comics sales
Comics A.M. | Archie-Valerie romance rekindled; cartoonist resigns
Archie #631
Creators | Dan Parent discusses an upcoming Archie storyline that will bring Valerie Brown from Josie and the Pussycats to Riverdale, causing sparks to once again fly: “The fans can expect the next step in what I think is the most romantic story in Archie history. The chemistry between Archie and Valerie was hot the first time they got together, and now you’ve really got to see it simmer, all the way from the rekindling of their romance to getting much more serious than we’ve seen before.” [USA Today]
Editorial cartoons | Cartoonist Jeff Stahler has resigned from The Columbus Dispatch following accusations that he lifted ideas from other cartoons, including one that ran in The New Yorker. [Poynter]
- December 13, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Comic sales climb 19 percent; IDW promotes Goldstein
Justice League #3
Sales | The comic book market was up more than 19 percent in November when compared with the same period last year, with comics up 23 percent and graphic novels up 12 percent. So far this year the comics and graphics novel market is up 1.87 percent versus the first 11 months of 2010. If December cooperates, this could be the first up year for the market since 2008.
DC Comics was once again the top company in terms of market share. The company took six of the top 10 spots on Diamond’s Top 100 Comics list, with Justice League #3, Batman #3, Action Comics #3, Green Lantern #3 and Marvel’s Point One #1 making up the top five comics of the month. Batman: Noel took the No. 1 spot on the Top 100 Graphic Novels list. [The Comichron]
Publishing | IDW Publishing has promoted Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein to president, with a focus on new markets and acquisitions. He joined the company in 2008 from Upper Deck. [ICv2.com]
- December 12, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The case against, and for, sales estimates
X-23 #20
Sales charts | Responding to an iFanboy article that speculates on what titles Marvel might cancel next, Men of War and Viking writer Ivan Brandon makes the case against sales charts and the subsequent analysis of them each month: “There’s an ongoing debate, for a bunch of years now. There are numbers that circulate every month, inaccurate numbers, people track them, people use that flawed ‘data’ to comment on what they see as the progress or decline on the list. A lot of comics professionals are against this, for a lot of reasons. In my case, for my books, the books I personally share copyright on … my reason is, and no offense to anyone out there: My income is none of your business. Just as your income is none of mine.”
Tom Spurgeon offers a counterpoint: “Sales information seems to me an obvious positive, not because it reveals the bank accounts of creators, but because what sells and to what extent is basic information about a marketplace, and the shape and potency of a marketplace seems to me a primary item of interest for anyone covering that marketplace. It’s foundational to our understanding of how things work and why. Certainly this information is already manipulated to brazen effect by companies with something to put over on customers; I have to imagine this would become worse under a system of no information at all being released.” [Ivan Brandon, The Comics Reporter]
- November 22, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
DC execs discuss October sales, Kindle deal
DC Comics Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development John Rood and Senior Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne try not to gloat too much as they discuss DC’s October sales numbers over at ICv2. (Actually, ICv2 did the gloating for them with the headline “DC Crushes Marvel.”) Thanks to strong sales of the New 52 line, DC took over 42% of the dollar share and 51% of the unit share in the direct market, pushing Marvel down to about 30% in both measures. And the pie got bigger: Single-issue sales were up 24% compared to October 2010. “We’re excited to see the reports from Diamond that we’ve won the month in dollar share and in unit share,” Rood told ICv2. “I consider that ironic as hell, since we don’t price our comics to win any dollar share battles, and we don’t pump out a lot of inventory to win any unit share battles. So the fact that this is happening accidentally just speaks to the readership of the New 52, and the support from our retailers, which we’re so appreciative of.”
In Part 2 of the interview, Rood says that he sees the sales increase coming from new and returning readers, who are in it for the long haul, as opposed to speculators buying issue #1s in the hope that they will become valuable collectors’ items.
He was a bit less forthcoming on the details of DC’s deal to put their graphic novels on Amazon’s Kindle Fire e-reader, refusing to discuss how long the exclusive agreement would last and whether DC was aware that Amazon would price Alan Moore’s Watchmen at $9.99, half the price of the print version.
