008, quite substantially. About 15 million in all, which is impressive. So they're right, sales ARE up. But sales on individual titles are down. So, basically, long running titles are seeing declines but people are picking up the brand new shiny titles or all those one off big crossover events.

But they're right to claim sales of COMICS are up. Just not INDIVIDUAL comics.

2008 saw a slight decline across the year. Not massive, but a drop on 2007 and no doubt that will continue this year, but every industry is feeling the recession, so it's no surprise.