Several problems here. DC and DD have chosen to go for the quick QUICK buck instead of focusing on quality series that can be picked up and enjoyed without having to buy countless crossovers and events to have any idea what might be happening. DD seems (finally!) to have at least grasped the concept by announcing that Superman and Batman will (paraphrasing) be embarking on adventures in THEIR OWN TITLES! Wow! Let us STOP going for the quick $$ by events and spin-offs (!!!) of events. Anyone remember the 90s? Anyone? Greed? Gluttony? Hello??

The DCU: As a long-time GA/BC fan, I’ve been waiting years for said book. And what to we get? Judd. The GA/BC “family” of endless confusion and… drek. Passed on the book, thanks. If ever we bring back Green Arrow and Black Canary, perhaps they’ll let us in on it and we’ll bite, yeah?

Flash: Jeezuz, where to start? We get over the Bart insanity (yeah, it was planned all along! uh huh), bring back Wally and we get… the Flash “family”. Does anyone wonder why sales on that book have plummeted? Do I want to read about second-rate Wonder Twins? Nada. Idea: DUMP THE WIFE AND KIDDIES! Better yet, BRING BACK BARRY ALLEN, say YES we made a mistake, have Patrick Duffy open the shower door and BRING BACK THE FLASH!!

On the up side, the Johns/ Robinson Superman team looks promising.

If anyone wants more ideas on how to save DC Comics, let me know!! yeah! : )

Well, that differs from book to book and from month to month, so in the current system of largely non-returnable distribution, there’s probably no workable way to find out.

Generally, the difference between what’s sold to retailers and what retailers sell to their customers tends to be the largest in the first month of a new launch, and gradually get smaller in subsequent months, as retailers adjust their orders to match the demand for a given title.

Ultimately, there’s always going to be a delayed effect, as far as these charts are concerned, of course. Still, I’d say that most of that is covered by the trends we see. If a retailer orders 15 copies of COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE and sells three, for instance, they’re probably going to order no more than five copies of the next issue - and hence we get to see an eight-percent drop on the chart.

Compare that to the Crime Bible series, which I have to keep asking my LCS to reorder for me because there aren’t enough. Point being, where does 20K really start equaling 20K? It’s one thing to get excited about a book doing 20k or down on a book for doing just 20k, but in reality, if LCS are filling up storage boxes with unsold books, that’s the real measure of success.

I understand that stores adjust their order quanties, but some of them will automatically order three or four or something no matter what, which is what was happening I think with Countdown to Adventure #6 and Crime Bible #4. The difference was that I as a consumer, had no trouble stuffing my bag with Countdown to Adventure several times over, but left the shop empty handed when it came to Crime Bible.

Sales does not equal quality. Never ever has. In any industry.

Most books these days, you don’t know ANYTHING — *ANYTHING* more than 1-2 months past solicitations. It strikes me that the thing that’s most different about GL is that we *do* know what’s coming up in Summer 2009, and I believe that affects the sales.

“I don’t know how to quit you.”

Marvel, meanwhile, has published Civil War, World War Hulk, Annihilation, Annihilation: Conquest, and their myriad spinoffs and crossovers since DC published Infinite Crisis, not to mention Messiah Complex and the buildup to Secret Invasion. Right or wrong, DC has more or less allowed their books to sink or swim on their own, yet no one complains that Marvel is just jumping from event to event to event. Why is the perception so inverted from reality?

Oh, I guess DC did also do Amazons Attack. Does it count as an event if no one notices?

I don’t think it’s fair to call anyone a mindless zombie for buying what they like at any rate. Some people really, really do like Bendis (I do, often), and some people really don’t like Geoff Johns (JSA makes me want to kill things), and these are their honest, true preferences and opinions. There was a time I bought more DC than Marvel… now it’s not the case. While both companies seem constantly embroiled in mega events, Marvel at least gives me some event free options so I don’t feel drowned with it all. Books like Runaways, Captain America and Daredevil often make reference to the big stories going on, but it’s not the main focus. At DC, I’m down to Blue Beetle and Brave and the Bold (and All Star Supes, whenever it manifests).

And by all that, I just mean to say, clearly Marvel is doing something to please the bulk of its audience that DC just isn’t at the moment. To assume people who like what we dislike are duped sheep is… well it’s something, but it’s probably not correct!