As for the trade collections of the New 52, the chief difference that readers will see, Wayne said, is a more unified trade dress; the graphic novels are definitely being presented as a jumping-on point for new readers. As to quantity and schedule, he said that the graphic novel releases will be spread out a bit, compared to the fairly concentrated launch of the monthly comics. While DC is publishing fewer comics titles than last year, the number of graphic novels will remain the same because they will be reaching into the vaults to publish older material, and movie tie-ins, in graphic novel form.
- November 11, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Quote of the day | ‘Reality will be hitting DC very quickly’
Justice League #2
“Can you please refrain from claiming that sales to retailers represent real sales? Aside from a small core of books, most DC #2′s have under performed. DC will be getting back large returns on these books. Even in September our DC sales did not approach Marvel sales. And in October Marvel crushed DC in our store. Sales to retailers are NOT sales to customers. Reality will be hitting DC very quickly, just as it hit retailers in October.”
– retailer Andy Battaglia of Comics Etc. in Rochester, New York,
responding to ICv2.com’s analysis of October’s direct market sales
- November 9, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Sales of DC’s New 52 titles slip just 6% in second month
In a month when half the books ordered by direct market retailers were from DC Comics, sales of October’s New 52 titles declined just 6 percent from those of the September debuts, a figure ICv2.com notes is less than half the typical decay between first and second issues.
As Comic Book Resources reported on Friday, DC claimed 42.47 percent of the market in dollars and 50.97 percent in united sold in October and dominated Diamond Comic Distributors’ Top 20 with 17 spots. According to newly released estimates from ICv2, the top six DC titles broke the 100,000-copy mark, led by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League #2 with about 180,700.
Sales of 14 New 52 titles saw gains from their first issues, with Animal Man boasting a 14-percent jump, followed by Batman and Swamp Thing with 7 percent each. Superman and Blackhawks, however, saw 26-percent drops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two DC relaunches that attracted controversy, Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws, saw 6-percent jumps.
Just one Marvel title sold more than 100,000 copies: Incredible Hulk #1, by Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri, with about 106,470. Wolverine and the X-Men #1 and Fear Itself #7 each hovered above 95,000.
It’s probably also worth pointing out the sheer number of DC reorders that appear high on October’s Top 300, led by Aquaman #1 in the 88th spot with more than 28,000 copies (pushing total sales of the first issue past 100,000 copies). That’s more than the orders for new issues of Marvel’s Hulk, Deadpool, Punisher and Thunderbolts.
Related: Rood & Wayne Unpack DC’s New 52 Sales Success
- November 8, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Direct market tops $40 million in October
Justice League #2
Comics | John Jackson Miller slices and dices the October numbers for the direct market, noting that overall dollar orders for comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines topped $40 million for the first time since September 2009. Orders rose 6.9 percent over September, the first month of DC’s relaunch. “While that may sound counter-intuitive, it isn’t when you consider that all those first issues continued to have reorders selling through October,” Miller writes. “Retailers with an eye on the aftermarket may also have some sense that second issues are historically under-ordered — something which goes at least back to the experience of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2 in the 1980s, which wound up being much more valuable than its first issue.” [The Comichron]
Passings | Tom Spurgeon reports that author Les Daniels has passed away. Daniels wrote horror fiction and nonfiction books on the comic industry, which include Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes. [The Comics Reporter]
- November 7, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | DC, Marvel tease big announcements as NYCC looms
New York Comic Con
Conventions | The New York Post previews this week’s New York Comic Con in a pair of articles, the second of which focuses on announcements from Marvel and DC. Marvel’s “Cup O’ Joe” panel will reveal how Fear Itself, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and X-Men: Schism tie together, while DC plans to reveal “the surprising origin of a longtime member of the Justice League” and more creators who will work on their New 52 books, in addition to Andy Kubert. Update: Presumably the Justice League member with the surprising origin is Wonder Woman. [New York Post article #1, article #2]
Comics | Not surprisingly, DC saw double-digit increases in September compared to the year before, but the overall market was down a touch as graphic novel sales, lacking this year’s equivalent of Scott Pilgrim, were down. [The Comichron]
Business | Disney CEO Robert Iger, who oversaw the company’s purchase of both Marvel Entertainment and Pixar, will step down as CEO in March 2015. [Bloomberg]
- October 10, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | SPX attendance up; more on Justice League #1 sales
SPX
