Re: Final Crisis: I agree with Paul’s column, where he discusses the numbers as not that bad at all (compared to exceeding all expectations Secret Invasion). I think this one is a sleeper, too. The story is building to include more major players, the art is rock-solid, and word of mouth is going to work in its favor. All we’ve got to judge by in May is anticipation based on Final Countdown. IE, there wasn’t any, the series made no sense. But Grant Morrison isn’t Paul Dini.

As you seem to know what your doing blogging wise, do you know what the best time of the week is to blog and have them read?…

If they wanna use WS as their licensed properties brand, fine. But why keep doing relaunch after relaunch of WSU? Are they afraid of ticking off Jim Lee if they completely axed their superheroes line?

I’ve heard the same speculations about LOVELESS, CROSSING MIDNIGHT and THE EXTERMINATORS, so I’m skeptical. It’s possible, but it’s just as possible that SCALPED is being allowed to continue for reasons which have nothing to do with sales.

It does seem to be getting more good press and professional support than any other current Vertigo book in recent memory, after all. Depending on how much rope they’ve got for this sort of thing, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to give the book some time to find an audience, even if the numbers weren’t there yet.

“While I don’t know if I entirely agree that understanding in one issue is always reasonable (do you always know what’s going on by page 50 of a novel?)”

Not quite the same thing, really, as you are given an entire novel all at once to be read at your own pace, as opposed to divided up into 6 or more parts published once a month. Ditto with movies. You don’t get the first 25 minutes of the movie, then a “To be continued in 30 days” banner.

I think it might have to do more with the rise of the trade paperback. Back even 20 years ago, comics were rarely if ever traded. For that matter, a lot of storylines were shorter too. Now everything is traded, and often stories are stretched out to better fit a trade volume.

Anyway, you have a lot of new or current readers, myself included, who read trade paperbacks as much or perhaps even more than they do issues. When they do, it’s mostly in one sitting, or at least much quicker than they would were they to wait a month for each installement.

Even serialised comics with volumes do this, particularly Manga. There’s still a ‘to be continued’, but there’s simply more story per installment.

I think that’s where the mentality comes from more than anything.

When it comes to classic comic themes, Sinestro delivered. The books didn’t rely on anything particularly “catchy,” nor were they saturated with gimicky hero death. The same thing happened with the Resurrection of Ras a Ghul.

A similar type of mini-epic within the pages of Flash or Green Arrow would have seen modest boosts I believe rather than the mess they seem to be in now.

Sinestro Corps War proves that fans are still right there ready to gobble up floppies. And the lingering effect demonstrates that if its done right, we’ll stick around. Many of these other titles that are failing demonstrate that if you jerk our chains too hard, we’ll spend our money on something else.

Now we don’t know what the initial print runs were, but I think we can take it for granted that if the print runs are so low that even selling out can’t bring a profit to Vertigo then they wouldn’t produce it at all. So we have to assume that those sales are reasonably substantial. But we also know that the trades are only selling alright as far as first month direct market US sales are concerned. Which leads me to suspect that the book is selling at a relatively much better rate somewhere else.

That wouldn’t be entirely surprising when we consider the subject matter. A crime story set on an Indian reservation isn’t exactly the kind of thing calibrated to sell in the direct market outlets. But it might well be the kind of thing that sells in the bookstores.

The other circumstantial evidence is the very fact that the book hasn’t been cancelled. It’s 18 issues in now, which is a lot of issues for a book with first month periodical sales that low.

“However, as soon as you attempt to determine trends, you are engaging in interpretation, which is not exactly editorializing, but it’s still a bit removed from “straight” reporting”

Personally, I can live with that description. I regard the column as a piece of critical, independent analysis and commentary - all opinions expressed are, of course, those of the author, et cetera, yadda yadda. That said, I agree with Paul that the primary objective is to make trends visible.

For reference, here’s what’s in the Comichron and ICV2 estimates of Diamond’s reports and what’s not:

1) Diamond’s sales to the U.K. These tend to be in the 10% range when it comes to units. Diamond sold approximately $36.8 million in comics, trades, and magazines in May 2008 in North America; my best guess on UK sales is another $3.8 million.

2) Newsstand sales, if the publisher has them, as well as any sales through other distributors, direct sales, or subscriptions — again, if the publisher has them.

