DC takes down Marvel

[mikenyc]

I would hardly call it a victory when a publisher has to use a gimmick for readership. They literally stuck the #1 on any title of substance and caused a few hundred thousand comic nerds to buy issues of titles they could give a mess about. This will be a blip.

 

I am included with these nerds.

Yes but October is the month the second issues were published. So much for the traditional #2 drop-off.

 

Rebooting your top 52 titles is a pretty big move. My prediction is it will decrease rapidly for the non-important titles, yeah I'm talking about you Blue Beetle and Grifter, and take a little more time for the Animal Mans and Swamp Things.

 

The bread and butter titles will continue, as they have, benefiting from the exposure and possibly gaining a foothold with new readers.

 

Was it a success, I said I would never participate, and I bought almost every title. I added Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Detective Comics, and Batman to my pull list so it worked on me. A victory though will be when we check back in a year and DC has still retained the title.

[ComicConnoisseur]

I would hardly call it a victory when a publisher has to use a gimmick for readership. They literally stuck the #1 on any title of substance and caused a few hundred thousand comic nerds to buy issues of titles they could give a mess about. This will be a blip.

 

I am included with these nerds.

I say it`s more like the 1700 lcs comic shops who have been buying the monthly comic books over the last few years then individual readers. I think there our a lot less people buying comic books then we think. I love the comic book hobby,but I am betting against this DC reboot,as a year from now this will be known as the comic industry`s Titanic.

[Silver Surfer]

I would hardly call it a victory when a publisher has to use a gimmick for readership. They literally stuck the #1 on any title of substance and caused a few hundred thousand comic nerds to buy issues of titles they could give a mess about. This will be a blip.

 

I am included with these nerds.

I say it`s more like the 1700 lcs comic shops who have been buying the monthly comicbooks over the last few years then individual readers. I think there our a lot less people buying comic books then we think. I love the comicbook hobby,but I am betting against this DC reboot,as a year from now this will be known as the comic industry`s Titanic.

 

Then they will probably revert back to the original numbering and sales will spike again but only briefly. They really need some fresh ideas and characters that people can take too. Having said that I'd gladly ship Deadpool over to DC because that is where he belongs. They have made the character's image a travesty. If I see another goof ball cover with this dude and 3 accompanying variants for the same issue I will puke.

[MrBedrock]

Wonder how much #1 stock will get dumped to the secondary $1 bin market very soon. Im looking at you Mr Terrific... and you Deathstroke..

 

The returns are a good point. Diamond im sure doesnt report those in their order #s..

 

and as I always say these numbers are somewhat useless cause they arent sales numbers at shops, just order numbers by shops... some dealers are still sitting on lots of leftover inventory by either mis-buying, or chasing varient incentives..

I can say that most shops had incredible sell through numbers, even with the increased orders and addition overprint copies. Our sell-through numbers approached ninty-eight percent. And that was with no single customer ordering quantities above two copies. And to give a little perspective we sold 1500 copies of Justice League #1. Purely from a sales standpoint it has been a pretty amazing and successful editorial decision.

[thehumantorch]

Wonder how much #1 stock will get dumped to the secondary $1 bin market very soon. Im looking at you Mr Terrific... and you Deathstroke..

 

The returns are a good point. Diamond im sure doesnt report those in their order #s..

 

and as I always say these numbers are somewhat useless cause they arent sales numbers at shops, just order numbers by shops... some dealers are still sitting on lots of leftover inventory by either mis-buying, or chasing varient incentives..

I can say that most shops had incredible sell through numbers, even with the increased orders and addition overprint copies. Our sell-through numbers approached ninty-eight percent. And that was with no single customer ordering quantities above two copies. And to give a little perspective we sold 1500 copies of Justice League #1. Purely from a sales standpoint it has been a pretty amazing and successful editorial decision.

 

I'm impressed, guess this means many reboots to follow.

[yzerman19]

I would hardly call it a victory when a publisher has to use a gimmick for readership. They literally stuck the #1 on any title of substance and caused a few hundred thousand comic nerds to buy issues of titles they could give a mess about. This will be a blip.

 

I am included with these nerds.

Yes but October is the month the second issues were published. So much for the traditional #2 drop-off.

 

I would be concerned for the health of the comic industry,as despite the hype Justice League went from;

 

Justice League 1 $3.99 DC 171,344

 

to

 

Justice League 2 $3.99 DC 104.800

 

Factor in most of the other DC titles even with returnability still averaged 30,000 copies sold.

This after only 2 issues.

Only the Batman and Green Lantern books sold well,but they were selling good before the reboot.

It is becoming apparant it is the 1700 lcs owners who are the ones who are buying the majority of monthly comic books.I expect to see massive amounts of issue 2s and 3s in the bins.

I also hope Justice League doesn`t have another - 70,000 copies sales lost for issue 3.

thankfully the lcs owners have deep pockets to keep the big two, and diamond in the comicbook business.

 

You're confusing the number as issues sold - it's actually a percentage based on sales of Batman which sold 177000 for the first issue. Assuming it did not drop very much for the second issue, Justice League is still selling well over 150000 copies.

[ComicConnoisseur]

Wonder how much #1 stock will get dumped to the secondary $1 bin market very soon. Im looking at you Mr Terrific... and you Deathstroke..

 

The returns are a good point. Diamond im sure doesnt report those in their order #s..

 

and as I always say these numbers are somewhat useless cause they arent sales numbers at shops, just order numbers by shops... some dealers are still sitting on lots of leftover inventory by either mis-buying, or chasing varient incentives..

I can say that most shops had incredible sell through numbers, even with the increased orders and addition overprint copies. Our sell-through numbers approached ninty-eight percent. And that was with no single customer ordering quantities above two copies. And to give a little perspective we sold 1500 copies of Justice League #1. Purely from a sales standpoint it has been a pretty amazing and successful editorial decision.

Well I am glad you had success with it, but

we know issue 1 with its variants was going to be a monster hit.I am interested to know how many issues your issue 2 sold for,and then issue 3.If your selling 750 copies when Justice League is on issue 10 then I will be impressed with this reboot.Also Justice League,The Batman,and Green Lantern titles were already strong titles before the reboot,so I be interested in what number their B characters sold at.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Wonder how much #1 stock will get dumped to the secondary $1 bin market very soon. Im looking at you Mr Terrific... and you Deathstroke..

 

The returns are a good point. Diamond im sure doesnt report those in their order #s..

 

and as I always say these numbers are somewhat useless cause they arent sales numbers at shops, just order numbers by shops... some dealers are still sitting on lots of leftover inventory by either mis-buying, or chasing varient incentives..

I can say that most shops had incredible sell through numbers, even with the increased orders and addition overprint copies. Our sell-through numbers approached ninty-eight percent. And that was with no single customer ordering quantities above two copies. And to give a little perspective we sold 1500 copies of Justice League #1. Purely from a sales standpoint it has been a pretty amazing and successful editorial decision.

 

Must have been the most ridiculous month for sales with all the various Marvel and DC titles, congrats! Best in recent memory?

[Prince Namor]

I'm glad it has been a success for comic shops. I don't want to see that 1700 number drop any more than it has. I will hopefully always be able to visit a comic book store.

I still worry that the way people buy, read, and collect comics is changing and none of it bodes well for the shops.

If DC had released issues of the 52 that gave me more than a "yeah, it's ok" response, I'd be a little more enthused. I don't want to downplay moderns, because there ARE great moderns out there.

Just not enough for me, often enough.

The big 2 is still lacking and seem to have their focus more on Hollywood.

They have the greatest collection of superheroes, but still can't seem to find a way to present them to consistently grow the comic book market.

Too much of our love for these characters is just rooted in memories of the past.

[bababooey]

Ever since this was announced I've often wondered why DC chose to promote it as the "New 52". I know they recently did that 52 weekly series but I don't understand why a company would attach their tag line to a 100% successful reboot.

 

After a year, if there are three cancellations - does this relaunch get promoted as the "New 49" or will they stubbornly refuse to cancel series that don't sell/aren't successful?

 

 

[sakaridis]

I would hardly call it a victory when a publisher has to use a gimmick for readership. They literally stuck the #1 on any title of substance and caused a few hundred thousand comic nerds to buy issues of titles they could give a mess about. This will be a blip.

 

I am included with these nerds.

Yes but October is the month the second issues were published. So much for the traditional #2 drop-off.

 

I would be concerned for the health of the comic industry,as despite the hype Justice League went from;

 

Justice League 1 $3.99 DC 171,344

 

to

 

Justice League 2 $3.99 DC 104.800

 

Factor in most of the other DC titles even with returnability still averaged 30,000 copies sold.

This after only 2 issues.

Only the Batman and Green Lantern books sold well,but they were selling good before the reboot.

It is becoming apparant it is the 1700 lcs owners who are the ones who are buying the majority of monthly comic books.I expect to see massive amounts of issue 2s and 3s in the bins.

I also hope Justice League doesn`t have another - 70,000 copies sales lost for issue 3.

thankfully the lcs owners have deep pockets to keep the big two, and diamond in the comicbook business.

 

I haven't seen the actual numbers for October yet. Where did you see that Justice League sold 103K?

 

And Batman was only selling about 50-60K before the relaunch. The New #1 sold 188K. That's a pretty big increase.

[Senormac]

How many does the Walking Dead sell ?

[kimik]

If I recall correctly, and without looking at the figures, Green Lantern was the top selling regular series prior to the relaunch by a long shot. The only Marvels to come close were the annual/bi-annual #1 re-launch issues, but after that they died down fairly quickly to trail GL.

 

It is great if this can increase readership overall, but looking at the results of Marvels continuous stream of new #1s I doubt it. That being said, it will be interesting to see what the staying power is across the board.

[sckao]

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-09.html

 

According to this chart, Justice League #1 is not anywhere NEAR the top 10 in terms of sales. It sold 46,650 copies in September.

For October, it's ranked 104% of Batman's relative sales as Batman is the baseline. So whatever Batman sold in October, Justice League #2 did slightly better in October with an index of 104.80 to Batman's 100.00

Which means that Justice League is the only title that did better than Batman in terms of comparative sales.

 

IT DOES NOT MEAN that Justice League #2 sold more than Batman #2 I think.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Justice League #1 actually came out in AUGUST 2011 with 171,344. I assume the the 46,650 copies in Sept were re-orders. So it had a total of 200,000+ sales.

 

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-08.html

 

 

 

[Boba]

For what it's worth, my son loves a bunch of the rebooted titles, and he's had little interest in the SA (or modern) DC's up till now.

So maybe they knew what they were doing after all

[Gatchaman]

The sales, while a victory for DC, were also a positive sign for the industry, which has fretted about declining readership and the availability of more and more titles on digital platforms from personal computers to smartphones.

 

I was wondering if anyone around here actually does their comic book reading in digital form ? I would think, if nothing else, that unless a persons screen was as large as a comic book page..... the whole artwork thing would be lost to readers.

 

To me, I don't care how technological it gets to reading comic books, you just can't take away from the original artwork and the feel of it on paper.

[Whizzer]

The sales, while a victory for DC, were also a positive sign for the industry, which has fretted about declining readership and the availability of more and more titles on digital platforms from personal computers to smartphones.

 

I was wondering if anyone around here actually does their comic book reading in digital form ? I would think, if nothing else, that unless a persons screen was as large as a comic book page..... the whole artwork thing would be lost to readers.

 

To me, I don't care how technological it gets to reading comic books, you just can't take away from the original artwork and the feel of it on paper.

 

And the smell, don't forget the smell!

[Gatchaman]

The sales, while a victory for DC, were also a positive sign for the industry, which has fretted about declining readership and the availability of more and more titles on digital platforms from personal computers to smartphones.

 

I was wondering if anyone around here actually does their comic book reading in digital form ? I would think, if nothing else, that unless a persons screen was as large as a comic book page..... the whole artwork thing would be lost to readers.

 

To me, I don't care how technological it gets to reading comic books, you just can't take away from the original artwork and the feel of it on paper.

 

And the smell, don't forget the smell!

 

+100

 

My wife and kids think it is funny when I smell them.

[smithdatura]

Not sure if there were many collectors like myself out there, but I bought into the hype in spite of my rational acknowledgment this was effectively one big marketing stunt by DC, proceeding to buy a few of the No. 1's that came out in early September. They were probably the first moderns I'd bought in close to 20 years.

 

That said, wayyyyy too many titles were sold out at my various LCS, so in the end it was a missed opportunity for DC to get more of my hard-earned $$$.

 

By the time these second issues were coming up, I had returned to where I was before the reboot: happy to ignore all moderns and return my collecting focus to silver goodness.

[Gatchaman]

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-09.html

 

According to this chart, Justice League #1 is not anywhere NEAR the top 10 in terms of sales. It sold 46,650 copies in September.

For October, it's ranked 104% of Batman's relative sales as Batman is the baseline. So whatever Batman sold in October, Justice League #2 did slightly better in October with an index of 104.80 to Batman's 100.00

Which means that Justice League is the only title that did better than Batman in terms of comparative sales.

 

IT DOES NOT MEAN that Justice League #2 sold more than Batman #2 I think.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Justice League #1 actually came out in AUGUST 2011 with 171,344. I assume the the 46,650 copies in Sept were re-orders. So it had a total of 200,000+ sales.

 

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-08.html

 

 

 

You may have to consider that even though the stores bought these that is doesn't necessarily mean that collectors/buyers bought that many when you factor in the fact that a lot of the sales were for the purposes of getting the alternate covers. A few issues down the road sales can drop drastically when DC stops offering the alternate covers as an incentive. This means that quite a few stores could have stock that isn't selling and will wind up at a convention in a discount bin. One of my local stores still has a lot of some of these issues and a nice display of the alternate covers.