by Paul O’Brien

November was meant to be the final month of SECRET INVASION, but that slipped into December, taking some high-profile crossover issues with it. In fact, perhaps the most striking feature of this month’s chart is the number of high profile books that are missing: no SECRET INVASION, no NEW AVENGERS, no MIGHTY AVENGERS, no ASTONISHING X-MEN, no THOR.

Since Marvel are saving most of their new titles for the upcoming “Dark Reign” promotion, there’s not much in the way of new books either. The month’s highest profile release was ULTIMATUM #1. There’s a couple of low-profile miniseries, and, uh, that’s about it, really.

With FINAL CRISIS and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA also absent, it’s a weird month all round. As usual, Marvel had the biggest share of the direct market, but it’s closer than usual. They led DC by 43% to 35% in unit share, but in dollar share, it’s a mere 37% to 34%.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.

1.  ULTIMATUM
11/08  Ultimatum #1 of 5 - 114,230

In the absence of SECRET INVASION (which would probably have beaten it by 35,000 or so), ULTIMATUM takes the top spot this month. This series is supposed to reinvigorate the Ultimate imprint, which has been flagging a bit over the last year or so. And at first glance, it’s off to a pretty strong start - 115K is roughly what FINAL CRISIS did last month.

But it’s not quite that simple. For one thing, it’s significantly lower than the first month sales of ULTIMATES 3 #1, which shifted an estimated 131K back in December 2007. With all the hype, you might have thought ULTIMATUM would deliver similar numbers. Then again, the Ultimate imprint generally has taken a hit over the last year, so perhaps not.

More surprising is the performance of the November tie-in issues, ULTIMATE X-MEN #98 and ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #58. Normally, you’d expect them to get big sales boosts from the crossover. But… well, see for yourself.

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That’s the bad news. However, ICV2 attributes it to the fact that so many top titles were absent in November.

The top comic titles were AWOL in November, leading to a weak month over-all. Six of the top ten comics in October (Secret Invasion, Final Crisis, New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Astonishing X-Men, and Justice League of America) had no corresponding issue in November. So it’s not surprising that the dollars of the Top 300 Comics dropped 11% in November 2008 vs. the year ago period.

Marvel’s Ultimatum #1 and DC’s Batman #681 (the final chapter in the RIP storyline) were the only two titles with sales to comic shops of over 100,000 in November, the lowest number of titles over that threshold since March. The top two titles in October were the Big Two’s event books, Secret Invasion and Final Crisis, neither of which shipped an issue in November.

Yet the report notes that “An unusually high seven titles in the top 25 sold more in November than they did of their previous issues (the corresponding number in October was two), with 12 dropping and seven new #1s.” So that’s the good news.

More: Top 300 Comics Actual–November 2008

Of some note: The #300 titles on November’s list was Oni’s WASTELAND at 2,230. In October the #300 book was UNCLE SCROOGE #380 at 4,230. This indicates that a LOT of higher-selling books didn’t ship in November, as in November Uncle Scrooge #382 ranked at #236 with 4,306 copies sold. There’s a lot of movement down below.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

Any signs yet of the financial crisis affecting the periodical direct market in October? No, not really. Thanks to several high-profile books that weren’t published in September coming out again, DC Comics’ average periodical sales jumped back up, as expected. The publisher’s DC Universe line continued to be dominated by the blockbuster events Final Crisis and “Batman RIP” and their numerous spin-off and tie-in titles. In other news, Pa Kent died, Supergirl got another new creative team and Superman kicked off the “New Krypton” crossover, with modest results. In terms of new launches, there were Terror Titans, Vixen and, um, Superman & Batman vs. Vampires & Werewolves, none of which charted very highly, unsurprisingly. Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s original Joker hardcover book led the Graphic Novel chart with a very respectable 17,296 units, meanwhile.

Average periodical numbers of DC’s Vertigo and WildStorm imprints kept eclipsing the 11,000 unit mark, which, shall we say, is not very impressive compared to their past numbers. At Vertigo, the new Unknown Soldier series by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli was off to a reasonably good start by recent standards. At WildStorm, no less than three new licensed properties got their comic-book miniseries. With the exception of Gears of War, they crashed and burned. Casey Blue, one of the few remaining creator-owned books at WildStorm, slipped off the Top 300 chart again with its final issue; for the sake of the average sales calculations, I’m assuming that it sold as many units as the previous issue - which it probably didn’t, but never mind.

See below for the details, and please mind the fine print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

2 - FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 — 144,826          [166,641]
06/2008: Final Crisis #2 of 7 — 126,082 (-12.9%) [134,116]
07/2008: –
08/2008: Final Crisis #3 of 7 — 123,881 (- 1.8%)
09/2008: –
10/2008: Final Crisis #4 of 7 — 115,666 (- 6.6%)

Approximately 40,000 units below Marvel’s Secret Invasion #7, DC’s event of the year continues to perform in a tolerably steady fashion. Quite obviously, the two blockbuster miniseries are still playing in different ballparks. The best thing Final Crisis has going for it right now, besides being comfortably ahead of every other DC periodical, is that it’s been able to hold on to an encouraging percentage of readers. As usual, Final Crisis sales were boosted with 50/50 variant-cover edition.

October’s spin-off titles were the one-shots Final Crisis: Submit and, um, Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, as well as new issues of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge and Final Crisis: Revelations - see below for those.

The release date of Final Crisis #6 has been pushed back to January 21, meanwhile, making it seem increasingly unlikely that DC will accomplish its stated goal of being done with the series by the end of January. Why choose between fill-in artists and delays when you can have it both ways?
(more…)

By Paul O’Brien

It’s a quiet October. SECRET INVASION continues into its seventh month. Just think, when the crossover began, Hillary Clinton was still campaigning for President…

The biggest new title of the month was ASTONISHING X-MEN: GHOST BOXES, and there’s also the “Original Sin” crossover between X-MEN: LEGACY and WOLVERINE: ORIGINS. And, er, that’s pretty much it - there are some new miniseries further down the charts, but otherwise, it’s a month of business as usual.