3) Any reorder activity outside the calendar period being reported.

Before 2003, we could safely say that the charts ALSO underestimated sales on all comics because they only reported preorders. Since 2003 and Diamond’s move to final order reporting, we also get reorders that ship within the same calendar month. This benefits Week 1 books more than any on the list, as a consequence. (And this is one of the places where month-to-month comparisons get tricky, if a book ships at different times in the months being compared. It’s this, not just the issue number, that causes the decline you usually see when multiple issues of a weekly ship in the same month. It’s not necessarily that sales are trailing off — just that the earlier issues have had more weeks in which to gather reorders.)

Given the standard errors most people have been able to achieve since the 2003 change, I’m reasonably sure the Comichron and ICV2 tables, as well as some others I could name, reflect what we each say they’re estimating; Diamond’s North American orders in the calendar month, and only Diamond’s North American orders in the calendar month. The important thing is always to spell that out, which isn’t always easy in a discussion. There’s always a lot of boilerplate small print that Marc-Oliver and Milton and I and the rest of us writing about this stuff, but it’s there for a reason.

I would argue that you’ve basically said the same thing twice. Please note; this is not a criticism, because I enjoy your analyses and find them to be both insightful and valid. However, as soon as you attempt to determine trends, you are engaging in interpretation, which is not exactly editorializing, but it’s still a bit removed from “straight” reporting, in my own opinion as a newspaper reporter IRL. Once you get to that level, the main difference is how accurate your interpretations are, and while I’d acknowledge that you have a very good track record on that score (easily better than a lot of us who are replying to your posts), I still feel we should be free to offer our own interpretations in response.

Obviously you could do that yourself if you wanted, but it’d take you several hours, and we’re saving you the hassle.

And as someone who often can only post in the middle of doing other things, I do appreciate this.

DC chasing “whatever sells” is, as strange as it sounds, bad practice. Whatever sells in this market environment is whatever is catering to and catching the attention of the shrinking niche fanbase. Whenever they try something new and it doesn’t catch on immediately the Big Two bury it as not marketable and go back to feeding the neverending crossover with more graphic violence and shocking character deaths. Nevermind that there are other venues out there for selling comics in the 21st century as well as whole new market demographics they could reach if they had the guts to actually to try something different or take a chance. So they will continue to run every tried and true formula into the ground while the industry dies around them.

Oh wait, I’m just some internet loudmouth babyman so why pay any attention to me right? (yes, treating your customers like an annoyance is also very bad business)

He’s past 80! And yeah, he’s still got it.

he’s actually 81!!

A funny side note, Joe Kubert must be pushing 70 by now, his work is still quality from page one to the last and like his last mini-series, each issue ships on time.

Take that you young whipper-snappers!

No I’m saying not to take a BORDERLINE FIGURE and make a federal case out of it.

Reread my last post.

Of course this says nothing about the inability of those supposedly iconic characters like Superman or Wonder Woman to sell more than 50K a month. Even if actual ales are higher and you would count the monthly online-theft numbers in - which translated in actual sales surely would boost these number a lot -, it still doesn´t paint a rosy picture for the future. The profit margin for monthly superhero comics must get smaller all the time. Which is sad.

I get what you’re saying, but the problem is, regardless of however many disclaimers you issue, the only reason your posts exist is to make projections based upon the available sales numbers (after all, if we just wanted the sales estimates without your respective analyses, we’d simply go straight to ICv2 or similar sites), so for Heidi or whomever to take the replying posters to task for what basically amounts to the same thing - ie. making projections based upon the available sales numbers - smacks of a tremendously petty, pissy hypocrisy.

I mean, what, should I take the time to add a disclaimer of my own, to the end of every single one of my reply posts in these threads? PLEASE.

Ok there was a point from my last post, aside from making it seem like I have a massive ego and the world (or at least DC sales) rotate around me.

What can we gleam from my pull list (which again I have to reiterate is genuine) aside from the fact that I’m clearly completely out of step with popular thinking when it comes to what makes a good comic book (I mean I’m turning towards DC from being a Marvel fan at this time and I haven’t even got around to checking out any of Geoff Johns much hailed current books.).

The answer of course is nothing, not a damned sausage. Now if you looked at my list in isolation without anything other than the raw sales data, and believed that I somehow had the mystical power to change the way the world works you might well be able to see a pretty decent correlation between books I like and bad or falling sales. Not an exclusive and exhaustive link, but still a link. Now of course being rational, sane people we know there is no such link.

Why then do people make seemingly definitive statements about the course and scale of DCs current APPARENT problems? Now I’m not going to say that there isn’t a problem, I’m not here to defend DC and all the evidence available to us Internet readers seems to point to the fact that there is a problem and what some of the courses are. That said there is no way we have all the information. These sales breakdowns, even to the writers need to be a bit of fun, some rough estimates that give some indication about the relative state of play between the competing big two. It’s not the whole picture, they’re by no means definitive and a whole host of other factors we’re by no means privilege to will come into play.

I love reading these run downs but treat them for what they are, a bit of fun, a vague glimpse into the world behind the comics I love. Nothing more, nothing less.

A great example of this is all the speculation about the relative success or otherwise the Amazing Spiderman launch as an almost weekly comic. Depending on people’s perspective this is either starting to prove to be a massive failure, or still a raging success depending on how people have determined, with no real information, what Marvel decided it wanted from the sales of these books. A host of factors are banded around, none of which have any real meaning as its all fun speculation.

In these figures we’re looking at estimates, from one market place (though I’m sure North America is the main one but international markets I’m sure play a part) through one (though again the main) channel of sales with no knowledge of what sales required for each title are for it to break even.

So for example I’d guess (that I’d GUESS) that Green Lantern costs more to produce than say Green Lantern Corps at the moment. I guess this because I figure Geoff John’s and the rest of the creative team cost more to hire than the team on the ‘Corps’. Likewise while Flash’s sales are certainly going down and this is worrying (I’m not pretending I’m not worried but the truth is I don’t really know and it’s probably pretty safe) if the drop in sales since say Mark Waid left is to some extent compensated for by having a book that now costs less to produce ‘cos Tom Peyer costs less to hire to write a book?

That’s my guess at just one factor that might influence how DC judges the actually success of a book in its output. There’ll be loads more and enough already.

All I’m saying is until we can get the comic companies to release actual sales figures we’re only playing with speculation. Even when they do that we won’t have the complete picture. So let’s have a bit of fun with all this and stop assuming we can make definitive statements about stuff we really don’t know about.

Did we learn nothing from the rumours of Didio’s impending departure from DC?

Now then more importantly why is my taste so bad in comics…

With all these wild, speculative arguments about the woes and evils of DC editorial and marketing going around I think it’s about time we all gained a little perspective and looked at the real course of DCs sales issues at the moment. ME! Plain and simple it’s me, all me me me!

I started getting into DC big time a couple of years ago after a couple of years collecting all the Wally West Flash material I could get my greedy little purrs on. Since then I’ve been moving steadily away from Marvel and increasingly towards DC. In May (and this is all true I promise) my DC pull list was as follows (most of which I love and I think are great books).

Final Crisis: I’ve been looking forward to this for a year now and opps, not the launch it seems people were expecting.

Rann/Thanagar: Holy War: Not a disaster but not great (though must admit I’m not enjoying this as much as most of the other books I’m getting).

Brave and the Bold: Ouch that’s slipping away badly for a great book.

Batman and the Outsiders: Not looking healthy.

Flash: Much talked about already and now it would seem that even Wally West himself, my first DC love, is maybe going to be sidelined.

Legion of Superheroes: Numbers slipping away too.

The War that Time Forgot: This is a great little book and it’s a shame its sales are so poor!

Tor: Oh come on it the good Kubert, the one with real talent so why isn’t this selling by the shed load?

Shadowpact: The first (but alas not the last) that’s actually been cancelled from my list.

Spirit: While the new creative team isn’t as good as Cooke its still a mighty fine fun book.

Metal Men: Ok I didn’t understand it all but I’m looking forward to reading it in one sitting without the long breaks and assume it will make more sense like that.

Infinity Inc: I loved 52, love Milligan what could possibly go wrong with this title…. Oh.

So you see all DC need to do to turn itself around is stop me buying their books and the jobs a good ‘un!

(I don’t read any Wildstorm books – their problems are of their own making!)