Conventions | Executive director Warren Bernard said attendance at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, was up 10 to 15 percent, with exhibitors reporting strong sales and many sell-outs. “A great line-up of new material was partially responsible, but the region itself is also a factor — the economy around metro DC has remained relatively stable even in the recession, and a lot of people with good jobs seem to save up their money for the whole year just to spend at SPX,” reported Publishers Weekly’s Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid. Because of the growth, next year the show will move to a bigger room with about 50 percent more space. Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware scheduled to attend. [Publishers Weekly]
Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, meanwhile, reports that it raised $12,500 at SPX, thanks to efforts like the Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit auction and fundraising activities involving Craig Thompson, Roz Chast and Sara Varon. [press release]
- September 14, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Comic sales up in August; CDC looks to motion comics to fight HIV
Justice League
Sales charts | Dollar sales of comics sold through Diamond Comic Distributors were up more than 15 percent in August, while graphic novel dollar sales rose by more than 31 percent when compared to the year-ago period. ICv2 puts the gains in perspective, noting that comic sales were down 17 percent in August 2010 and graphic novel sales were down 21 percent. August 2010 also had four ship weeks compared to August 2011′s five. DC Comics topped the August charts with Justice League #1, followed by Flashpoint #5, Fear Itself #5, Flashpoint #4 and Ultimate Comics Fallout #4. Serenity Better Days and Other Stories from Dark Horse was the no. 1 graphic novel for August. John Jackson Miller offers commentary as well as a look at the best-selling comics of this century, a list that will include Justice League #1. [ICv2, Comichron]
Comics | The Centers for Disease Control has awarded a roughly $145,000 contract to Terminus Media to create motion comics to educate young people about HIV. The comics will be offered on “internet-capable platforms” including desktop computers, laptop computers, video gaming systems, wireless phones and tablet computers. [Politico, Via]
- September 13, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
DC’s push for New 52: Sales, reviews and continuity
Justice League #4
As week three of DC’s big relaunch begins, here are some more highlights of news, announcements and coverage of the New 52 thus far:
• So how is the relaunch doing overall? DC Comics put out a release this morning noting several fun facts about sales and the relaunch thus far, while Kiel Phegley at Comic Book Resources spoke with DC’s John Rood and Bob Wayne for context.
Also of note is Diamond Comic Distributor’s list of the top 100 comics in August. As DC noted in their release, Justice League #1 was not only the top seller in the direct market for the month, but is the top-selling book of the year so far. That’s not surprising. DC also noted it’s the highest first printing they’ve had since the 2006 Justice League relaunch. John Jackson Miller, meanwhile, looks at the top books of this century this far, pointing out that the new Justice League will likely land in the top 30 of that list.
We already knew that Justice League‘s print run was over 200,000, but today DC announced that Action Comics‘ second printing will push it over 200,000 copies as well. And speaking of second printings, DC confirmed that all of last week’s titles AND this week’s titles — yes, the ones that aren’t in stores until Wednesday — have sold out at the distributor level, and they’ll be going back to press on them all.
- September 12, 2011 @ 03:08 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Kids comic store opens; the ‘I have a girlfriend in Canada’ of sales analysis
Little Island Comics
Retailers | Little Island Comics — “the first kids comic book store in North America–maybe even the world” — opens its doors today in Toronto. The store is owned and operated by The Beguiling, and is located around the corner from the flagship store. The store will hold an official grand opening in a few weeks. [The Comics Reporter]
Publishing | DC Comics co-publisher and Justice League artist Jim Lee discusses his work on DC’s flagship title, which came out in digital form last Wednesday, the same day it hit comic shops. “It’s also setting records digitally. I can’t give numbers, but on the first day it set a record for us,” Lee tells Heidi MacDonald.
That leads Tom Spurgeon to throw a flag on the play: “… it looks like DC won’t be releasing its New 52 digital numbers but will feel confident in making claims on their behalf. It also looks like comics sites will then repeat this claim as news, perhaps qualified by source or as a claim but still putting that information out there. This should stop. I think DC has a really dubious history with using the hidden portions of their numbers to PR advantage — call it the ‘I have a girlfriend in Canada’ of sales analysis. My take is that this practice has intensified slightly ever since the numbers have become smaller and therefore more crucial. When in the 1990s sales on mainstream comics dipped to the point where people questioned the profitability of certain issues of certain titles, perhaps leading to a line of analysis about mainstream publishers making books at a loss for market share advantages or to knock other comics from the limited stand space, we were sometimes assured that there were sales elsewhere we didn’t know about that pushed certain comics over this projected threshold.” [Salon, The Comics Reporter]
- September 6, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
SDCC ’11 | Griepp: Digital is small but growing
At the ComicsPRO meeting last February, DC co-publisher Jim Lee held up a sheet of paper and a piece of dental floss. The paper, he said, represented revenues from print comics, while the dental floss was revenues from digital comics.
