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80. BLACK PANTHER
Feb 02 Black Panther #41 - 19,523
Feb 03 Black Panther #54 - 17,401
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Feb 05 Black Panther #1 - 69,930
Mar 05 Black Panther #2 - 47,533 (-32.0%)
Apr 05 Black Panther #3 - 44,925 ( -5.5%)
May 05 Black Panther #4 - 40,804 ( -9.2%)
Jun 05 Black Panther #5 - 37,401 ( -8.1%)
Jul 05 Black Panther #6 - 35,256 ( -5.7%)
Aug 05 Black Panther #7 - 42,905 (+21.7%)
Sep 05 Black Panther #8 - 46,239 ( +7.8%)
Oct 05 Black Panther #9 - 40,173 (-13.1%)
Nov 05 Black Panther #10 - 31,987 (-20.4%)
Dec 05 Black Panther #11 - 29,327 ( -8.3%)
Jan 06 Black Panther #12 - 27,933 ( -4.7%)
Feb 06 Black Panther #13 - 26,054 ( -6.7%)
6 mnth (-39.3%)
1 year (-62.7%)

The other half of the big wedding, and it continues to drop like a stone. At these levels it really can’t afford to keep shedding almost 2,000 readers an issue, but that’s what it’s doing. Marvel evidently have tremendous faith in the book, but the direct market doesn’t agree with them, on the strength of these numbers.
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It’s just back on that trend at last, now that the endless propping up from other books has all-but-ended (Storm’s still in the book, but she’s also back in Uncanny X-Men and any references to BP in there are trivial - even when they had the “new F4″ appear, it was just Ben & Johnny, not BP).

Denying reality doesn´t stop it from happening. The persistent drop in A:TI is worrying, specially when you take into account the hints being dropped that a book in the top20 will be canceled not due to sales, but to skrulls.

Crossovers (and, as I said, Initiative seems to have been treated as a crossover for the purposes of ordering based on the sales of all the books bannered as such), as you and just about everyone else who reads the charts will know, tend to put a square wave in the trends - they bump up hugely, but only during the crossover, when the vast, vast majority of them drop straight back down to where or below where they were before. The only books in recent memory which IIRC bucked that trend in any way without a post-bannered issues relaunch were Cable & Deadpool and Thunderbolts (which was relaunched five months after the CW banner had gone away and so has post-CW, pre-Ellis data), who both held 5k or so above their pre-crossover levels the month after and took a few months to reach where they were.

And A:TI, of course, HAS no baseline for retailers to cut back to. So they hacked away a huge chunk post-crossovers to see where they were, found themselves with a big excess still, and hacked away some more. What are the odds, with that sort of trend, that they won’t be hacking away for a month or two more at the very least before they find some sort of level that won’t leave them losing money?

The glass may not be down to half quite yet, but there’s big hole in the bottom.

(And it’s not consistently losing 10% a month. Con•sis•tent: (adj) able to maintain a particular standard or repeat a particular task with minimal variation. How is a 19% drop from a first issue with a varient cover a minimal variation from a 2.6% bump during a crossover? Do you have enough data to show a consistent trend for this book?)

If at least 60,000+ readers stay with the title for 9 months, doesn’t that say something? That puts Avengers Initiative in the same range as titles like Detective Comics, in the middle of a major Bat crossover.

You can point to the numbers of readers who have left and opine that it was because “it was nothing like Bendis’ New Avengers”. If that is true, then what about the converse? What about the 60,000+ readers who’ve stayed? What does that say about an audience that large who are still following a Marvel title about new characters and c-listers?

I guess what I’m asking is, if that 10% drop doesn’t occur like you’ve predicted, and the book continues to stay in the Top 25, will you start seeing the glass half full instead of half empty?

That poster said: “Well, having no legs is losing 10% of readership each month.”

And Avengers the Initiative hasn’t lost 10% of its readership each month. It’s fluctuated. It went UP around 2.5% when it took part in the World War Hulk crossover. It went down over 14% when it came out of the crossover. There’s context that you’re not bringing to the table when you make blanket statements like it’s “losing 10% of readership each month.”

In your last post you agree that the book would have to take close to a 20% drop next month for that average to hold. And you’ve been doing this long enough to know that a book usually takes its biggest drop from issue #1 to issue #2, especially if the first issue had a varient cover.

Do you think that the book will take that steep of a drop going from issue #7 to #8? Do you think the 10% average will exist next month? Do you think that the book will drop out of the Top 25?

True, but you’re the one who told another poster that it was “factually inaccurate.” And it isn’t. It’s totally accurate.

The Order falling so much in sales because its a great book. Not something I would expect from Marvel. As I say it reminds me of something Valiant would have put out back in the day. Also if you look at the fact the heroes are mostly new I don’t see the sales as being awful.

Avengers: The Initiative rocks, but it stars characters a lot of people don’t care about, or want to take the time to know. If anything I would think it would sell in the same range as New Warriors.

Ghost Rider just sucks because Daniel Way doesn’t know how to write the character.

Moon Knight I have always felt was way overhyped. The last issue was the best issue in the last 7.

Iron fist is a niche so you really can’t expect him to sell a ton. For a B-lister you gotta give the book its props.

Nova is another one that is sad to see it going. I would think though that the low 30s would be considered decent for the character. The big test with Nova will be whether or not it will be able to stand on its own without crossovers.

Black Panther is just a broken book driving with four flat tires going nowhere.

The bottom line comes down to asking “Is the book making money for Marvel”. Avengers the Initiative seems like it has to be. Heck, they just put out a premiere hardcover, which I thought was kind of overdoing it, but clearly someone at Marvel is convinced people will spend that kind of money on it.

Having said that, it would be nice if it wasn’t loosing around 10,000 readers for the past 4 issues and hopefully that trend will stop soon.

Unless the next issue of Avengers Initiative takes that much of a drop (19%), that figure will not hold when doing your 6 month assessment. That number is an outlier. If you were to take it out of the equation and look at the following 5 months worth of sales, the standard drop of the book shrinks down to around 8%.

Also, looking at the numbers as they’re laid out here, without individual context (when they were part of a crossover, negative reaction to a fill-in artist, etc.), it doesn’t really tell an accurate story of this, or any other book. Like another poster on this thread said, “It’s all a crapshoot.”

One thing that is inarguable is that this book started in the Top 25 and has remained there for its entire run.

That being said, I will go on record and say that the current success of CA is MOSTLY (if not SOLELY) due to the book still being in gimmick mode. After the gimmick is over, sales will drop right back down to pre-death issues. I said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face, the 90’s are back.

However, I think that when most people pick their favorite artists (or “the best” artists), they tend to pick the ones who show more “fine art technique”, i.e., drawing pretty pictures. As Steven Grant pointed out in a recent column, it’s hard to think of a page by Buscema that makes you say “WOW!”, even though, as a STORYTELLER, he’s second to none.