The problem with certain trends is that the “fan-boys” of the world get fed all this crap about how everything that a certain writer is doing is all they should buy…IMHO, Bendis is the biggest hack in all of comic-land, but, damn, Wizard thinks he is the “end-all-be-all” writer.

Storywise, Marvel isn’t that great, and the sad part is “Secret Invasion” will outsell “Final Crisis” by leaps and bounds…Why?!?! Because of BMB and the wonderful people at Wizard! That is why!

I think that the majority of the sales that we are seeing each month is caused by these mindless drones (Marvel Zombies, if you will) are being led like lambs to the slaughter…while World War Hulk might have sold more than it’s counterpart at DC (Sinestro War)…Sinestro was ten-times the story…Just the same, Infinite Crisis (for all the crap that it cause afterwords) was better (in terms of story) than Civil War (most anti-climatic ending…Captain America #25 was the true final issue of the mini), however, what Wizard tells these people to buy, they do…

Makes me wonder if Marvel signed Shamus to one of those exclusive contracts…

My ranting is over…

Well, on the one hand, I’d argue that retailers don’t place their orders in a vacuum - they have feedback from their customers, which I’d wager determines the bulk of their ordering habits, as far as periodicals are concerned. So, ultimately, the trends we see here should give us a pretty good idea of what readers want, I think.

Then again, I wonder how much of a factor the so-called “shelf copies” are. If books have to compete for shelf space with a thrice-monthly AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, a weekly COUNTDOWN and twenty-seven spin-off titles, then something eventually has to give. And if a book stops being on the shelf, its potential for attracting new readers is considerably diminished, obviously.

Thus every given month a retailer may think, hm, Blue Lantern isn’t selling very well, I’m only going to order 2 copies instead of 4. A few people do it and a few hundred copies less per month.

This has ALWAYS been the pattern, even when these charts were not as publicised at they are now. Look up Matt High’s original charts back on Usenet and you will see this is true.

Look at it this way: The vast majority of readers do stick around from month to month. However, there are countless reasons why a given reader may drop a given title from one month to the next. Consequently, every month, those books which didn’t manage to gain enough new readers to compensate for the lapsed ones will drop by a cerain percentage.

And the longer a serial narrative goes on, the harder it usually gets to convince people to jump on board. As a result, most books are trending downward by about two percent every month.

As someone said, these numbers are retailers ordering the books, not customers buying them.

If there are, for argument’s sake, 3000 comics stores, 22% of them ordering one less copy of #87 would account for those 644 lost orders. For each individual store, no big deal really, ordering 19 instead of 20 copies. But it adds up.

“100 Bullets” is a good example: Why would 644 people drop the book between issues #85 and #87? You’d figure at that point they’d either a) Already have been buying trades, b) Figured out if they liked the series (and it’s not like there have been fill-ins), or c) Having read 85 issues of the series, just hold out 15 more issues for the conclusion, even if they are leaving comics (assuming, of course, they have the financial resources available). Being a creator, I’ve been puzzling over this for a while.

It’s kind of odd, but I enjoy a lot of the lower selling DC titles, which I consider to be pretty well written. I’m among the number that reads Checkmate, Shadowpact and Suicide Squad. I was also among the readers of such excellent series as Manhunter and Chase that seemed to get canned before their time.

I’m also of the opinion that DC had some titles that had great runs before new, supposedly high profile creative teams took over to “relaunch” certain books. I loved Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman at the end of the old post-Crisis series, similarly I’d never been a regular Flash reader before discovering the great team of Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins on that title. When the books were relaunched, I detested the new direction of both and thus refused to buy them, having read the first issue of each new series that a friend had purchased. Similarly, one issue of the new Flash was enough for him and he gave up the new Wonder Woman title 4 issues in.

Sometimes creative changes aren’t needed, but sometimes they come too late to save a title. The new Firestorm is a good example of this. While the title was enjoyable after Stuart Moore took over as a writer, the initial launch under Dan Jolley was hard to read at times. The only reason I hung in is because the character is my favorite superhero of all time so I’m a completist. By the time the book became enjoyable under Moore’s tutelage(he came onboard around issue 15 IIRC), a good portion of the audience was already lost.

It’s kind of odd, but I enjoy a lot of the lower selling DC titles, which I consider to be pretty well written. I’m among the number that reads Checkmate, Shadowpact and Suicide Squad. I was also among the readers of such excellent series as Manhunter and Chase that seemed to get canned before their time.

