Kinda like “Zombies and Democrats” being redundant?

Funny stupid, not funny ha-ha.

And not for nothing, but my local shop has TONS of unsold copies of that Vixen miniseries. I’d be surprised if they’ve sold any.

158 Invincible 53 $2.99 Image 14,176
159 Invincible 54 $2.99 Image 14,165

218 Astounding Wolf-Man 9 $2.99 Image 8,325

I guess I was a little over on one and under on the other.

They do chart somewhere. I believe in the 150ish range with about 13,000 and 10,000 respectively.

Sad, but true. Either you have a fill in artist to stay on schedule or you wait for your artist to have a cohesive final product. DC has neither. What a cock up.

I’ll take ‘The War that Time Forget’ the numbers are clearly terrible in the North American direct market. Now I think this is a shame as its a great fun book. That said, and this is just off the top of my head this could mean two things.

1. Its a disaster and they hoped from minimal pulbicity this book would sell big numbers, or at least high enough numbers to justify its existance. This seems unlikely or it’d have been pushed more or wouldn’t have been risked at 12 issues.

2. DC has a broader publishing strategy for different titles than the limited view these figures can give us.

Superman may not be doing great guns at the moment in the US, doing ok but not great BUT when I was visiting Spain recently I saw a few Spainish Superman editions, likewise Legion. These big name titles might not have to sell a single issue in the US if licencing them to foreign markets provides the funds (thats pure speculation of course).

Likewise a book like ‘War that time forgot’ might have a market as a graphic novel in Europe, or some other terrioritory. It might be demned to have a future in bookstores in Fiji for all I know. The main point I’m trying to make is taking these figures as gospel for the success or otheriwse of a title is short sighted.

It may be indicative, after all many titles that rank up poor sales here get cancelled. So there certainly seems to be some correlation. Certainly with the mainstream hero titles, or the more obsure ones at least. If ‘Checkmate’ ain’t sells good numbers in the North American direct market it aren’t going to sell good numbers anywhere.

With these more ’specialist’ titles like say ‘War that time Forgot’ it might well be that its a disaster BUT at 12 issues I’d guess (and I openly admit I’m only guessing) DC had some other strategy in mind? Jonah Hex seems to be a great example of this broader vision that clearly the publishers will have. There seems to be an assumption that say ‘Tor’ will find its market elsewhere, this may well extend to other titles?

Thought you might like to know that although Trinity is about the DC headliners Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, all three characters have disappeared from the book for quite a few issues. Perhaps people are disappointed…

I’m not sure if they’re related, but since Kirkman joined, the Man of Action crew (Joe Kelly, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle) have launched a ton of new titles from the company. Really good titles, too.

“I mean, he had that big rant about how creators should work on book sthey own, did it actually lead to anything? ”

No, because there hasn’t been time for anything to come of it. Ask again in about or eight months.

Not that I think it’ll lead to much anyway, but still…

The best-selling periodical WildStorm are no longer publishing continues to perform excellently. Variant-cover editions are now a permanent fixture, though, apparently.

Not a problem for me, just adds to the fun. The story is staying dead-on focused.

Re: Kirkman, where do Invincible and Astounding Wolf-man chart, if at all?

“Huh, it seems Walking Dead is now selling better than every Vertigo title.
Has anything come from Kirkman becoming a partner at Image?”

Not really. The book has been more or less steadily going up in sales since 2004 - it seems to be completely unaffected by anything else Kirkman has been doing at any point.

It recently occurred to me that both the Teen Titans and to a lesser extent the Legion of Super Heroes concepts are overdue to be taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot, or at least the DCU versions. I mean, once upon a time the Titans were the backbone of the DC publishing schedule, and that’s great, but what even made them successful? The coming of age of a bunch of B-list superheroes. Well, OK, but now it’s been done and it’s time to move on. You can’t revamp a completely burnt out concept into relevancy.

Legion of Superheroes is just an Ultimate version of itself, insomuch as it’s so incredibly beholden to its own publishing history that it can never have it’s own momentum. So maybe don’t kill it entirely, maybe just let it rest for a decade or so. But do something to remove the albatross.

Oh whatever. DC has a publishing schedule to fill, and fill it it will; I suppose Teen Titans is as good as most any other title coming out of the DCU.

You’re entirely correct. My apologies.

These people seem to be ones who populate threads on Comicbloc like “What character would you follow no matter what?” or “What book will you read no matter how bad it gets?”

“TITANS did very well for three issues spread over eight months,”

That’s meant to say “FOUR issues spread over eight months,” of course.