gojira

On 4/3/2024 at 4:26 PM, Robot Man said:

All great ones. Congrats. That Wings 94 might be my favorite in the run. Mine is a little lower grade but has blinding color. 

Thank you. Wings 94 is my favorite of the run as well (but I like 90 just as much).

8 hours ago, fastballspecial said:

Are online sales helping you any?

 

 

Not that much. Most of our online sales are toys. Then we sell a few trades but people prefer buying single issues in store.

13 hours ago, the blob said:

would customers like it if the main story was 48 pages? I am trying to get into the mindset, obviously nobody is buying a stack of $4.99 comics viewing them as potential resale candidates. sure, one might be one day, and a specific issue might get sold out for that reason, but i am ssuming they buy them for the stories and such and out of habit?

I think that more people would buy these if the main story was a few pages longer, but my customers don't care about the back-up stories. The $4.99 Marvel books sell much better than the DC ones.

41 minutes ago, the blob said:

I think DC thought they could jack up prices with more pages per book? I'll be honest, I haven't looked inside them. Are the $4.99 books regular size?

Don't they realize that with constant re-boots they lose folks?

It isn't like Marvel, etc. haven't had jacked up prices. Secret Invasion was $3.99 13 years ago based on some thick cover stock. But they can get away with it for a special event.

I'd say losing the legacy numbers on these old line titles loses folks each time, but I am not so sure anymore, Marvel does it too.

The $4.99 have a back-up story. But the customers that I have talked to don't care for them.

I don't mind a decent relaunch that much as I usually do well (sales wise) with these but Future State killed DC IMHO. Another Suicide Squad #1? I totally understand that no one buys that book and others like it.

4 minutes ago, followtheleader said:

Noticed the same here for Joker #2.  Heavily ordered here, not well received/purchased.  

Patrick 

Yes, it's crazy. I just reduced my quantity for issue 3 in the FOC to 25 copies.

4 hours ago, the blob said:

You're in France, right? Marvel and Image (Spawn at least) have been reporting good U.S. sales in the last 6 or whatever months since lockdowns started easing. Actually, i am pretty sure comic shops here in New York City opened up in June and we were one of the most restrictive (and hardest hit) areas, although there were probably capacity limitations (4 people in a small shop or whatever) and mask requirements (still are). DC seems to be in a lousy situation. They thought they could go the premium pricing larger format route and it seems to not be working. How is it that image managed to keep $2.99 cover prices through all of this?

Yes, I'm in France. The situation hasn't and still isn't easy here as well. Two strict confinements and we are in another semi confinement right now. We have curfew as well since the beginning of the year which means that stores close earlier than usual.

Marvel is doing OK and Image too. The problem is that we don't know what will happen next and I have to try to adjust orders predicting the future here. If there's a lockdown sales go down drastically and I still have a ton of overstock from the first two lockdowns.

This weeks DCs are ridiculous once more. No one cares about Joker #2 for example. It's just another ridiculous first appearance. Luckily a customer is going for the one per store variant which will help a little with the regular covers that won't sell.

I don't get it either, how come that Image and other independent publishers manage to continue releasing single issues at a decent price and trades as well?

DC have become a joke and most of my customers are steering away from it. I have been a retailer for close to 25 years and sales never have been this low. Future state was a disaster and the Infinite Horizon titles are selling even less. I ordered 70 copies of Batman Urban Legends 1 and sold 15. Even Batman is down to a little under 60 copies now which is an all time low for me. I sold 20% of my Joker 1 order. It's like throwing money down the drain. I am not taking chances with DC titles any more and order low now. If the people in power at DC don't wake up soon they will lose the few readers they have left. Comic book sales have never been as low as in  the last 12 or 13 months, Covid hit us very hard. Sales were down to over 50% in some months but things are getting better now and they slowly rise again. I doubt that I will ever reach the amount of sales we had in our best years again but I'm pretty sure that better days are ahead of us. Probably not this year but I'm counting on 2022. Manga sales are up 50% and we are selling more every month. We don't have enough space for manga right now and are toying with the idea to open a store dedicated to them right next to our location because demand has been so high. It's actually nice to see some kids coming into the store again. But most of them don't care for comic books.

Independents and Marvel still sell on a decent level but the recent issues of Previews are quite depressing as there isn't much in them. Deliveries are getting smaller by the week. I have multiple accounts at Diamond, one for Previews orders, one for products and goodies and one for trade reorders. It's easier for us that way as we don't need to separate new books and trade reorders when we work on our deliveries. In the past we always received more new books than reorders (box count) and now it's the other way around. This means that we still have a lot of customers who just buy trades which is good but less and less people buy the monthly books. Sales stats confirm my thoughts, I sell more trades now than monthly issues.

Recent DC trade sales have been down. Customers do not want to buy over priced HC's and they are not attracted by the current story lines. A few books have stood out but we are far away from the quantities we sold a few years ago. I sold over 200 copies of White Knight (hard and soft). Curse of the White Knight sold less than 30 copies. Good sellers in the past were 50 copies or more. Now I'm happy when a DC trade sells more than 25 copies and that doesn't happen a lot. I have sold between 2 and 8 copies of the recent Joker War HC's just to give you an idea. I checked sales stats for the last 12 months the other day and DC now sells approximately the same amount Marvel does. In the past I sold almost twice as many DC trades than Marvel ones.

8 minutes ago, Sauce Dog said:

Cheers!

$56 shipped surface.

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38 minutes ago, dikran1 said:

We shall see, in the meantime, I keep buying GL keys cuz they seem to be the only books immune to current market craziness, hopefully it'll pay off, someday... I hope... if not, who cares

I haven't bought a book in two years. But I have the itch to buy something nice right now....

1 hour ago, dikran1 said:

Was hoping it would hit 8k 

I'm happy with the result. The book is moving again after being stagnant for a few years. I just hope that interest will not die down.One day this book will get the attention it deserves, don't know if it will be during my lifetime though... 

The CROW 5.5 on Clink sold for $7153. This one and the recent Heritage sale of the 5.0 make me think that there's a little more interest in the book right now.

2 minutes ago, Captain Canuck said:

Amazing! What commission bracket can you get today for the same price you paid then?

Well, to be honest I didn't pay for it. Jim and I hung out a little back then and he wanted to draw something for me so I asked for Batgirl.

1 hour ago, kimik said:

You mean ordering shortages, not publishing. Stores have cut their shelf copies significantly, three I hit last Wednesday only ordered 1 - 2 shelf copies of each Spawn cover since it is a slow seller outside of files (unsold copies go into the back issue bins. As a result, 309B was long gone by the time I went there in the late afternoon/evening. Right now is a good time to be speculating, IMHO, as 1st apps/hot covers will have low orders = low print runs.

I agree. I have cut orders by 50% and only received 12 copies of 309. By the time I realised that cover B was hot Diamond UK had of course sold it out. I put in an advance ro for issue 310.

15 hours ago, fatlab123 said:

I’ll take it

Cheers!

15 hours ago, fatlab123 said:

I’ll take it

Cheers!

1 hour ago, Old_Man_Adam said:

thanks Mike !

Thank you Adam!

Batman 97 1:25 Harley variant NM+ $20  SOLD

Dark Knights Death Metal Guidebook 1:25 Dodson variant NM $22.50 REMOVED

Maestro 1 1:50 McGuinness variant NM $30  SOLD

Maestro 1 1:25 Perez variant NM $17.50  SOLD