![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ICv2 News - Top 300 Comics Actual--May 2007
ICv2 News - Top 300 Comics and Top 100 Graphic Novels Index
You know, looking at comic sales figures and trying to understand the business is kind of fascinating, in a weird way.
Comics is pretty much a Big Two world, with one mid-major player, and a bunch of mid-minors, shall we say. There's only one title in the top 70 for May that isn't either DC or Marvel (Dark Horse's Buffy the Vampire Slayer issue 3 at #12 and 106,634 issues sold). There are only 12 non-Marvel or non-DC titles in the top 100. And, well, it sucks to be Image, with only one title in the top 100 this month, although they did better in other months. (Image's Loaded Bible 2, a personal favorite, tragically sold only 4,700 copies, but then, it was so closely tied to the first issue from last year that, combined with the topic, lowish sales were practically guaranteed; that said, I don't understand why they didn't handle it as a full-sized graphic novel one-shot, since the actual story would have handled better at that length. But I digress.) Fallen Angel, IDW's only continuing title, has sales apparently stable but comparatively low. (6,603 issues sold in February; no figures reported for March; 6,788 issues sold in April; 6,615 for the month of May). And then, of course, there's Virgin.
Virgin constitutes a very peculiar case indeed. Virgin's sales seem terribly weak; in May, Gamekeeper issue 2, Devi 11 and Authentic Ganesha all came in between between 4,000-6,700, and nothing else even charted (and remember, we're talking the top 300 titles); April's charting titles ranged from Devi 10 at 4,097 to Walk-In signing off with a paltry 1,677 -- if nothing else, that Virgin persists in the face of these painful sales is a testament to Branson's deep pockets, and the fact that most of these titles were clearly conceived as movie bait, so they'll make money on the back-end. THAT said, it also seems clear that Devi, at least, probably was not considered movie bait (and I can't imagine anyone being even slightly interested in filming Walk-In, except maybe as animation, because where would you get all the fish and octopuses?), so the persistent low sales have to be disappointing. That said, mainstream press was reporting that Devi, Sadhu and Snakewoman all opened with gangbuster sales, yet ICv2 reports, for example, Devi issue 1 sales at 5,917. So where were the rest of these issues sold? The Indian press is reporting Virgin's Ramayan Reborn with US sales of over 200,000 in four months, which is wildly improbable; the title a bit too sincerely esoteric to pull an audience that large. Devi is reported to have sold over 300,000 in that same period. So again, the question is: where are they selling? A hefty percentage of comics stores only sell Marvel and DC, and the others would have sales coming through Diamond, and thus appearing in ICv2. Bookstores in general don't sell many comic pamphlets, and rarely sell indie publishers when they do. So where did those 300,000 issues of Devi go? The other peculiar thing about this is that the print runs of the first two issues of all Virgin titles were deliberately short, so they could evaluate sales, which indicates that they didn't actually print many more than the 5,900 being reported. To be sure, there are probably Indian-oriented bookstores in the US that picked up the titles, and they may have sold briskly there, but surely it wouldn't be enough to explain the gap between Diamond's 5,900 and New India Press being told about 300,000 of Devi selling.
Buffy's success for Dark Horse -- May's chart includes not only issue 3 at #12 and 106,634 issues sold, but also issue 2 repeating at #111 and 20,207, and issue 1 repeating at #144 and 15,239 -- explains a great deal about why DC is even vaguely considering a Veronica Mars comic. They would do well to be a bit careful going in. Xena Warrior Princess #1 opened at only 20,000 units sold for Dynamite in June 2006 (July chart), dropped to 15,271 in July, 13,460 for the next issue, 9,222 for the annual, then perked back up slightly to about 13,000 for issue 1 of the Dark Xena story. Not monstrous sales for a series that ran considerably longer than Veronica Mars. DC does have a massive advantage in terms of their distribution channel -- those previously mentioned Marvel/DC-only stores -- and if they can get it to market soon, may pull in the same sort of group of people who haven't normally read comics, but would read this. THAT said ... DC's own Supernatural: Origins, tying in to the CW series "Supernatural", sold only 21,128, good for #106 on the May 2007 chart. Assuming the normal ~25% drop for issue 2, and continuing drops beyond, Supernatural doesn't look like it's going to sell at a level DC will like, and this is a tie-in for a series that didn't get canceled. You'd have to think that a Veronica Mars comic might be very bad business indeed.
I wonder how much a given title has to sell to pay for author, artist, printing and distribution at the publisher end, never mind staffing and other costs at the comic store -- how much does a given title need to sell before it at least breaks even? How few before a publisher says, "OK, we're done here"? It seems clear, for example, that DC considers Manhunter, one of its worst-selling DC Universe titles, a loss-leader at best -- a title peripheral to the main DC universe, with low sales title that nonetheless has a certain quality and prestige, which is about the only reason they keep publishing it; Manhunter sold 17,234 issues in April and 16,373 in May, but was cancelled the first two times when it was selling around the 20,000 issue level. They've since hinted that Manhunter is now safe, for whatever reason. By contrast, of the "mid-majors": Dynamite Entertainment's resurrected Boys, their best selling title, came in at 31,616; Image's best title came in at 25,839 sold; IDW's best title sold just over 17,300; Devil's Due's best seller is at 15,039. (Dark Horse, thanks to Buffy, is a significant outlier; that said, they also seem to have more titles in the #50-#100 ranks than any of the other mid-majors, and more in the #100-#200 set as well, although not significantly.) If Manhunter is a loss-leader for DC, then why does it work for the smaller companies to have sales that aren't significantly better? Economies of scale would argue that, for example, DC should be able to easily afford Manhunter and its low sales, while IDW should be biting its collective nails over what to do with Fallen Angel (IDW's various miniseries do rather better), and Virgin should be committing collective executive suicide. Yet Manhunter has been the title to twice escape outright cancellation, while IDW and Virgin seem to sail serenely on.
The comics business is a puzzlement, indeed.
ICv2 News - Top 300 Comics and Top 100 Graphic Novels Index
You know, looking at comic sales figures and trying to understand the business is kind of fascinating, in a weird way.
Comics is pretty much a Big Two world, with one mid-major player, and a bunch of mid-minors, shall we say. There's only one title in the top 70 for May that isn't either DC or Marvel (Dark Horse's Buffy the Vampire Slayer issue 3 at #12 and 106,634 issues sold). There are only 12 non-Marvel or non-DC titles in the top 100. And, well, it sucks to be Image, with only one title in the top 100 this month, although they did better in other months. (Image's Loaded Bible 2, a personal favorite, tragically sold only 4,700 copies, but then, it was so closely tied to the first issue from last year that, combined with the topic, lowish sales were practically guaranteed; that said, I don't understand why they didn't handle it as a full-sized graphic novel one-shot, since the actual story would have handled better at that length. But I digress.) Fallen Angel, IDW's only continuing title, has sales apparently stable but comparatively low. (6,603 issues sold in February; no figures reported for March; 6,788 issues sold in April; 6,615 for the month of May). And then, of course, there's Virgin.
Virgin constitutes a very peculiar case indeed. Virgin's sales seem terribly weak; in May, Gamekeeper issue 2, Devi 11 and Authentic Ganesha all came in between between 4,000-6,700, and nothing else even charted (and remember, we're talking the top 300 titles); April's charting titles ranged from Devi 10 at 4,097 to Walk-In signing off with a paltry 1,677 -- if nothing else, that Virgin persists in the face of these painful sales is a testament to Branson's deep pockets, and the fact that most of these titles were clearly conceived as movie bait, so they'll make money on the back-end. THAT said, it also seems clear that Devi, at least, probably was not considered movie bait (and I can't imagine anyone being even slightly interested in filming Walk-In, except maybe as animation, because where would you get all the fish and octopuses?), so the persistent low sales have to be disappointing. That said, mainstream press was reporting that Devi, Sadhu and Snakewoman all opened with gangbuster sales, yet ICv2 reports, for example, Devi issue 1 sales at 5,917. So where were the rest of these issues sold? The Indian press is reporting Virgin's Ramayan Reborn with US sales of over 200,000 in four months, which is wildly improbable; the title a bit too sincerely esoteric to pull an audience that large. Devi is reported to have sold over 300,000 in that same period. So again, the question is: where are they selling? A hefty percentage of comics stores only sell Marvel and DC, and the others would have sales coming through Diamond, and thus appearing in ICv2. Bookstores in general don't sell many comic pamphlets, and rarely sell indie publishers when they do. So where did those 300,000 issues of Devi go? The other peculiar thing about this is that the print runs of the first two issues of all Virgin titles were deliberately short, so they could evaluate sales, which indicates that they didn't actually print many more than the 5,900 being reported. To be sure, there are probably Indian-oriented bookstores in the US that picked up the titles, and they may have sold briskly there, but surely it wouldn't be enough to explain the gap between Diamond's 5,900 and New India Press being told about 300,000 of Devi selling.
Buffy's success for Dark Horse -- May's chart includes not only issue 3 at #12 and 106,634 issues sold, but also issue 2 repeating at #111 and 20,207, and issue 1 repeating at #144 and 15,239 -- explains a great deal about why DC is even vaguely considering a Veronica Mars comic. They would do well to be a bit careful going in. Xena Warrior Princess #1 opened at only 20,000 units sold for Dynamite in June 2006 (July chart), dropped to 15,271 in July, 13,460 for the next issue, 9,222 for the annual, then perked back up slightly to about 13,000 for issue 1 of the Dark Xena story. Not monstrous sales for a series that ran considerably longer than Veronica Mars. DC does have a massive advantage in terms of their distribution channel -- those previously mentioned Marvel/DC-only stores -- and if they can get it to market soon, may pull in the same sort of group of people who haven't normally read comics, but would read this. THAT said ... DC's own Supernatural: Origins, tying in to the CW series "Supernatural", sold only 21,128, good for #106 on the May 2007 chart. Assuming the normal ~25% drop for issue 2, and continuing drops beyond, Supernatural doesn't look like it's going to sell at a level DC will like, and this is a tie-in for a series that didn't get canceled. You'd have to think that a Veronica Mars comic might be very bad business indeed.
I wonder how much a given title has to sell to pay for author, artist, printing and distribution at the publisher end, never mind staffing and other costs at the comic store -- how much does a given title need to sell before it at least breaks even? How few before a publisher says, "OK, we're done here"? It seems clear, for example, that DC considers Manhunter, one of its worst-selling DC Universe titles, a loss-leader at best -- a title peripheral to the main DC universe, with low sales title that nonetheless has a certain quality and prestige, which is about the only reason they keep publishing it; Manhunter sold 17,234 issues in April and 16,373 in May, but was cancelled the first two times when it was selling around the 20,000 issue level. They've since hinted that Manhunter is now safe, for whatever reason. By contrast, of the "mid-majors": Dynamite Entertainment's resurrected Boys, their best selling title, came in at 31,616; Image's best title came in at 25,839 sold; IDW's best title sold just over 17,300; Devil's Due's best seller is at 15,039. (Dark Horse, thanks to Buffy, is a significant outlier; that said, they also seem to have more titles in the #50-#100 ranks than any of the other mid-majors, and more in the #100-#200 set as well, although not significantly.) If Manhunter is a loss-leader for DC, then why does it work for the smaller companies to have sales that aren't significantly better? Economies of scale would argue that, for example, DC should be able to easily afford Manhunter and its low sales, while IDW should be biting its collective nails over what to do with Fallen Angel (IDW's various miniseries do rather better), and Virgin should be committing collective executive suicide. Yet Manhunter has been the title to twice escape outright cancellation, while IDW and Virgin seem to sail serenely on.
The comics business is a puzzlement, indeed.
Tags: