Future of Comic Book Collecting

[stevescu1]

Where are the new readers coming from? Comicbooks as we know them are no longer available as an "impulse purchase" on newstands or at 7-11's or any of the other traditional venues of the past. Yes, we can order them from 100 different locations on the internet or at a few stores like Wal-Mart or Borders or at any of the dwindling number of comic shops, but one has to search those out. The companies realize this and of course are catering to an older ( ever shrinking ) audience. I don't know what the solution is, but I think it's kind of pollyanaish to say that everything is so hunky dory and everything will be just fine.

Toys-R-Us has a comics section in the boys toy aisles. I'm sure that adds a few impulse buys from kids.

[rjrjr]

With less comic shops and hardly any corner stores carrying comics sales have to be down. In the late 70's and 80's comics were available in almost every store I went in. In the 90's there was the comic & card boom that had comic shops popping up on every corner and every sports card store started carrying comics.

 

The few comic shops that are still alive don't carry a very big selection. They carry a few of the more popular titles but even then they carry a very small inventory. Good luck finding a new independent title or even a main stream popular title if you don't have a box in that store. Most shops now have way more TP & HC then regular issues and they really promote them.

 

The industry is hurting that is obvious. There are very few new collectors and I don't see that changing. The older collectors are more interested in spending money on back issues of comics they know are good or stuff from their youth.

 

 

Why are you clinging to the local comic shop (LCS) as if it is the only choice you have? I switched to an online retailer (DCBS) and have no problem getting the independent titles I want. There is so many titles available that I would never have seen or heard about if I was shopping at the LCS exclusively. I cannot buy everything I'm interested in reading and I don't even buy superhero titles from the big two. An added bonus to switching to mail order is the deep discounts. If the local comic shop disappears, good riddance! Serves them right for just stocking and pushing the same old Marvel and DC titles, none of which I am interested in. Alternatively, you can buy your big two books at the local comic shop and your independents from one of the online retailers if you feel you need to support your LCS.

 

What I'm hearing is the industry is hurting, yet some of the smaller publishers (Dark Horse, Boom, IDW, Dynamite Entertainment, Image, etc.) are doing just fine. They are able to do this by juggling the correct mix of creator owned, licensed, and corporate titles. If one or both of the big two folded, I believe comics would not disappear, but a new distribution model (direct from the publisher perhaps?) would emerge to cater to the comic reader. As long as there is a demand, however small, there will always be publishers.

 

So, I'll ask this question. Is the industry really hurting, or is the industry just changing? All of the arguments I'm reading is because people are clinging to the old distribution methods (brick and mortar convenient stores not carry comics appears to be everyone's big complaint) and the dwindling of brick and mortar LCSs. We may have lost the convenient store distribution (what, over 20 years ago?) and we may now lose some brink and mortar specialty stores, but there are ample online retailers willing to step in and cater to your comic needs.

 

I forgot to mention Hastings entry into the comic retailer market earlier this year. Sure, they are not mom and pop, nor national, but instantly became the largest brick and mortar comic retailer in the US overnight. There are plenty of comics available at the mass retail outlets (Walmart, Target, ToysRUs, big book retailers) so I don't understand this concern that the local convenient store (7-11 or Circle K) does not carry comics. Also, I still see Archies at the local grocery store checkout, so that hasn't changed much over the years.

 

What I see is an industry that is efficiently publishing comics that are being consumed. Gone are the days of returnable comics. Publishers who understand their customer are able to market to their customer directly and publish comics their audience want. I don't see the doom and gloom just because Marvel's Spiderman is not appealing to a larger audience or Batman's better days are behind us.

[Logan510]

With less comic shops and hardly any corner stores carrying comics sales have to be down. In the late 70's and 80's comics were available in almost every store I went in. In the 90's there was the comic & card boom that had comic shops popping up on every corner and every sports card store started carrying comics.

 

The few comic shops that are still alive don't carry a very big selection. They carry a few of the more popular titles but even then they carry a very small inventory. Good luck finding a new independent title or even a main stream popular title if you don't have a box in that store. Most shops now have way more TP & HC then regular issues and they really promote them.

 

The industry is hurting that is obvious. There are very few new collectors and I don't see that changing. The older collectors are more interested in spending money on back issues of comics they know are good or stuff from their youth.

 

 

Why are you clinging to the local comic shop (LCS) as if it is the only choice you have? I switched to an online retailer (DCBS) and have no problem getting the independent titles I want. There is so many titles available that I would never have seen or heard about if I was shopping at the LCS exclusively. I cannot buy everything I'm interested in reading and I don't even buy superhero titles from the big two. An added bonus to switching to mail order is the deep discounts. If the local comic shop disappears, good riddance! Serves them right for just stocking and pushing the same old Marvel and DC titles, none of which I am interested in. Alternatively, you can buy your big two books at the local comic shop and your independents from one of the online retailers if you feel you need to support your LCS.

 

What I'm hearing is the industry is hurting, yet some of the smaller publishers (Dark Horse, Boom, IDW, Dynamite Entertainment, Image, etc.) are doing just fine. They are able to do this by juggling the correct mix of creator owned, licensed, and corporate titles. If one or both of the big two folded, I believe comics would not disappear, but a new distribution model (direct from the publisher perhaps?) would emerge to cater to the comic reader. As long as there is a demand, however small, there will always be publishers.

 

So, I'll ask this question. Is the industry really hurting, or is the industry just changing? All of the arguments I'm reading is because people are clinging to the old distribution methods (brick and mortar convenient stores not carry comics appears to be everyone's big complaint) and the dwindling of brick and mortar LCSs. We may have lost the convenient store distribution (what, over 20 years ago?) and we may now lose some brink and mortar specialty stores, but there are ample online retailers willing to step in and cater to your comic needs.

 

I forgot to mention Hastings entry into the comic retailer market earlier this year. Sure, they are not mom and pop, nor national, but instantly became the largest brick and mortar comic retailer in the US overnight. There are plenty of comics available at the mass retail outlets (Walmart, Target, ToysRUs, big book retailers) so I don't understand this concern that the local convenient store (7-11 or Circle K) does not carry comics. Also, I still see Archies at the local grocery store checkout, so that hasn't changed much over the years.

 

What I see is an industry that is efficiently publishing comics that are being consumed. Gone are the days of returnable comics. Publishers who understand their customer are able to market to their customer directly and publish comics their audience want. I don't see the doom and gloom just because Marvel's Spiderman is not appealing to a larger audience or Batman's better days are behind us.

 

Do you have any idea what sales are like these days and how many warm bodies those sales actually represent? The best analogy I've heard about the american comicbook industry as it stands today is " we may not be dead, but we're certainly sitting in the corner and coughing up blood".

[rjrjr]

Do you have any idea what sales are like these days and how many warm bodies those sales actually represent? The best analogy I've heard about the american comicbook industry as it stands today is " we may not be dead, but we're certainly sitting in the corner and coughing up blood".

 

 

Here is a chart from The Comics Chronicles from 1997-2009:

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

If I'm to believe the sales in 2009, there were an estimated 74.88 million comics sold in the North American market. The low point on that chart is 2001, with 66.92 million comics sold. These figures only account for the top 300 comics sold by Diamond. I'm not 100% sure if Diamond is/was the distributor for comics to book stores, Target, Walmart, ToysRUs, etc. I also understand sales will be down this year, but that is to be expected since the U.S. is in a deep recession.

 

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997, but this in anecdotal until someone puts up the numbers and compares them apples to apples like these charts on Comics Chronicles is attempting to do. What I see is 12 years where some years were better than others, but overall, not too wild of a fluctuation in copies sold year to year. I don't see numbers for TPBs sold, nor comics outside the top 300. Eventually, I believe Comics Chronicles will have enough data to put up the numbers for other years so we'll have a better picture.

 

I get that individual titles sales went down over time. But there are far more titles produced today than any time in the past (remember when there was only one Spiderman title, one Avengers title, one X-Men title, etc.), so I can only speculate on the overall trend. Did the industry sell 2 or even 3 times this many overall comics in the late 80s, early 90s during the speculation boom? How about in the 70s, where many people predicted comics would cease publishing because of horrible sales? What about the 60s, when Marvel was only able to distribute a limited number of books each month due to their distribution deal, but Dell/Gold Key was a bigger player?

 

If you are trying to imply I'm not aware of the "sky is falling" arguments I've been hearing for 30+ years, I'm well aware of what people are saying. I can only look at the empirical evidence that is shown and shrug however, because everything else is just anecdotal.

 

Are sales worse today than they were in 2001 (almost 10 years ago)? How does the rise of TPB sales affect these numbers? So, the industry has been in its death throes for over 10 years now, correct? Like I said, from what I've read, the industry has been in it's death throes since the 1970s and yet here we are.

 

[oakman29]

[VintageComics]

 

Are sales worse today than they were in 2001 (almost 10 years ago)? How does the rise of TPB sales affect these numbers? So, the industry has been in its death throes for over 10 years now, correct? Like I said, from what I've read, the industry has been in it's death throes since the 1970s and yet here we are.

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond and post that info.

 

(thumbs u

[Logan510]

Do you have any idea what sales are like these days and how many warm bodies those sales actually represent? The best analogy I've heard about the american comicbook industry as it stands today is " we may not be dead, but we're certainly sitting in the corner and coughing up blood".

 

 

Here is a chart from The Comics Chronicles from 1997-2009:

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

If I'm to believe the sales in 2009, there were an estimated 74.88 million comics sold in the North American market. The low point on that chart is 2001, with 66.92 million comics sold. These figures only account for the top 300 comics sold by Diamond. I'm not 100% sure if Diamond is/was the distributor for comics to book stores, Target, Walmart, ToysRUs, etc. I also understand sales will be down this year, but that is to be expected since the U.S. is in a deep recession.

 

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997, but this in anecdotal until someone puts up the numbers and compares them apples to apples like these charts on Comics Chronicles is attempting to do. What I see is 12 years where some years were better than others, but overall, not too wild of a fluctuation in copies sold year to year. I don't see numbers for TPBs sold, nor comics outside the top 300. Eventually, I believe Comics Chronicles will have enough data to put up the numbers for other years so we'll have a better picture.

 

I get that individual titles sales went down over time. But there are far more titles produced today than any time in the past (remember when there was only one Spiderman title, one Avengers title, one X-Men title, etc.), so I can only speculate on the overall trend. Did the industry sell 2 or even 3 times this many overall comics in the late 80s, early 90s during the speculation boom? How about in the 70s, where many people predicted comics would cease publishing because of horrible sales? What about the 60s, when Marvel was only able to distribute a limited number of books each month due to their distribution deal, but Dell/Gold Key was a bigger player?

 

If you are trying to imply I'm not aware of the "sky is falling" arguments I've been hearing for 30+ years, I'm well aware of what people are saying. I can only look at the empirical evidence that is shown and shrug however, because everything else is just anecdotal.

 

Are sales worse today than they were in 2001 (almost 10 years ago)? How does the rise of TPB sales affect these numbers? So, the industry has been in its death throes for over 10 years now, correct? Like I said, from what I've read, the industry has been in it's death throes since the 1970s and yet here we are.

 

The Direct Market is what saved comics back in the late 1970's, books that would never have survived on the newstands did in the DM and some even thrived. The TPB market will not save the industry as it won't bring in the new readers that are the future lifeblood of the industry. Dollar sales are up, but unit sales are down, mainly due to a smaller audience buying multiples of the same issue. How long can that last when the average age of their readership is over 20 with few younger readers joining the ranks?

 

I'm not trying to say it's dead, but to think everything is rosey is just plain naive.

[stevescu1]

The Direct Market is what saved comics back in the late 1970's, books that would never have survived on the newstands did in the DM and some even thrived. The TPB market will not save the industry as it won't bring in the new readers that are the future lifeblood of the industry. Dollar sales are up, but unit sales are down, mainly due to a smaller audience buying multiples of the same issue. How long can that last when the average age of their readership is over 20 with few younger readers joining the ranks?

 

I'm not trying to say it's dead, but to think everything is rosey is just plain naive.

If you check the link rjrjr posted, while sales might be down over the last few years, overall sales are are up by 5 million over a decade ago. TPB dollar sales were 15.84 million in 2000 and 77.65 million in 2009. To me that seems like a very very healthy growth.You can look at it this way, in 2000 comic and TPB sales equaled 89.46 million dollars. In 2009 over 152 million dollars.

 

The dollars in the DM almost doubled in a ten year period. Obviously that type of growth can't be sustained forever, and it looks like there is about a 5% decline this year to date, which doesn't seem all that bad all things considered.

 

I do agree that the industry needs to do something to get younger readers into comics. I think things like putting comics racks in the toy aisles in Toys R Us is a pretty decent start. What else can they really do though at this point? The newstand is dying for all mags. I always thought they should advertise during kids shows. I think an ad during the Brave and the Bold cartoon saying something like "if you want to see more adventures of Batman, check out these comics" could work. Then again I'm not sure how kid friendly most of the books are.

[Scrooge]

The TPB market will not save the industry as it won't bring in the new readers that are the future lifeblood of the industry. Dollar sales are up, but unit sales are down, mainly due to a smaller audience buying multiples of the same issue.

 

How can you be sure that the TPB market will not bring in new readers? From all evidence I see, the TPB market is doing just that! TPBs are bought in big chain stores by folks that do not frequent LCS's and TPBs are often seen on shelves at public libraries across the country. To me, the TPB market is helping bringing in new blood into the hobby of reading comics (though probably not collecting comics since it's a further evolution). All I care about is that people read comics and on balance, we probably have more people doing that today than 10 years ago. Take the European example, few people are "collecting" in the sense we understand it on these boards but a lot of people are casual readers and the TPB market is helping the US market along into that direction. Just recently, the release of the most recent volume of Blake and Mortimer received a nationwide publicity campaign, something we've never seen in the US and yet, Europeans are not comic book collectors but readers. I know I got my copy. Consider also that this is a new volume of a series that was dead for decades once its creator died but has been successfully revived by the publication house with a rotating set of writers and artists working on the classic characters. Spirou went through the same successful revival. I like the fact that TPBs are making inroads to the public at large and I see nothing but good coming out of it.

 

As far as your comment about folks buying multiple issues, I'd have to see / know evidence of this before I would comment further but I do not believe that has a major effect in inflating current modern sales numbers.

[Logan510]

 

As far as your comment about folks buying multiple issues, I'd have to see / know evidence of this before I would comment further but I do not believe that has a major effect in inflating current modern sales numbers.

 

It almost by default has to mean just that. Dollar sales are up ( partly due to price point ) and unit sales are down. Less readers buying more comics...or do you really think whatever hot gimmick with 10 variant covers represents 1 warm body per sale?

[kidcolt]

I am not clinging to the concept that LCS are the only place. We moved 7 years ago and my nearest LCS is 1200km, I now buy everything online or through the mail. However the industry will have trouble gaining new readers especially young readers if they have to buy online. My 9 year old is a smart kid but he certainly won't be buying anything online anytime soon. Most young readers don't have credit cards or the credit history to set up charge accounts. There are more challenges shopping online then being in a comic shop, seeing a comic you like and hauling out $10 to pay for it. Impulse buying!!!

 

Introducing TP at Walmart is a smart move. The Walmart stores here have decent TP selection plus it is set up right next to a comic DVD section. There always seems to be people looking and picking up the dvd's and TP there.

 

I am not saying that LCS is the only option but having more shops and having comics carried in corner stores definitely helped sales in the 70's and 80's. The Sports card industry is going through the exact same issues. There are far less collectors then 10 years ago and hardly any young collectors. Young kids have a lot more options on where to spend their money plus cards are harder to find then they were. Sure you can go online but a huge part of any retail business is impulse buying....Archie digest are a prime example of this. Archie digest would probably not exist if it was mainly bought and sold online. I would say 80% of Archie digest sales are from drug stores, Walmart or similar box stores.

 

I don't think the industry is doomed but it certainly is in trouble.

 

Do you have any idea what sales are like these days and how many warm bodies those sales actually represent? The best analogy I've heard about the american comicbook industry as it stands today is " we may not be dead, but we're certainly sitting in the corner and coughing up blood".

 

 

Here is a chart from The Comics Chronicles from 1997-2009:

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

If I'm to believe the sales in 2009, there were an estimated 74.88 million comics sold in the North American market. The low point on that chart is 2001, with 66.92 million comics sold. These figures only account for the top 300 comics sold by Diamond. I'm not 100% sure if Diamond is/was the distributor for comics to book stores, Target, Walmart, ToysRUs, etc. I also understand sales will be down this year, but that is to be expected since the U.S. is in a deep recession.

 

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997, but this in anecdotal until someone puts up the numbers and compares them apples to apples like these charts on Comics Chronicles is attempting to do. What I see is 12 years where some years were better than others, but overall, not too wild of a fluctuation in copies sold year to year. I don't see numbers for TPBs sold, nor comics outside the top 300. Eventually, I believe Comics Chronicles will have enough data to put up the numbers for other years so we'll have a better picture.

 

I get that individual titles sales went down over time. But there are far more titles produced today than any time in the past (remember when there was only one Spiderman title, one Avengers title, one X-Men title, etc.), so I can only speculate on the overall trend. Did the industry sell 2 or even 3 times this many overall comics in the late 80s, early 90s during the speculation boom? How about in the 70s, where many people predicted comics would cease publishing because of horrible sales? What about the 60s, when Marvel was only able to distribute a limited number of books each month due to their distribution deal, but Dell/Gold Key was a bigger player?

 

If you are trying to imply I'm not aware of the "sky is falling" arguments I've been hearing for 30+ years, I'm well aware of what people are saying. I can only look at the empirical evidence that is shown and shrug however, because everything else is just anecdotal.

 

Are sales worse today than they were in 2001 (almost 10 years ago)? How does the rise of TPB sales affect these numbers? So, the industry has been in its death throes for over 10 years now, correct? Like I said, from what I've read, the industry has been in it's death throes since the 1970s and yet here we are.

[Jeffro.]

Sure you can go online but a huge part of any retail business is impulse buying....Archie digest are a prime example of this. Archie digest would probably not exist if it was mainly bought and sold online. I would say 80% of Archie digest sales are from drug stores, Walmart or similar box stores.

 

Archie digests are available at my local Stop & Shop. (and presumably at others as well) I see them every time I go, right at the check out counter. Definitely well placed for impulse buying.

[dupont2005]

Mainstream comics don't seem like they are for kids anymore anyway. Sure, there are kids comics. An "Adventures" imprint with sub par writing and art that treats kids like kids in a condescending way that I'm sure they are aware of. Then there are smaller publishers like BOOM! doing good kids stuff, but without being a comic book message board addict or a subscriber of previews, who would know? Not a ten year old kid or their parent unless the parent already read comics, that's for sure. I think the Scholastic graphic novels are the last saving grace for introducing kids to GOOD comics that are actually made for kids. But it's not a big deal, I mean I think the industry can survive without them. It kind of is a big deal that the potential love for reading and art that a kid could find in comics is less likely to develop or be discovered. As far as collecting goes, it will live on in one form or another. I'm still a skeptic of ultra high end comics and the premiums they fetch, but whatever. Comics themselves will have to go through a major overhaul to stay alive. It won't happen any time soon though. As long ans Marvel and DC can continue to make a profit they will do what they are doing. Increase price, decrease page count and page size. Eventually, I would like to see the standard comic format look something like what Heavy Metal is, hundreds of pages thick, magazine sized, and can be subscribed to cheap. I don't see how Heavy Metal can give so much for so little but the largest publishers in the industry can't...

[joe_collector]

Maybe I should clarify, I'm only addressing the span of time I've been reading and collecting comics. I'm over 40. I started reading comics in the 70s. (The first comic off the news-stand I remember getting was Star Wars #26, although I'm sure there were issues before this that my parents bought for me.) Back then, the death of the industry was being talked about.

 

You definitely got into comics pretty late, so my initial estimates were off. 1979-80 was a tough time for comics and was the official start of the DM with some books going DM-only and catering to a more adult/upscale market.

 

The time period I was thinking of was the 1973-77 era, which was quite a bit different.

[joe_collector]

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997

 

Exactly, and the high-point in the 2000's was during the comic movie boom/CGC speculator spike, and it has been moving down ever since.

[wee_s2e-migration]

With less comic shops and hardly any corner stores carrying comics sales have to be down. In the late 70's and 80's comics were available in almost every store I went in. In the 90's there was the comic & card boom that had comic shops popping up on every corner and every sports card store started carrying comics.

 

The few comic shops that are still alive don't carry a very big selection. They carry a few of the more popular titles but even then they carry a very small inventory. Good luck finding a new independent title or even a main stream popular title if you don't have a box in that store. Most shops now have way more TP & HC then regular issues and they really promote them.

 

The industry is hurting that is obvious. There are very few new collectors and I don't see that changing. The older collectors are more interested in spending money on back issues of comics they know are good or stuff from their youth.

 

 

Why are you clinging to the local comic shop (LCS) as if it is the only choice you have? I switched to an online retailer (DCBS) and have no problem getting the independent titles I want. There is so many titles available that I would never have seen or heard about if I was shopping at the LCS exclusively.

 

Your LCS doesn't carry Previews? Do you have to have a box to order from Previews?

[oakman29]

I really dont care if the other shoe is going to fall off,I've been collecting comics for 30 years now and everythings been fine.I'll just ride the wave and have fun while I'm doing it.

[ComicConnoisseur]

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997

 

Exactly, and the high-point in the 2000's was during the comic movie boom/CGC speculator spike, and it has been moving down ever since.

I reposted these sales figures here as its more relevant than the FF thread.

Here is a few of the other big guns sales figures courtesy of icv2.com

Uncanny X-men

10/2006 #479 - 89,052

10/2010 #529 - 62,256

Amazing Spider-man

10/05 #525 - 79,520

10/10 #645 - 56,709

10/10 #646 - 58,125

HULK

10/08 #7 - 110,261

10/10 #26 - 42,934

DEADPOOL

10/08 #3 - 61,833

10/10 #28 - 34,828

GREEN LANTERN

10/2007: Green Lantern #24 -- 78,650

10/2010: Green Lantern #58 -- 81,626

SUPERMAN

10/2005: Superman #222 -- 67,638

10/2010: Superman #704 -- 46,741

DETECTIVE COMICS

10/2005: Detective Comics #812 -- 39,270

10/2010: Detective Comics #870 -- 35,674

so it seems the so called movie effect has no affect at all saleswise for monthly comics.

 

 

 

[He11blazer]

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997

 

Exactly, and the high-point in the 2000's was during the comic movie boom/CGC speculator spike, and it has been moving down ever since.

I reposted these sales figures here as its more relevant than the FF thread.

Here is a few of the other big guns sales figures courtesy of icv2.com

Uncanny X-men

10/2006 #479 - 89,052

10/2010 #529 - 62,256

Amazing Spider-man

10/05 #525 - 79,520

10/10 #645 - 56,709

10/10 #646 - 58,125

HULK

10/08 #7 - 110,261

10/10 #26 - 42,934

DEADPOOL

10/08 #3 - 61,833

10/10 #28 - 34,828

GREEN LANTERN

10/2007: Green Lantern #24 -- 78,650

10/2010: Green Lantern #58 -- 81,626

SUPERMAN

10/2005: Superman #222 -- 67,638

10/2010: Superman #704 -- 46,741

DETECTIVE COMICS

10/2005: Detective Comics #812 -- 39,270

10/2010: Detective Comics #870 -- 35,674

so it seems the so called movie effect has no affect at all saleswise for monthly comics.

 

 

 

Surely that shows that movies DO increase sales temporarily?

 

I bet Iron Man shot up after the first movie, and I'll bet it's still higher than it was before the movie (only guessing). How's Avengers doing?

[ComicConnoisseur]

I understand this is just a 12 year snapshot of the industry and comics sold many more copies in years prior to 1997

 

Exactly, and the high-point in the 2000's was during the comic movie boom/CGC speculator spike, and it has been moving down ever since.

I reposted these sales figures here as its more relevant than the FF thread.

Here is a few of the other big guns sales figures courtesy of icv2.com

Uncanny X-men

10/2006 #479 - 89,052

10/2010 #529 - 62,256

Amazing Spider-man

10/05 #525 - 79,520

10/10 #645 - 56,709

10/10 #646 - 58,125

HULK

10/08 #7 - 110,261

10/10 #26 - 42,934

DEADPOOL

10/08 #3 - 61,833

10/10 #28 - 34,828

GREEN LANTERN

10/2007: Green Lantern #24 -- 78,650

10/2010: Green Lantern #58 -- 81,626

SUPERMAN

10/2005: Superman #222 -- 67,638

10/2010: Superman #704 -- 46,741

DETECTIVE COMICS

10/2005: Detective Comics #812 -- 39,270

10/2010: Detective Comics #870 -- 35,674

so it seems the so called movie effect has no affect at all saleswise for monthly comics.

 

 

 

Surely that shows that movies DO increase sales temporarily?

 

I bet Iron Man shot up after the first movie, and I'll bet it's still higher than it was before the movie (only guessing). How's Avengers doing?

Some more sales figures courtesy of icv2.com

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN

10/07 #23 - 42,608

10/10 #31 - 45,507

NEW AVENGERS

10/05 #12 - 127,949

10/10 #5 - 73,409

CAPTAIN AMERICA

10/05 #11 - 45,162

10/10 #611 - 48,788

DAREDEVIL

10/05 #78 - 45,071

10/10 #511 - 43,167

WOLVERINE

10/05 #34 - 75,664

10/10 #2 - 63,210

THOR

10/08 #11 - 78,673

10/10 #616 - 51,051