Comic Fodder: Comic Books News and Reviews

The Previews Top 100 Comic Sales for April

The latest Previews magazine is out from Diamond Comics Distributors, and it’s worth looking at the grid from time to time just to see what’s hot and what’s not. This month is of particular interest because DC has five books in the top 10, and the top two slots, which doesn’t happen that often within a year’s time. Granted, there are other ways to estimate comic sales, and people can debate about better metrics, but even with some of the problems inherent in how Diamond tracks and publishes its sales, it’s still a convenient barometer, and more reliable than not.

I tend not to cover monthly sales, because other sites have regular columns that cover things with nice analysis and number-crunching. But something significant happened that not too many people are pointing out: Detective Comics is #1 for the month of April! I’ve never seen that happen before, and according to Jim, who owns my local comic store, the highest ranking that Detective has ever reached was #7 on the charts, and that was decades ago. The rare confluence of Neil Gaiman writing Batman in a special tale (meant to bring comparisons to Alan Moore’s much-revered “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” Superman story) vaulted the title waaay up the charts. Detective had never reached the #1 slot even during the heights of Bat-mania.

Detective was ranked #17 in January, #24 in December of 2008, #14 in November, #16 in September and August, #18 in July, and #44 in May. So it’s been ramping up the chart for a while now, but #853 was almost double the sales of #852. This, even though this was the second part of a two-part story, and it was more than two months late. For a normal series, the lateness would have affected sales. For recent proof, see the comparisons of Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk. The first and second issue sold over 100,000 copies apiece back in 2005. You know, when the series debuted? In March 2009, issue #3 came out, and sold 68,000 copies, dropping to around 60,000 copies for issues #4 and #5. So for those company spin-meisters that try to tell you that lateness doesn’t really affect sales, that’s one of the more obvious examples, and there are tons of others. Before I get off onto a rant about late comics, let me try not to digress…

This late Detective story doesn’t fit that bill. Readers knew going into it that this was more of an Elseworlds or “The End” story, making it more like a one-shot experience (and if they put it together as a one-shot, that probably would have been better). In the rest of the DCU, Batman was already gone, and all of the Bat-titles were being canceled and retooled for the next Bat-explosion. That Neil Gaiman was involved also meant some leeway with the fans, much as there has been considerable leeway with George Perez on Legion of Three Worlds. Perez is considered a legendary art talent, but with a notable history of trouble making deadlines, and long-time fans should have actually expected problems (especially considering we know he has had health issues with his hands in recent years). So while the greater truth of lateness=hurt sales stands for most things, it is also easy to find a couple exceptions, and Detective was one of them.

The third reason I wanted to cover this month for the sales chart is that comic sales actually went up for a change. Considering the recession and the recent price increases, you might think the trend would continue down. Even in movie theatres, actual attendance is down, but sales are up because they increased prices. This enables them to try to support their usual canard, that movies are good business in good times, and better business in bad times. If there is any element of truth to that, does it also apply to the comic collecting crowd? As real life tends to suck more, do you find yourself purchasing more comics? I think I do, that, come to think of it…

Back to the first reason: DC has five books in the top ten! Detective was #1, and Flash: Rebirth was #2. That seems pretty self-explanatory, and proof that Flash fans have been waiting for a good Flash story for almost three years. Batman: Battle for the Cowl was #6, and I don’t feel it deserved to be there, but what else was there to satisfy your Batman itch? DC’s sleeper success story, JSA, was #8, and Green Lantern was #9. Climbing up as part of that success, Green Lantern Corps was #26, and the (as I mentioned, late) Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds managed to hit #28.

For the first time, sales for Trinity fell out of the Top 50, and this may be due to the new title like Flash: Rebirth, plus the rare title like Legion displacing it. Since the month of April was up, we find that Trinity actually sold around 33,000 copies for each of the next four issues, meaning issues #44-48 held fairly stable with the previous month’s #40-43, but there were more comics that sold higher, pushing it down in the charts. Another reason is that DC’s publishing schedule kind of had an “overlap." By this, I mean most of these titles are published once a month, but there are three issues of Superman/Batman in the Top 50, two issues of JSA, and two issues of Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men. Sometimes the individual publishing schedule can fall just so, such that one issue comes out on April 1, and the next issue comes out on April 29. That, and for titles like Superman/Batman, they may have been late, and moved up their publishing of issues to get the series “back on track.”

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, fans. Be sure to let me know if you would like to see more insightful analysis of monthly sales from ComicFodder in the future.

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Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

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Posted by Travis on June 1, 2009 10:16 PM
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