Unsurprisingly, Marvel’s huge market share in September was a blip. DC shipped their major titles in October, so the market shares are back to more normal levels. Marvel led DC by 45% to 33% in unit share, and 39% to 32% in dollar share.

The bottom end of the chart is unusually strong this month. The number 300 book - UNCLE SCROOGE #380 - has estimated sales of 4,230. That means some of Marvel’s lower-selling titles missed the charts entirely: ODYSSEY #2, THREE MUSKETEERS #5, MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #16, MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #41 and HULK CHRONICLES #4. Bear in mind, also, that we’ll be missing any re-orders below that point.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.

1.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 272,195
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 197,685  (-27.4%)
06/08  Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 186,533  ( -5.6%)
07/08  Secret Invasion #4 of 8 - 175,469  ( -5.9%)
08/08  Secret Invasion #5 of 8 - 165,958  ( -5.4%)
09/09  Secret Invasion #6 of 8 - 169,440  ( +2.1%)
10/09  Secret Invasion #7 of 8 - 154,675  ( -8.7%)
                                  6 mnth  (-43.2%)

Still holding up well as the lynchpin of Marvel’s superhero books. Last month’s rise was a blip because of the Baltimore Con Variant making the charts, but the general trend is a steady drift downwards. For an eight-issue mini, that’s fine.
(more…)

Since we’re talking numbers, Todd Allen gets a look at Marvel sub and newsstand figures via Marvel’s circulation audit. The #1 subscription title is the kid-friendly MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN with 31,479. #1 at the newsstand is CIVIL WAR CHRONICLES with 7,824.

Interestingly enough, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man didn’t even register 1,000 copies sold on the newsstand. I guess parents must subscribe their children after one issue. If you take the Marvel Adventures titles out of the subscription list, it isn’t completely different from your direct market sales charts. Newsstand, on the other hand will blow a couple minds.

Allen concludes that the newsstand is marginally more kid- and teen-friendly, although the numbers are so low.

John Jackson Miller’s October 2008 sales estimates are up, but what’s really notable, he writes, is that October was a huge month for dollars.

The October 2008 comics sales estimates are online at The Comics Chronicles, and it turned out to be a record-setting month in a number of categories.

The Top 300 Comics Dollar sales were the highest they’ve been since the beginning of the Diamond Exclusive era, in April 1997. Likewise, the Top 300 Comics Plus Top 100 Trade Paperbacks (although only the Top 25 and then the Top 50 trades were reported up until a few years ago). The Overall Comics, Trade Paperback, and Magazine sales figure also set the highest mark since that category became trackable in 2003.

And the average cost and average weighted cost of new comics in the Diamond Top 300 is higher than at any time in the Diamond era, and almost certainly in the history of comics. The average cost of all comics in the Top 300 was $3.38 — and the weighted average, total dollars divided by total units, was $3.31. The Top 25 comics had an average price of $3.39, so the top of the list was particularly pricey.

Obviously, rising comics prices had much to do with it, but as we pointed out earlier, and Miller affirms, the overall sales on the chart were much higher than in the past, with even the #300 book selling over 4000 copies. In January 2005, the #300 comic sold 679 copies. (Emphasis mine.)

What does this mean in light of all the recession gloom and doom? We’re not quite sure. Momentum has a lot to do with it, but it does seem that a more diversified base of readers will help smooth out the transition when Marvel and DC inevitably raise their cover prices in the next year.

ICv2 has released its October sales estimates, and the bad news is that sales slipped almost everywhere:

Sales to comic stores on the top titles in October, the first month since the global economic crisis has been front page news for the full month, appear to have slipped, with only two titles in the top 25 eking out an increase over the previous month’s issues. Amazing Spider-Man #573 displayed the “Colbert Bump,” picking up sales over the previous issue; and Batman #680, the penultimate issue in the RIP storyline, also gained. But other than that, declines of a few percentage points vs. the previous issue were the norm.

But the good news is that dollar sales were up a “robust” 9%. What? HOW???

The gains weren’t in circulations at the top of the chart, where most titles were down. But ten of the top 25 books were $3.99 this October, compared to only two $3.99 books in October of 2007, so price increases are certainly a factor. Another is strength at the bottom of the chart, where the #300 title clocked over 4,200 copies, vs. just 3,000 copies for the #300 title a year ago.

That bottom chart strength is especially noteworthy in the shrinking economy. Dizamn, maybe these things ARE recession proof after all.

More: October Top 300 Comics Actual
October Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

So, did the financial meltdown have an effect on the periodical comics market in September? Probably not. DC Comics’ periodical business did take a massive hit, mind you, but that had more to do with Final Crisis than with the financial crisis. DC’s big blockbuster event failed to come out in September, and so did spin-off titles Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds and Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge. Batman, Justice League of America and Justice Society of America didn’t make it out, either, meaning that none of the publisher’s four top-selling titles on the August chart came out in September. The fact that DC’s average sales crashed to their lowest level in years didn’t come as a great surprise, consequently.

Also contributing to the weakness of the company’s September output were low debut sales of the election tie-in limited series DC Universe: Decisions and the ongoing monthly Secret Six by Gail Simone. That aside, though, there were actually some rather encouraging signs in the DC Universe line’s September performance Thanks to a couple of new launches at WildStorm and two issues of Fables at Vertigo, meanwhile, the average periodical numbers of both jumped back above 11,000 for the first time in months. And, of course, September was another successful month for DC as far as the Graphic Novel chart is concerned: Perennial favorites Watchmen and Kingdom Come ranked high, as did the latest collection of Vertigo’s 100 Bullets.

Before we head into the Top 300, some corrections are in order this month. The chart of WildStorm’s average numbers was a mess: The correct average for August 2008 is not 10,560, but 10,064, first up. Second, the year-on-year comparison wasn’t accurate, either, because I accidentally compared the August 2008 figure with the July 2007 figure. My apologies for the mix-up.

