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Better month than September, worse than last October. But the new release volumes were much, much lower than last October’s — even given the fifth week. Last October was a record month for both orders and the volume of new releases; 1,020 new comics, graphic novels, and magazines. The figure was 743 this time out. Marvel and DC had a third fewer new comics release in the month, while Dynamite, for example, had fewer than half the new comics out this October that it had last October.

So the slates are smaller — and may be punching their weights better. 28% fewer releases, but sales were only off less than 10%. Better than if it were the other way around…

http://blog.comichron.com/2015/11/marvel-sweeps-october-2015-top-10.html

And I looked back at the numbers on market share: Marvel’s is its highest since December 2009, when it posted 44.57%; and DC’s lowest dollar share since March 1998, which was 21.83% — its low water-mark for the Diamond Exclusive Era. Marvel’s high for the era was September 2008, and 45.31%.

With many key titles relaunching, Secret Wars still going on AND Star Wars doing its thing, it’s hardly a surprise Marvel killed it in October, especially with DC running out the status quo. If anything, this type of month will make DC feel like another relaunch is necessary, but I hope they let more than a month guide their way.

I’ll be really interested to see what happens once the relaunch hype wears out and Marvel’s in status quo again. I hope the ANAD books don’t fall off, but I feel like they will in a big way. Time will tell, I suppose.

I neglected to mention the other thing that’s going to start impacting the annual comparatives on the unit sales side — Loot Crate. Last October was the Walking Dead issue, around about the time the numbers on those really started impacting the charts. They don’t inflate things on the dollar side by nearly as much.

In specific response to Heidi’s other question above, the 20% gains were over last month, not last year — and Marvel’s slate wasn’t that much smaller in October than in September. Lower-selling offerings were replaced with higher-selling ones, hence the increase seen there.

DC shipped 10 more books than Marvel? Those numbers must really be soul crushing. If DC were doing 52 books instead of 78…yikes. There goes that whole ‘flooding the market’ argument.

“DC shipped 10 more books than Marvel? Those numbers must really be soul crushing. ”

Count the number of #1s that Marvel released. Though, well, it is kinda soul crushing that releasing tons of #1 books still sell.

More noteworthy… Unless I missed something and Batman didn’t ship in October, all titles in the top 10 sold more than 100k copies, and even some outside the top 10 did.

Congrats to Marvel

Batman #45 shipped 10/14

Oof, and then the sales for Iron Man #2 come in… http://www.previewsworld.com/Home/1/1/71/977?articleID=170881

[…] A Marvel Comics ficou com quase metade do mercado de quadrinhos dos EUA em outubro – com relançamento da linha e um monte de Star Wars – coisa que não se via há algumas décadas. […]