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!!