I’m also of the opinion that DC had some titles that had great runs before new, supposedly high profile creative teams took over to “relaunch” certain books. I loved Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman at the end of the old post-Crisis series, similarly I’d never been a regular Flash reader before discovering the great team of Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins on that title. When the books were relaunched, I detested the new direction of both and thus refused to buy them, having read the first issue of each new series that a friend had purchased. Similarly, one issue of the new Flash was enough for him and he gave up the new Wonder Woman title 4 issues in.

Sometimes creative changes aren’t needed, but sometimes they come too late to save a title. The new Firestorm is a good example of this. While the title was enjoyable after Stuart Moore took over as a writer, the initial launch under Dan Jolley was hard to read at times. The only reason I hung in is because the character is my favorite superhero of all time so I’m a completist. By the time the book became enjoyable under Moore’s tutelage(he came onboard around issue 15 IIRC), a good portion of the audience was already lost.

It seems like there are a few things DC could learn from Marvel:
1.) Remove the character for a long period of time. Marvel built up a lot of anticipation for the return of Thor by having him “die” for a few years before bringing him back. Presumably, this would also allow a creative team to get pretty far ahead on their deadlines, so that the nightmares that DC faced after One Year Later could be avoided. It would seem to me that Wonder Woman would benefit greatly from this strategy.

2.) If you have to do events, build them around a character. Marvel has really given the Hulk a shot in the arm with World War Hulk. Would Green Lantern have benefitted more from the Sinestro Corps War if it was a standalone series supported by the ongoing? As successful as SCW was, I really think it could have been bigger.

I also don’t understand why DC continues to release books like The Programme as comics. These books are designed to be read as trades. Why have they gotten away from the Prestige Format? A series like this would do much better in that format, with a collection to follow.

There are as many reasons for dropping a book mid-stream as there are people. Maybe it’s no longer in the budget. Maybe the reader found some other book he/she likes more and those three dollars are going towards that. Maybe the new artist or writer on a book isn’t to the reader’s liking. Maybe some new character’s really getting on the reader’s nerves. Maybe there was a price increase (that’s why I dropped the IDW Transformers stuff). Maybe the reader decided to start waiting for the trade. Maybe it’s just not clicking with the reader anymore. Maybe the reader has just read all the stories with that character, or that universe, that he/she needed to read — not in an, “Oh, if I read another ______ story I’m gonna throw up!” way, but just in an, “Huh, I guess I’m done,” sort of way.

Heck, maybe the reader just got busy and forgot to go to the comic store that month and when he/she figured it out he/she shrugged his/her shoulders and went, “Huh, I guess I don’t need to buy these things anymore.” Habits can be like that sometimes, y’know.

Oh, and the other thing to remember is that these are the orders placed by the retailers, not the end consumers. As long as they have the extra cash, they can keep buying two copies of such-and-such-a-title for the racks just in case they might sell, but if a hot new title comes along, or an event starts up, or they need to tighten their belts, they can’t keep up with those two copies of that book. It’s kind of like how all the B-level titles started to drop at the same time the books became so darned event-driven — part of that was probably the retailers buying less copies, but part of that was also the readers adjusting their budgets to follow the event rather than what had been, ’til then, their regular books.

My old list comprised of Superman & Batman titles, Flash, Wonder Woman… oh hell, pretty much a big chunk of superhero books DC put out every month, and this remained constant every week until last March.

After Infinite Crisis, my interest became muddled with dissatisfaction largely due to continuity problems, short-term creative teams, and books being late. The continuity problems still bother me the most, since its been two years and no damn explanation has been presented. All I want to know is if Bibbo existed, dammit!

Several friends of mine also stopped buying DC titles as well, citing continuity fuck ups and event wear-out as their reasons.

However, I will point out that my friends and I have been comic readers for many years; I started in 1992.

I know there are so many people who have never picked up a comic or *gasp* have never even heard of Superman and other superheroes. That’s right, they’re out there.

In the past year living in Hollywood ironically enough I have met more people who have never even heard of Superman or Wonder Woman, and when they do, I direct them to a comic book store, BUT I tell them to buy trades, because to quote myself: “you may not understand the new stuff. It’s too confusing when it should never be.”