Comic sales figures for April

[angelophile]

The estimated sales figures for April have been released. Again I'll be looking at a few of the ongoing Marvel titles (since that's all I'm reading at the moment) to see what trends there are for those titles.

First off, looking at the top five, there's a new arrival at number 3 - namely the first issue of Wolverine: Weapon X. I didn't think there was the market for a third Wolverine ongoing but apparently I have egg on my face there. Debuting at 98k the title's probably been helped by the Wolverine movie coming out in April, but even so, colour me surprised. It'll be interesting to see how big the second issue drop is and if all three Wolverine ongoings stay healthy(ish in the case of Origins). Apparently the market for Sniktbub isn't as saturated as I thought.


Next up, Uncanny X-men #508 sees quite a slight slide from last issue's 78k to 76.5k. Not so bad, you might think. Certainly not as bad as the 71k that represented a new low in the title's history.

Unfortunately there's two issues of Uncanny out this month and Uncanny X-men #509... Well, it flops, dropping a staggering 7.3k down to 69k, over 10% of its readership between issues. Even looking at the previous low of 71k, that's still another 2k drop. Apparently fled the Land drawn storyline as soon as the first issue was done and Psylocke's "return" and the big storyline of the Sisterhood cost the book 10% of its readership.

I shouldn't really use the term "sales poison" to describe this creative team but with drops like that while the rest of the market is bottoming out, it's hard to see it any other way.

Amazing Spider-man sees a healthy boost this month, with #590 coming in at 66.5k, #591 at 60k and #592 at 66k. That's up quite substantially on last month where sales for the three titles hovered around 59-61k. However, the simple reason for that is that #590 and #592 have Wolverine Appreciation Month variant covers. The 60k for issue #591 is probably the true level for the book which suggests that, unlike Uncanny, it's bottomed out.

There's a... curiosity with X-men Legacy. Last month it was listed as selling 55k. This issue sells 72k according to ICv2's figures. I... have to conclude there's a mistake somewhere, because there's absolutely no reason for the book to suddenly jump 17k mid arc. If true, that's boggling. We'll have to see if they adjust the figures later.

Astonishing X-men#29 fares badly. It drops from 71k for the last issue down to 68k. Now, considering the last issue came out in January and these figures are from April, it could just be, and call me crazy, that people are sick of waiting months between issues for what's already quite a slow moving storyline. Given Ellis' comments on the state of the scripts, you have to conclude that the artist is the one holding things up. Hopefully when the final issue of this arc finally crawls around they'll be announcing a new, and hopefully more prolific, artist. That could help to push those sales back up.

X-Force gets a healthy boost up to 6k this month, according to figures. It's been a remarkably steady seller and the Messiah War crossover finally appears to be paying off as the figures climb to 57k. Marvel must be happy with this - the book's been one of the post MC reboot's few success stories.

Deadpool sees another slight jump too and is still doing well. The 47k from last issue climbs to 48.5k as the crossover with Thunderbolts continues. It's the best selling Deadpool title for quite some time and Daniel Way seems to have found fans on the book in the way that he hasn't on Wolverine Origins.

There's actually a jump on Incredible Hercules, up 1k and now around 32k. I'm not sure quite why, but I assume it's people picking the book up for the promise of a Dark Reign crossover. Of course, Hercules has managed to build in crossovers without them seeming like crossovers, so anything that works, really. That's a positive sign.

X-Factor is steady as a rock, still bang on the 32k level. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere, up or down and it's been this way for months now. Impressive. I still won't pick the book up again, though. The LOLDEADBABY!! saga has turned me off Peter David for life.

The new Exiles launches to sales of 31k, somewhat under the level New Exiles launched at under Claremont in the last reboot and pretty much at the level the old Exiles series was at before it was scrapped. However, the second issue drop off will be the telling thing. New Exiles slid to 17k and, to be honest, with levels like this on the first issue of the new series, it doesn't look hopeful this one will have legs either.

Runaways sees a slight recovery and seems to have bottomed out at 19-20k. It's not healthy but it's not desperate either as long as the trades and digests continue to do business. With the new creative team coming up, we might see a jump again.

Captain Britain and MI:13 jumps too, from 18k up to 20k, a decent jump but not enough to save the title, which is cancelled as of issue #15. My opinions of this book are well know and I'm sad to see my predictions that it wouldn't last beyond the end of the Vampire State arc are correct. Still, you can't say that Marvel and the creative team could have done more. It's just a case of the book not finding an audience, although lord knows why. Maybe that anglocentric name was offputting and they'd have been better off going with Excalibur after all.

Next month New Mutants will show on the list and it'll be interesting to see where it places. My prediction? Issue 1 should hit around 47-50k.

Comments

[occamsnailfile.livejournal.com]

Sales of endless reams of Wolverine crap are the reason why we can't have nice things like MI-13. :(

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

No, people BUYING stuff like new Wolverine titles and not MI-13 are the reason. Marvel can't be blamed for the sales slump of CB&MI13 - they pushed it pretty heavily lately. And still people don't buy it. I can't blame Marvel for publishing more Wolverine titles, especially if they can pull figures like this, but I can blame people for... well, the icon says it all.

[occamsnailfile.livejournal.com]

That's more or less what I meant. I just cannot fathom the collective obsession with Wolverine (and Batman from the DC side).