See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

4 - ALL STAR BATMAN & ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER
09/2005: All Star Batman #2 — 178,592 [184,962]
09/2006: –
—————————————
09/2007: All Star Batman #7  — 100,582 (- 5.1%)
10/2007: –
11/2007: All Star Batman #8  —  97,037 (- 3.5%)
12/2007: –
01/2008: –
02/2008: All Star Batman #9  —  93,766 (- 3.4%)
03/2008: –
04/2008: –
05/2008: –
06/2008: –
07/2008: –
08/2008: –
09/2008: All Star Batman #10 —  94,057 (+ 0.3%)
—————-
6 months:  n.a.
1 year  : - 6.5%
2 years :  n.a.

15 - ALL STAR SUPERMAN
09/2006: –
—————————————–
09/2007: –
10/2007: –
11/2007: All Star Superman #9  —  78,706 (- 5.6%)
12/2007: –
01/2008: –
02/2008: –
03/2008: All Star Superman #10 —  73,574 (- 6.5%)
04/2008: –
05/2008: All Star Superman #11 —  70,355 (- 4.4%)
06/2008: –
07/2008: –
08/2008: –
09/2008: All Star Superman #12 —  70,423 (+ 0.1%)
—————-
6 months: - 4.3%
1 year  :  n.a.
2 years :  n.a.

Luckily for DC, both All Star series were on hand in September to cushion the blow resulting from the absence of all the company’s major titles somewhat.

Whether or not the brief controversy caused by the botched first print run of All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder #10 had any effect on the book’s numbers, we won’t be able to tell for certain until the next issue comes out. My guess is that it did, but it’s not impossible that the numbers are simply bottoming out, either. As usual, All Star Batman sales were supported through a 1-for-10 variant-cover edition, which means that retailers had to order 10 copies of the regular edition for every copy of the variant edition.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s run on All Star Superman ended with issue #12, meanwhile. While the book’s numbers have been quite good for a Superman book compared to the other ones out there, they still seem underwhelming for a creative team of this caliber. Even when it debuted with estimated sales of 170K back in November 2005, the book came up short against other sales juggernauts of the time, and the numbers have gone steadily downhill from there. On the other hand, of course, All Star Superman has reaped rave reviews and awards across the board, and the collected editions will probably still be significant sellers long after anybody remembers potboilers like Secret Invasion, so I doubt anybody’s been losing sleep over these numbers.

DC seem to be doing the sensible thing and shut down the series. Even ignoring that the All Star line doesn’t seem to have been terribly well-thought-out from the start, neither its numbers nor its strength as a brand right now suggest that it would be a good idea to continue the book. Whatever resources it would take to establish a new creative team are probably better spent on a new series that isn’t tainted by the spotty release history and the conceptual murkiness of the All Star label.
(more…)

By Paul O’Brien

The eight-month SECRET INVASION crossover continued to dominate Marvel’s output in September, sprawling across a whole load of tie-in books. Marvel are saving most of their new launches until after the event, but this month did see the launch of a new solo DEADPOOL series, as well as a second Stephen King adaptation, THE STAND.

As usual, Marvel had the largest market share in the direct market - the surprise is just how big it was. In dollar share, Marvel led DC by 45% to 27%. In unit share, the lead was a staggering 51% to 28%.

This is pretty remarkable, but it’s worth noting that Marvel actually sold a few more copies, in real terms, on a couple of occasions in 2007. Their market share in September was helped by an exceptionally poor performance from DC, who failed to ship most of their major titles. (FINAL CRISIS, BATMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA and FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF 3 WORLDS all failed to appear - in August, they sold over 450K in total.) And in fairness, DC still has a significantly bigger share of the trade paperback market. But there’s no denying this was a fantastic month for Marvel.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.

1,242.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 272,195
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 197,685  (-27.4%)
06/08  Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 186,533  ( -5.6%)
07/08  Secret Invasion #4 of 8 - 175,469  ( -5.9%)
08/08  Secret Invasion #5 of 8 - 165,958  ( -5.4%)
09/09  Secret Invasion #6 of 8 - 169,440  ( +2.1%)

As you’d expect, the central book of the crossover remains Marvel’s top seller, even nudging slightly up in sales. The figure shown for issue #6 is a combination of the regular edition and its variants (listed at number 1) and the Baltimore Con Variant (listed separately at number 242, because of its lower cover price). For some reason, issue #3 also saw another 4,344 in re-orders, and they’re added in above.

With a massive lead over the number two title, and strong performances from tie-in books, it’s hard to deny that SECRET INVASION has been another commercial hit in Marvel’s string of big events.

(more…)

Two of the sales charts analyses came out last week; at Newsarama, John Jackson Miller does his thing, charting Marvel’s big month. However here’s something we noted — the ten year comparison chart, from the near-depths of the last comics sales depression:

Sept. 2008 final orders versus Sept. 1998 preorders (est.)

Top 300 units: -9% (6.77 million copies vs. 7.44 million copies)

Top 300 dollars: +21% ($21.96 million vs. $ 18.18 million)

Top 25 trade paperbacks: +49% ($1.7 million vs. $1.14 million)

Top 300 comics plus top 25 trades: +22% ($23.66 million vs. $19.32 million)

Interestingly, although total units are down, the chart shows more strength overall:

Nine items were above the 100,000-copy preorder mark, with 131 items over 20,000 copies and 209 items over 5,000 copies. Titles in the midlist tended to sell more strongly, but the chart doesn’t have nearly the depth we see today. The 300th-place item had preorders of 1,761, compared with this September’s 2,889.

Meanwhile, John Mayo also looks at charts, and flags late shipping as a problem:

When I first started reading comics, titles shipped each and every month. Some titles would always come out on the first week of the month, others always on the second week, etc. If a comic didn’t ship the week it normally did, it was considered late. In most cases, it would ship a week or two later. These days, complaining about a comic shipping a week or two late is tantamount to nitpicking. Shipping a comic late is considered acceptable behavior for a publisher. How often have we heard things along the lines of “do you want it good or do you want it now?” from publishers? It is too much to ask for both? Late comics equate to missed sales.

Sort of related, Brian Hibbs looks at SECRET INVASION vs FINAL CRISIS, and although he feels FC is better artistically, it hasn’t flourished:

Let me tell you a little story about my audience: I was, for the LONGEST time there, the prototypical “DC store” — DC comics ALWAYS sold better than Marvels for us. This has ABSOLUTELY changed in the wake of “One Year Later” and COUNTDOWN. New DC series are largely non-starters for us, with anything that isn’t “A-List” having the lowest rack sales I’ve ever seen, including my first month of business 19 years ago! Things like RANN/THANAGAR WAR or DC DECISIONS are having rack sales of ONE OR TWO copies for us. I could stop racking 80% of the DC line today, and I don’t think it would have a significant negative impact on my sales. That’s really painfully ugly. If it weren’t for Morrison and Geoff Johns, DC would have nothing at this stage. That makes me deeply sad.

It’s that time of the month! After a few months of sliding, ICv2 reports that comic sales were up in September — say, maybe there is something to this “recession-proof” chatter.

Sales of periodical comics through Diamond Comic Distributors rose 2% in September, reversing a 7-month long string of declining comic sales. Although a 2% gain versus September of 2007 doesn’t sound like much, it represents a major year-over-year improvement from August during which comic sales declined a whopping 9%, the largest monthly drop since March.

More:
• Top 300 Comics Actual–September 2008
• Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual–September 2008
• Sales overview

Secret Invasion led the way to Marvel’s sales dominance:

Marvel’s Secret Invasion event is in full swing and it helped boost sales in September with seven SI-related titles in the top 25. The lead title Secret Invasion #6, which was down just over 1,000 copies from the previous issue, was number one by a large margin. So far Secret Invasion has shipped on time and is clearly the major comic event of 2008 so far. Two other Secret Invasion-related titles, New Avengers #45 and Mighty Avengers #18 also made the top five.

In fact, Marvel had a pretty titanic month, according to Michael Doran:

Diamond Comics Distributors released their Top 100 Comic Book and Graphic Novel sales charts and Market Share report for the September 2008 comic book Direct Market on Monday, and Marvel Comics may have achieved an industry milestone for the first time in the single major distributor/post-Marvel bankruptcy era - over 50% Unit Market Share - i.e. over half of every comic book and graphic novel ordered by retailers in September was a Marvel publication.

PLUS: John Jackson Miller has his sales figures up and even tells us:

And I haven¹t worked it out all the way back, but Marvel¹s number of entries in the Top 300 is very possibly as high as it¹s been since September 1996, when I began keeping track. It had 116 books in the Top 300, versus 87 for Marvel and 27 for Image. I think you probably have to go back to the early 1990s for as high a number of entries. Second-printing or variant covers may be part of the reason, although Diamond does lump all versions into the same entry in its Top 300 lists.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

With Final Crisis and Batman both showing up on shelves and spawning more crossover books, August was the strongest month for DC Comics’ periodical business in quite a while. Thanks to the new high-profile spin-off titles Final Crisis: Revelations, Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, DC Universe: Last Will and Testament and Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, and to a persistently spectacular performance of the “Batman RIP” tie-ins, average sales of the publisher’s DC Universe line rose to their highest level to date in 2008.

The average periodical numbers of DC’s Vertigo and WildStorm sublabels, meanwhile, appear to be making some small progress towards climbing out of their respective all-time lows, although you wouldn’t guess it from looking at any individual titles. At Vertigo, neither the new monthly series Air nor the returning Army@Love provided much in the way of ecouragement. And at WildStorm, the rest of the relaunched WildStorm Universe books turned up, making it official that the entire line is now less popular than Ambush Bug.

The North American direct market’s top-selling comic in terms of dollar-value in August 2008 was, quite remarkably, not a periodical at all, by the way. It was the Watchmen collection, first released in 1988, the latest edition of which sold an estimated 43,393 units to North American direct-market retailers in August. When a trailer for the upcoming film adaptation was shown in conjunction with The Dark Knight, demand for the book skyrocketed, apparently. So, all told, August was definitely one of DC’s better months in recent history.

See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

2 - FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 — 144,826          [166,641]
06/2008: Final Crisis #2 of 7 — 126,082 (-12.9%) [134,116]
07/2008: –
08/2008: Final Crisis #3 of 7 — 123,881 (- 1.8%)

Final Crisis sales continue to level out very quickly. Those brave souls who stuck around to read the book despite DC’s promotional efforts actually seem to like it. For Marvel’s Secret Invasion, on the other hand, the opposite seems to be true, so while there’s still a tremendous commercial gulf between the two rival blockbuster series, the distance has been melting away.

August’s Final Crisis Director’s Cut Special #1 charted with an estimated 14,937 units (they’ve been added to the above sales of issue #1), and June’s Final Crisis #2 and July’s one-shot Final Crisis: Requiem #1 sold another estimated 2,496 and 5,759 units in August, meanwhile, further supporting the notion that people do like the story, in this case.

In the way of gimmickry, the usual applies: There was a 50/50 variant-cover edition of Final Crisis #3.

(more…)

by Paul O’Brien

It’s month five of SECRET INVASION, and the crossover continues to dominate Marvel’s output. August also sees the X-books continuing their “Manifest Destiny” direction, and relaunches for RUNAWAYS and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY.

Marvel’s share of the North American direct market continues to hold up well. This time round, they beat DC in dollar share by 41% to 33%, and unit share by 48% to 33%. But there’s a fly in the ointment, as DM periodical sales have now been sliding for seven straight months. Graphic novels are up, but that’s entirely due to the sudden surge of WATCHMEN sales.

All a bit discouraging, then. But hey, what isn’t, these days? There was a time when comics used to be relatively recession-proof, but then in those days, Marvel weren’t charging four dollars for an issue of a miniseries.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.

1.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 272,195
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 197,685  (-27.4%)
06/08  Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 182,189  ( -7.8%)
07/08  Secret Invasion #4 of 8 - 175,469  ( -3.7%)
08/08  Secret Invasion #5 of 8 - 165,958  ( -5.4%)

The core title of this year’s crossover maintains a comfortable lead over the number two book, FINAL CRISIS, which had estimated sales of 123,881. And as one of those four dollar books, it should be bringing in plenty of lovely cash in these difficult times.

Issues #2 and #3 are continuing to pick up re-orders. Issue #2 gets a further 6,661 copies, while issue #3 notches up 6,454. As always, they’re added into the figures above. Curiously, last month’s issue #4 didn’t make the chart again. That means its reorders were lower than 2,041, the estimated sales of the number 300 book.

(more…)

So anyway, the Kirkman/Bendis debate thingie. Perhaps it was just because everyone was still amped about the previous night’s Obama/McCain matchup, but everyone came expecting a real debate. What they got was Bendis and Kirkman sticking to their talking points. ComicMix has a near transcript, but Vaneta Rogers’s report at Newsarama has a more accurate take on the vibe of the room. While this particular exchange may not have reached soaring rhetorical heights, it was still a high-profile airing of the central matter of the creator’s life: making a living from your work. Via Rogers:

Bendis said he hopes “everyone in this room sits down and tries to make a comic. That would be amazing. But know that there’s an opportunity for it not to be seen.” He said that Torso, his early creator-owned work, never sold more than 2,200 copies, “which meant it sold 100 copies more than it needed to make a profit. Thankfully years later, the book has found an audience. But it didn’t look like it was ever going to find an audience.”

The writer said it’s a huge struggle to try to do creator-owned comics. “I just eeked out a living. And I just don’t care because I have mental problems,” he said to laughs. “You can’t live on it at all. I lived as a character artist,” he said, emphasizing that even when he thought he’d made it, he still needed another job.

“I remember very, very clearly winning an Eisner and leaving San Diego that night because I had to get to a gig doing a Bat Mitzvah that night.”

(more…)

ICv2’s monthly sales charts for August are out, and while the 43,000+ copies of WATCHMEN sold is a fantastic number that dwarfs all expectations, it’s the seventh month in a row of declining periodical sales that everyone will be talking about:

Sales of periodical comics by Diamond Comic Distributors declined again in August, the seventh consecutive month of declines. The 9% drop (based on sales to comic stores of the Top 300 comics) was the third largest drop since a two year climb in comic sales ended last September. Although it was relatively easy to explain declines earlier this year based on tough comparables against Civil War and its spin-off titles in the corresponding months in 2007, the competition a year ago was less powerful in August, with World War Hulk the major Marvel event in August 2007.

More:
Top 300 Comics Actual–August 2008.
Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual–August 2008.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

For the DC Comics’ mainstream line of periodicals, July was the most eventful month in ages. Although the company’s big blockbuster Final Crisis missed its July shipping date, the series saw its first couple of spin-off books with Final Crisis: Requiem and Final Crisis: Rogue’s Revenge. The popular “Batman RIP” storyline returned with a vengeance, meanwhile, and began spawning crossover arcs in the secondary Batman books. There also were a Justice Society of America Annual, Ambush Bug and Reign in Hell, as well as - just in time for the new film - a whole bunch of Batman-related specials and miniseries. And quite what on earth was going on with Trinity in July, we can’t be certain, but I’m taking a brave stab at an educated guess, anyway.

As far as Vertigo and WildStorm’s periodical departments are concerned, the most notable thing that happened in July was probably the fact that three of their new releases failed to make the Top 300. In fairness, July was a month with five shipping dates for new material and an unusually high bottom line for the charts. But that’s happened before, and it’s never pushed any Vertigo or WildStorm periodicals off the chart until now. Vertigo’s average periodical sales continued to be stuck below 11,000 in July. At WildStorm, the latest Wildcats relaunch and an X-Files adaptation failed to get average periodical sales back above the 10K mark again.

The lateness of the column this time around is entirely my fault, by the way. After relocating several times in the last few weeks, my computer decided to call it quits and crashed, just when I’d finally settled down. My apologies to all for the delay, especially to Heidi and Paul, whose Marvel piece has been done for quite some time.

See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

5 - BATMAN
07/2001: Batman #593 —  43,654*
07/2002: Batman #605 —  52,635*
07/2003: Batman #617 — 146,601 [158,844]
07/2004: Batman #630 —  69,026 [ 70,414]
07/2005: Batman #642 —  65,435
07/2006: Batman #655 — 113,567 [123,903]
——————————-
07/2007: Batman #666 —  83,781 (+ 4.6%)
08/2007: Batman #667 —  78,578 (- 6.2%) [ 82,418]
08/2007: Batman #668 —  76,962 (- 2.1%)
09/2007: Batman #669 —  73,471 (- 4.5%)
10/2007: Batman #670 —  76,890 (+ 4.7%) [ 86,049]
11/2007: Batman #671 —  76,764 (- 0.2%) [ 80,440]
12/2007: Batman #672 —  71,189 (- 7.3%)
01/2008: Batman #673 —  69,234 (- 2.8%)
02/2008: Batman #674 —  68,208 (- 1.5%)
03/2008: –
04/2008: Batman #675 —  71,138 (+ 4.3%)
05/2008: Batman #676 — 105,039 (+47.9%) [122,877]
05/2008: Batman #677 —  96,116 (- 8.5%) [111,065]
06/2008: –
07/2008: Batman #678 — 103,213 (+ 7.4%)
—————-
6 months: +49.1%
1 year  : +23.2%
2 years : - 9.1%
5 years : -29.6%

Grant Morrison’s “Batman RIP” arc keeps Batman sales far above their previously established level. Between June and July, the first two chapters of the storyline also sold a combined 33,000 units in reorders. So, all told, it’s one of DC’s bigger hits of late, trumping even previous successes like the “Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” and “Sinestro Corps War” crossovers.

What the three publishing events have in common is that they’re stories centered on specific characters, rather than celebrations of the DC Universe as an end in itself. There may be a lesson in that.

As with the two previous issues, there was a 1-for-25 variant-cover edition of Batman #678, which means that retailers had to order 25 units of the regular edition to qualify for ordering one variant-cover edition.
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By Paul O’Brien

UNCANNY X-MEN celebrates five hundred issues, while SECRET INVASION enters a fourth month, with a range of crossover titles in tow. Marvel tend to save their major launches until after the crossovers have finished, but there’s a handful of new minis, as well as the debut of Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi on ASTONISHING X-MEN.

As usual, Marvel were by far the biggest publisher in the North American direct market, beating DC in unit share by 48% to 35%, and in dollar share by 49% to 33%. But then, FINAL CRISIS was on a skip month, so what do you expect?

Before we get into the figures, it’s worth noting that July was actually an unusually good month for lower-selling comics. The number 300 book, INCREDIBLE HERCULES #117, charted on re-orders of 4,256. That compares to a mere 2,549 for June’s number 300 title, VIX #1.

This means that more re-orders than usual will be missing the charts. For example, DARK TOWER: LONG ROAD HOME #2 and SKY DOLL #1 both charted in June with re-orders that wouldn’t have made the cut-off in July.

But an even more striking illustration is that two original Marvel titles - MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #38 and MARVEL ILLUSTRATED: THREE MUSKETEERS #2 - have missed the top 300 altogether. (Given the sales of the previous issue, MARVEL ILLUSTRATED: MOBY DICK #6 would almost certainly have suffered the same fate, but it was rescheduled to the first week of August.) Marvel’s newsstand reprint titles often miss the charts, but for original Marvel comics - even under these imprints - this is highly unusual. Obviously, we’ll have to see whether this is a blip or a trend.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use these figures for their calculations.

1.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 272,195
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 191,024  (-29.8%)
06/08  Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 175,735  ( -8.0%)
07/08  Secret Invasion #4 of 8 - 175,469  ( -0.0%)

With DC’s FINAL CRISIS skipping July, Marvel take the top four places, and SECRET INVASION comfortably leads the field. The rate of decline has dropped to virtually zero, which is an extremely impressive result. The directors’ cut of issue #1 also hits the stores, charting at number 129 with estimated further sales of 17,746. As always, those numbers have been added in to the totals above.

And this is as good a place as any to note that June’s SECRET INVASION: WHO DO YOU TRUST anthology one-shot is also picking up re-orders. A sketch variant shows up at number 251 with orders of 6,109, while a second printing with its own variant cover shifts 5,188 coies to reach number 278. That’s a hefty 11,297 in combined re-orders, bringing total estimated sales to 72,295.

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ICv2 has released its July sales analysis. Periodical sales continued a slight decline:

The dollar total for comics purchased by comic stores dropped again in July, by 3%, the sixth consecutive month of year over year declines. It’s getting harder to lay the declines at the feet of tough comparables, with the tail end of Civil War Initiative and Captain America: Fallen Son titles, along with World War Hulk, not providing particularly tough competition for the year over year comparisons. Certainly general market conditions are having an impact, with store visits and purchases impacted by inflation and other macro-economic issues. But July 2008 sales were still higher than July 2006, so the longer term trends are positive.

More:
Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual–July 2008
Top 300 Comics Actual–July 2008
‘Secret Invasion’ Stays Strong in July

The unthinkable has happened, and an American-produced graphic novel has topped the BookScan chart, ICv2 reports. In fact, in a breathtaking comeback for the home team, no less than 10 — that’s TEN — of the top 20 graphic novels on BookScan for July were Occidental comics, and an additional volume — IN ODD WE TRUST by Dean Koontz and Queenie Chan — was an OEL manga, making the majority of the top 20 non-Japanese manga. Here’s the whole list:

1. WATCHMEN
2. NARUTO VOL. 30
3. FRUITS BASKET VOL. 20
4. BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE
5. NARUTO VOL. 29
6. Y: THE LAST MAN VOL. 10
7. IN ODD WE TRUST
8. BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN
9. NARUTO VOL. 28
10. WANTED
11. BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS
12. CHIBI VAMPIRE VOL. 9
13. BATMAN: YEAR ONE
14. BLEACH VOL. 23
15. DEATH NOTE VOL. 1
16. ALL-STAR BATMAN & ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER VOL. 1
17. THE WALKING DEAD VOL. 8
18. KINGDOM HEARTS II VOL. 2
19. DEATH NOTE VOL. 2
20. MARVEL ZOMBIES 2

The list was led by WATCHMEN, of course, but Batman books obviously fared well in the wake of THE DARK KNIGHT juggernaut, and WANTED also charted. Even non-movie related American comics did well.

Truly, a month to be savored.

PS: While we were writing this post, we realized that there is no single word for “non-manga” comics, is there? Calling WATCHMEN American when it was made by two Brits seems wrong. What to call them, then?

UPDATE: In the comments, Marvel’s Jim McCann points out that this is not the first American comic to top the list — last December, Stephen King’s DARK TOWER topped the list.

Tireless John Jackson Miller, ever busy peering thrugh the tomes of years past for nuggets of information, find some circulation information from 1959 on what various comics publishers sold per month:

Here’s what the 1960 edition has, which means the numbers are coming likely from the end of 1959:

American Comics Group • 650,000 copies monthly
American Romance Group • 325,000 copies monthly
Archie • 3,216,979 copies bimonthly
Charlton • 5,000,000 copies bimonthly
Dell • 9,686,424 copies monthly
Dennis the Menace • no figures cited
Harvey • 5,029,759 copies bimonthly
Marvel • 2,253,112 copies monthly
National (DC) • 6,653,485 copies monthly

We’d caution against drawing too many conclusions about current comics based on any of this, BTW — not too many businesses have the same dynamics that they did 50 years ago, after all. However it does prove, once again, that comics once sold a heck of a lot of copies in these here United States.

Although Miller cautions that Fawcett is among the publishers missing from the listing, it is an interesting note that DC was such a strong publisher at the time. Superheroes were not the dominant genre at the time — but they did hold their own, as other figures from Miller’s site show.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

In June, DC Comics’ periodical business was mostly defined by all the things that didn’t happen. Final Crisis #2 didn’t seize the top spot. The new weekly Trinity, DC’s big launch of the month, didn’t make the Top 10. The third chapter of “Batman RIP” didn’t show up in stores as scheduled; neither did All Star Batman, Reign in Hell, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Robin, Blue Beetle, Fables, The Exterminators or Northlanders. At Vertigo, the launch of the new monthly Madame Xanadu didn’t much affect average periodical sales. And at WildStorm, average periodical sales didn’t increase from May’s historical low. See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

3 - FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 — 144,826          [151,704]
06/2008: Final Crisis #2 of 7 — 126,082 (-12.9%)

The bad news first: There’s no sign that the poor performance of Final Crisis in comparison with other blockbuster comics is due to an accounting glitch or because retailers massively misjudged demand when they placed their orders. So far, the numbers we see appear to be an accurate reflection of the book’s reception in the market place.

On the other hand, the second-issue drop in June is relatively small, particularly for a book selling above 100K. Marvel’s Secret Invasion, by comparison, saw a 27.1% drop for its second issue in May, shedding almost 70,000 units, as opposed to the 20,000 copies Final Crisis lost between its first two issues. Final Crisis #1 also made the chart again in June, selling an additional 6,878 copies.

Neither of these things suggests that retailers are rushing to make some significant course correction here, mind you, and Final Crisis sales are still in a different league from those of Secret Invasion. But the modest drop and the reorders may be a hint that the audience is slowly coming around to the book, after all.

Like the debut issue, Final Crisis #2 was promoted with a 50/50 variant-cover edition.

Batman #678, the third chapter of the much-hyped “Batman RIP” arc missed its June shipping date, meanwhile, and didn’t come out until July. The first two parts of the story both made the chart again in June, however, selling an additional 11,809 and 7,959 units, respectively. That’s quite significant, and it suggests that “Batman RIP” is a hit.

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by Paul O’Brien

Crossover season continued in June, with SECRET INVASION and its tie-ins still leading Marvel’s output. But this time round, the event hasn’t completely taken over Marvel’s output. There’s also the heavily promoted ULTIMATE ORIGINS series, and two new ongoing titles: SKAAR, SON OF HULK and ETERNALS.

As usual, Marvel had the dominant share of the North American direct market. If you go by Diamond’s figures, Marvel had a 48% unit share compared to DC’s 30%. In dollar terms, their lead was smaller but still commanding: 42% to 30%.

However, that’s probably overstating it a bit. One of DC’s big launches for June was TRINITY, their latest weekly series. Like 52 and COUNTDOWN before it, the early issues of TRINITY are being sold to stores on a returnable basis. Diamond’s policy, in compiling the charts, is to reduce the sales by some unspecified amount to allow for this.

In theory this is perhaps fair enough, but in practice, 52 and COUNTDOWN both supposedly saw their sales bounce up when the first non-returnable issue shipped. The obvious inference is that Diamond is being excessively pessimistic in allowing for returns, and that TRINITY probably sold significantly better than the chart shows - with the consequence that DC’s market share is probably at least slightly bigger than the chart makes it look.

Oh, one other thing. I’ve decided that listing all the skip month titles at the end of the column is just taking up a lot of space for no particular benefit, so I’ll drop it this month and see if any of you particularly care.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use these figures for their calculations.

1.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 254,449
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 191,024  (-24.9%)
06/08  Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 175,735  ( -8.0%)

Still at the top of the charts, with a comfortable lead over the titles below it. These are steeper drops than we saw for the opening issues of WORLD WAR HULK, but then SECRET INVASION started out from a higher level. All told, it’s a runaway hit.

Issue #2 picks up re-orders of 8,581, and as usual, they’re added to the total above.

2.  ULTIMATE ORIGINS
07/08  Ultimate Origins #1 of 5 - 136,418

A surprisingly strong debut for this miniseries, which is basically an explanation of where superpowers came from in the Ultimate universe. The Ultimate imprint has been looking a bit lacklustre over the last couple of years, and the spin-off minis no longer selling in “event” numbers. This bucks the trend.

Mind you, it does have four covers - two of which are by the late Michael Turner, and one of those is a 1 in 75 incentive variant. I suspect that there genuinely is more interest in this series than in some other Ultimate minis of the last few years, but that it’s variant covers which are really pushing sales up to these heights. We’ll have to see how well it holds up over the rest of its run.
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We often forget to talk about each PW Comics Week’s newsletter — you have all subscribed, right, because it’s free? — but this week’s issue turned out pretty good, especially considering we had to put most of it together by ourself. A guided tour: First up: Van Jensen looks at Platinum Studio’s public statements and insider background and it isn’t pretty:

“Until we have made further progress on our business plan, we will most likely continue to have [going-concern warnings] in all of our filings,” Altounian said in an exclusive interview with Publishers Weekly. “You have to understand that in these post-Sarbanes-Oxley days, there are so many mandatory disclosure items for public companies that a significant number of SEC filings are filled with risk factors and going concern clauses and every kind of contingency to alert the average investor to every possible thing that can go wrong with a company. It’s really not an issue of whether or not I agree with the assessment — if the auditors have some criteria for determining whether or not a company is a going concern, they are required by law to include the clause.”

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which responded to accounting scandals including that at Enron, was passed in 2002. More than a year later, an article in the CPA Journal noticed no increase in auditor warnings, but rather a “dearth of going-concern modifications.”

Joe Hovorka, a financial analyst and senior vice president at Raymond James & Associates, Inc., said of going-concern opinions, “You don’t see them often. …An auditor giving a qualified opinion is not to be taken lightly. It’s a red flag.”

NOTE: Platinum has responded with their own transcript of Jensen’s conversation with Brian Altounian:

Brian Altounian: As you say, Van, there are a lot of rumors and without sounding glib, I am just glad they’re spelling my name right. In all seriousness, the great thing about our industry is it is filled with passionate, creative and brilliant people who comment on almost any and every topic and this digital medium provides the platform to reach a wide audience. Frankly, we would much rather focus on building our business than spend time addressing speculation and conjecture.

Next, our newest recruit, Sam Thielman looks at the long and winding road to the American Flagg! collection:

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by Marc-Oliver Frisch

In May, DC Comics finally awoke from their year-long beauty sleep. Unfortunately, they seem to be getting up on the wrong side of the bed. The good news, now, is that the first two chapters of the much-hyped “Batman RIP” storyline made the Top 10. The bad news, as you may have heard, is that Final Crisis, the big blockbuster title they’d been building towards for the past two years, didn’t quite debut in the top slot. See below for an explanation. Apart from the two major projects, DC also launched another bunch of miniseries in May, none of which registered very high on the charts. May was also th first month in two years in which there was no weekly title from the company, so, perhaps not surprisingly, sales of the average DC periodical were slightly down from April, Final Crisis and “Batman RIP” notwithstanding.

With its remake of the old House of Mystery title, Vertigo saw its highest-selling ongoing series launch in almost four years. Due to a long tail of books selling below the 10,000 mark, though, this didn’t have much of an effect on the imprint’s average periodical sales. Over at the WildStorm sublabel, meanwhile, May was a disastrous month for periodicals. Because the WildStorm Universe line of superhero series kept tanking badly and only one of three new limited series based on licensed or creator-owned properties debuted with sales above 10,000 units, average WildStorm periodical numbers declined by almost twenty percent in May, dropping to a terrifying 9,812 copies - a new all-time low for the imprint.

See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

2 - FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 — 144,826

Final Crisis, by writer Grant Morrison and artist J.G. Jones, is, of course, DC’s big monster-whopper blockbuster juggernaut of the year. They’ve been building towards the book for quite some time, and it’s been widely expected to be the final litmus test for the current direction of the DC Universe line. Would Final Crisis validate DC’s year-long commitment and turn around the recent negative sales trends, or be final proof that DC were wrong to put all their eggs in one basket and have dropped the ball like a Dutch forward in the penalty box? That was the question. Looking at the May chart, and presuming that half the book’s print run didn’t fall off a truck somewhere, it seems we’re a little closer to the answer now. And for DC, it’s not a pleasant answer.

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By Paul O’Brien
The May sales charts have received a lot of attention already, and we all know what the big story is: FINAL CRISIS #1 triumphed for DC, vindicating the controversial direction of their superhero imprint, and proving the critics wrong.

Oh no, hold on. That’s Earth-2.

Here in the real world, FINAL CRISIS #1 tailed in around 40,000 copies behind SECRET INVASION #2, which caused a bit of a stir. And it was a strong month for Marvel all round. In addition to the summer crossover, May also saw the release of the Iron Man movie, the conclusion of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s ASTONISHING X-MEN, and the launch of AVENGERS/INVADERS (which turns out to be a bigger deal than I’d expected).

All of this means - and if you’re a devoted DC fan, you might want to look away now - that Marvel thrashed DC yet again, with a dollar share of 43% to DC’s 28%, and a unit share of 48% to 30%. And arguably, that’s a lot more damning than just comparing the figures of SECRET INVASION and FINAL CRISIS. Of course, to be fair, there’s a strong argument that DC should be happy with being number two. After all, they’ve still got around a third of the direct market. And they have imprints like Vertigo, CMX and Minx which could be selling well in other channels - Marvel has no equivalent of those. Still, the superhero books are an important part of DC’s line, and the gap between them and Marvel is starting to look more like a chasm.

Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.

1.  SECRET INVASION
04/08  Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 254,449
05/08  Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 182,443  (-28.3%)

Marvel’s summer event book holds onto the top spot for the second month running. It has a comfortable margin over FINAL CRISIS #1, with estimated sales of 144,826. Most books tend to see their big sales drop with issue #2, so chances are that Marvel will keep the lead for the rest of the run.

The conventional interpretation is that FINAL CRISIS has underperformed. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. After all, 145K would be a comfortable number one in most months, and it’s around 35K clear of NEW AVENGERS in the third slot. So let’s look at it from the other perspective. Hasn’t SECRET INVASION done unexpectedly well?

Marvel have spent months building up this story, and at first it didn’t seem to have much impact on sales. In the last couple of months, however, things have picked up. Satellite books like MS MARVEL have seen big increases. The core title is comfortably outperforming last year’s WORLD WAR HULK, which debuted with first month sales of 178,408, before dropping to 155,322 in the second month.

If SECRET INVASION and FINAL CRISIS had both sold 145K with their first issue, nobody would have been particularly shocked by that. So let’s be fair: this gap is as much due to SECRET INVASION doing well, as FINAL CRISIS doing badly.

It’s not unqualified good news for Marvel, though. That 28% drop is on the steep side. In comparison, WORLD WAR HULK dropped 18% in its second month; CIVIL WAR, only 9%. And the re-orders aren’t spectacular. Issue #1 picks up only 4,186 extra copies (as usual, included above). However, that might be misleading - SECRET INVASION #1 came out in the first week of April, so three weeks of re-orders will have been included in the April chart.

Still, it’s possible retailers might have overdone it a bit with this series, and we might see some further downward corrections over the next few months. But even if that happens, we’re only talking about sales dropping from “astronomical” to “very good indeed.”

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