Marc-Oliver Frisch writes:
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.
Paul O'Brien writes:
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%.
Continue reading...
Marc-Oliver Frisch writes:
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.
Continue reading...
Paul O'Brien writes:
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.
Continue reading...
Marc-Oliver Frisch writes:
Looking at the pertinent facts and carefully weighing all the available data, it can be safely concluded that, at DC Comics, April was the month before May. The year-long weekly Countdown to Final Crisis concluded, and so did several other storylines, creative runs and limited series. The book that was probably the publisher’s highest seller for the month, the 50-cent primer DC Universe #0, didn’t show up on the charts, because Diamond Comic Distributors don’t count promotional comics. The most prominent DC Universe launch in April was Judd Winick and Ian Churchill’s new Titans series, joined further down the charts by the intra-company crossover book DC/WildStorm: Dreamwar and the manga take Batman: Death Mask. In other words, few things started, and many kept winding down in preparation for May’s Final Crisis.
Continue reading...
Paul O'Brien writes:
The event season is upon us again, and Marvel hit the ground running with the first issue of SECRET INVASION. There aren’t too many tie-in issues in this first month, but the crossover still gets off to an impressive start. If you’ve been waiting for event fatigue to set in - well, it looks like you’re going to be waiting for a little while longer.
Continue reading...
Marc-Oliver Frisch writes:
For DC Comics, March was another slack month in the periodical business. More than ten ongoing titles were slated for cancellation across the publisher’s various lines, and numerous finite projects were in their final stages, with new ones waiting around the corner to replace them over the next several months. There were no major new releases in the DC Universe line of mainstream superhero titles in March, but DC suffered from late books again. With Action Comics, Batman and Justice Society of America, three of the company’s major titles failed to come out. The fact that sales of both the average DC Comics periodical and the average DC Universe periodical were the lowest they’d been in more than three years didn’t come as a great surprise, consequently. Over a five-year period, though, both averages remain slightly up.
Continue reading...
Paul O'Brien writes After a quiet couple of months, March saw Marvel starting to gear up again. In fact, there’s only one really big new title this month - DARK TOWER, which returns for a second miniseries. But there’s also the launch of two new monthly series, CABLE and WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS. And although SECRET INVASION itself won’t show up until the April chart, the first tie-ins are starting to to crop up.
Continue reading...
|
|
08:03:33 pm, by ComicList 
