By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/6/2016
By John Jackson Miller [Reprinted with permission from Comichron] The comics market’s growth accelerated in 2015, with a strong finish to the year helping to negate a weaker third quarter, according to Comichron’s analysis of end-of-year data released byDiamond Comic Distributors. Comics retailers ordered more than $579 million in comic books, graphic […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/16/2015
The November sales estimate headlines are all about how the market is up, owing to Dark Knight 3, Vader Down and a metric ton of Marvel’s relaunched #1’s. You expect a certain amount of that. Stunts sell, as long as the publishers don’t over-extend the market for variant covers (and they sure seem aggressive in emphasizing those instead of the content in between the covers). What you’d miss out on if you only read the headlines is that Marvel’s #2 and #3 issues aren’t getting a ton of traction relative to those gaudy #1 sales totals.
Welcome to the cynical circle, Todd! :)
Only two comments:
– comparing Dr strange and Thor numbers doesn’t seem fair at all, especially for the Doctor. The last ongoing serie for the doctor was so much time ago that there is no real point of comparaisons, except that Dr strange was never a huge seller, but did manage to keep its ongoing title during more than 20 years.
– the creator mix is quite different. Many names are new and some associatiosn are quite new, let’s be fair. We can’t say that Marvel hasn’t put a lot of innovative titles with this relaunch. Of course, if you only lokk at the big titles, nothing has changed much, but the rest of their catalog is quite daring and innovative (and expensive too :p ).
Looking at the diamond numbers for the past couple of years gives such a flawed idea as to how its doing. Its not like the way it was in the past where the direct market is the main sales number and even then the Diamond numbers were still flawed. It doesn’t take into account the rather sizable digital numbers, where books like Spider-Gwen have such a huge audience that’s not reflected in these numbers. All the numbers to is allow people to manipulate them and show a small example in order to push their agenda.
“It doesn’t take into account the rather sizable digital numbers, where books like Spider-Gwen have such a huge audience that’s not reflected in these numbers”
And where can we see this digital numbers? I can totally believe Spider-Gwen selling big online but I’d like to check out the sales figures myself.
Mike
Bob, who’s your source on Spider-Gwen’s digital sales? The only digital comic at Marvel I’ve gotten confirmation *from Marvel* on a consistently percentage of digital sales is Ms. Marvel. From what I could tell, and I couldn’t get a straight enough answer to suit me, Ms. Marvel seemed to be selling close to (but not quite) print numbers in digital. Which was an anomaly. If Spider-Gwen is doing the same, then that’s two books out of the entire line.
Depending on who you talk to, digital is still 10%-15% of total sales and since there’s no more newsstand for Marvel, that leaves 85%-90% of the sales to Diamond. It reflects the reality of the Direct Market, where many retailers rely on Marvel to get them into the profit column each month.
But really, accusing somebody who wrote a book on how the digital market works of ignoring digital to push a print agenda? Grow up. There’s better trolling to be done than that.
To be fair on Dr Strange, Marvel tied the incentive for variants on Dr Strange to Thor, so Marvel expected some sort of comparison. Sadly it was exceed 175% of Thor to get the variants, so they expected it to far outsell Thor
From an artist perspective that Iron Man Cover looks okay, but the computer lettering with all those style filters (embossing) added looks hideous. I don’t collect super hero books these days, but I would think all the movies and cartoons out there are creating a somewhat over saturation of the market. Perhaps people are looking elsewhere for something new. Rebranding of things don’t make for new.
Marvel need to do something to create buzz beyond the first issue. How they do this I don’t have the answer, but I would say this would need to be a long term thing and not reliant of the variant covers. Possibly they could do a big push on the tpb collections with an attempt get people to jump onto the floppies after.
Great analyses Todd! Good to see you here.
Once the delays and extra issue were announced I dropped Secret Wars. It was the first Marvel event I’ve indulged in since 2010 and I don’t see any reason to do these anymore.
I’m trying all of the #1s but reboot fatigue, lack of star talent and cost are looking like ANAD is a jumping off point for me. It’s looking like I’ll settle around the 6-7 title mark where pre-Secret Wars I was at the 15-16 title level.
Same thing happened with DC’s reboot too though. These reboots tend to shake the tree enough that I guess I’m one of the old base that falls off and haven’t really come back in any substantive way. I guess it’s up to some new fan to take my place at the superhero shops at this point.
I suppose Marvel should just switch over to an “every issue is a #1” relaunch! Maybe an Amazing Spider-Man #1, Amazing Spider-Man #1 (and in tiny print 1.1) and A,mazing Spider-Man #1 (1.2), and so on. ;) I jest, I jest, but I swear, this is how it’s going. At some point the companies (not the fans) decided the only thing that sells are #1’s and variant covers. It’s the usual short-term money making thinking, unfortunately. And the fanboys blindly fall into the trap, and become addicted to the idea, as well.
But also, wow, the new creative teams on these relaunches are just a big no for me. Even my best friend, and we’ve both read comics since we were in grade school, told me every single Avengers relaunch is horrible. We both bought them all before the relaunch, after, every single one dropped. And The Vision, Starbrand and NightMask, Scarlet Witch, Dr. Strange, etc. – it’s just a personal preference, but the whole “indie” art thing at Marvel has killed my desire to buy these books, books that, if they had a more “traditional Marvel art style” I’d probably snatch up! I think overall the relaunch is just a mess in terms of characters and creative teams.
I personally like more “realistic” artwork, which is why most of my money goes to Independents now. Butch Guice, Alex Maleev (one hold=over at Marvel), Mike Perkins (the other), Michael Lark, Bill Sienkiewicz, Steve Epting, Gabriel Hardman, etc. All, at one point, Marvel artists…