Milton Greipp, publisher of the retail news site ICv2, did more or less the same thing with numbers at the ICv2 Comics, Media, and Digital Conference that kicked off this year’s Comic-Con. In his White Paper on the industry, Griepp estimated that the market for digital comics grew from about $1 million in sales in 2009 to $6 to $8 million in 2010, but the fact that he still had a $2 million error bar shows just how much uncertainty remains. One thing is for certain, though: Griepp expects the market will double this year. He credited the growth in sales of mobile devices such as the iPad and Android tablets (the Sony PSP, one of the early digital comics platforms, seems to be dead in the water; Griepp attributed this to the hacking of Sony).
Looked at in isolation, that number seems impressive, but Griepp also estimated total sales of print comics and graphic novels in 2010 at $635 million, which means that digital sales are about 1% of the print market, a tiny slice indeed.
These numbers are dynamic, however, and print and digital sales are changing in different ways. Digital may be burgeoning, but print is in a slump, with total sales down in 2010 from $680 million the year before. Things have picked up this year, but the picture remains grim for monthly comics: Sales of comics were down 8%, graphic novels were up 3%. Put those together, and the market as a whole is down 2%.
- July 25, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
ICv2 lists the hot comics of 2010
ICv2 has just posted its year-end summary for 2010, and to no one’s surprise, it’s rather grim:
Comic sales were softer than graphic novel sales in the direct market, but bookstore sales of graphic novels took a major hit even before Borders entered chapter 11 earlier this year. Declines in graphic novels occurred despite two significant media-driven hits in the second half of the year: Scott Pilgrim and The Walking Dead.
What’s interesting about their analysis is that they consider all channels, not just Diamond or Bookscan numbers, so it’s a comprehensive overview. They also take a brief look ahead, opining that comics won’t get much of a media boost this year because none of the four superhero movies scheduled for this year has a clear connection to a comic. But the most interesting part of the article (which mainly promotes the latest issue of their print report) is their listing of the hottest properties of 2010. Batman topped the list of the top 10 superhero properties, followed by Superman and Kick-Ass; The Walking Dead, Twilight, and Fables headed the list of the top 10 genre properties; and in the curiously mixed category of “Fiction & Reality Titles,” Scott Pilgrim, The Book of Genesis, and Logicomix led all the rest. The article also includes lists of top kids’, comic strip, and manga properties. It’s an interesting snapshot of the year just past, as well as a reminder that there is a lot of variety in comics, even within categories.
- March 30, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Comic sales in December, Nick Lowe promoted
Batman: The Dark Knight
Publishing | Diamond’s December numbers for sales in comics shops are out, and the picture is grim. Diamond reports that it sold 89,985 copies of the top selling single-issue comic, Batman: The Dark Knight #1—the lowest number for the month’s top seller since ICv2 started tracking the numbers in 2001. In its more detailed dollar analysis, Diamond sees comics sales down and graphic novel sales up for a slight overall increase, both in December and in the last quarter of 2010 as a whole. [ICv2]
Publishing | Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada announced that Nick Lowe has been promoted to senior editor. Lowe edits Uncanny X-Men, Generation Hope and New Mutants, among other titles. [Comic Book Resources]
Publishing | Douglas Wolk boils down the 2010 comics sales data into some easily digested bullet points, for the benefit of those who don’t like to spend all day squinting at sales charts. [Techland]
Pop culture | Apparently inspired by Tiger Mask, a character from a manga popular in the 1960s, people in Japan have been quietly dropping off gifts for children in orphanages and other institutions. [Inquirer.net]
Digital comics | Johanna Draper Carlson tries out the comiXology app for the Android OS and is somewhat underwhelmed. [Comics Worth Reading]
- January 11, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson