April '08 Sales

[Sebastos]

Great to see Iron Fist staying strong in sales.

 

[Max J Power]

Fantastic Four continues to slip in sales rank. It went from 8 to 22 to 27. I guess people just aren't as interested in the characters anymore.

Criminal still isn't breaking the top 100.

The Daredevil: Blood of Tarantula one-shot was about 25 places lower than the book normally ranks. I didn't read it, and I'm guessing a lot of other regular readers didn't either.

Thor is still in the top 10. Yes.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I doubt there's anything wrong with the FF characters. People could just not be interested in Millar and Hitch's run...

 

[moraldeficiency]

I doubt there's anything wrong with the FF characters. People could just not be interested in Millar and Hitch's run...

Nah, people love thinly veiled social commentary violently shoved down their throats along with a duex de machina giant robot that's never been mentioned being used to fix things. It's kinda sad when the gundam series offers better action, more clever thought out characters and social commentary than the FF, but here we are. Yay!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Haha, wow, I've been hearing mostly positive things about Millar and Hitch's run. Although your take does reinforce my expectations for virtually anything Millar writes.

 

[moraldeficiency]

Haha, wow, I've been hearing mostly positive things about Millar and Hitch's run. Although your take does reinforce my expectations for virtually anything Millar writes.

I tried it out and I'll preface by saying I liked ultimates 1, 2 and the social commentary seemed right in that for what it was, but it feels forced as hell here. Oh no the earth is being polluted, let's make a new one with hippies and flowers and no guns and just one big giant super robot that will protect us while we dance around the camp fire in our tie dyed t-shirts. What, the giant robot thinks all humans are dangerous and will eventually eliminate everyone? How could we not have seen this coming? It's not like there have been thousands of variations on this concept from west world to terminator. Plus add in Johnny Storm becoming a shallow male ****e, while reed just seems to have this giant super robot to fight galactus that no one's ever heard off (even though it's massive and would have cost billions to make, plus reed's never gone with such a device to defeat any threat in the past as he generally outthinks his opponent with something smaller and more dangerous) and you've got a comic that I really was looking forward to but now I've just written off as a low rent social satire with a fixed ending that could have happened in the second issue.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Wow.

 

[iloveclones]

I have to agree about the FF. I like most of the Millar stuff I've read, and this run has been completely underwhelming. I did think the Galacta-transformer-bot was pretty stupid. ****, since the premise was that the CAP robot wouldn't attack him, he could have went at it with an arc welder and saved us taxpayers a lot of money. And by the way, Hitch, you're not on Ultimates anymore. How about getting Iron Man's armor correct. Your version sucks.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Hahahaha, Hitch does seem to come back to the same elements of costume design over and over. The new FF costumes, for example: Raised seams? Check. Bodysuit-style overall design? Check. Random bits of ribbing? Check. Gloves with cut-off fingers? Check.

 

[iloveclones]

What's really disappointing about this run is that I was kind of digging what McDuffie was doing. I would've liked seeing them let Reed and Sue go off for a year or so.

 

[Max J Power]

I doubt there's anything wrong with the FF characters. People could just not be interested in Millar and Hitch's run...

There's nothing wrong with the characters, they just don't seem to be as popular as they once were. I think Dread put it best.

- The Millar/Hitch FF has slipped towards the end of the Top 30 with 65k sales. That is above some of the McDuffie run but this has to be seen as underwhelming considering the pedigree. It is barely 20k over KICK-ASS, which is an ICON book. All insiders thought this would be a Top 10-20 lock for it's run and it isn't, and it may slip back to McDuffie's 40-50k rut before long. Reasons? Perhaps after the long delays of ULTIMATES 1 & 2, readers are trade-waiting in enough droves that retailer supply is down, and frankly I don't blame them. The lags between ULTIMATES 2 issues were atrocious. Another bigger reason is the the Fantastic Four as a franchise just can't sustain any buzz, regardless of feature films or A-List creators. DC has had similar problems with Batman, Superman, & Wonder Woman at times. It is a shame as Millar seems genuinely interested in some innovation in FF and is having a ball with it. But despite what editors may believe, some franchises seem destined for B-List status regardless of who is writing/drawing it, and the Four may be one of those franchises now. They sparked the Silver Age of comics in 1961 but now that formula has been imitated and refined so much that, like Superman, the Four may have been left in the dust.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

The fact that their movies sucked might have something to do with it.

 

[moraldeficiency]

Yeah the movies definately hurt them more than helped.

Now I'll bring up the main point everyone seems to be overlooking that's the true worth of the FF. They are the explorers of the universe and they bring in more and better characters then any other comic that can extrapolate into other series flawlessly. Rather than say magneto that really only has mutant issues on the brain or lower tier villans like Kingpin, who only works street level, or the Red Skull, with his political goals, you get characters that spin off and villians that basically made the MU exciting in the first place. Let's go through the list of just some of the greatness that really only the FF could spawn: Doctor Doom, Annilius, Galactus, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Kree, Inhumans and that's just some main points of the top of my head. Extrapolate those creations with what's come off them and almost a majority of conflicts and stories in the MU (especially currently) are offshots of something that originated with the first family. They might not be the most popular but their worth as a testing ground where literally any story is possible cannot be directly correlated to just the sales of their series.

Now I'm sure the argument can be made that they haven't done anything recently and are now obsolete in many ways but I don't think that's from the lack of new creativity. I think it's just hard to beat the best rogue's gallery in comics. Still if I was to "fix" the FF I think I'd take them off earth for a while and try and build some new characters and races for them to come in contact with, rather than rehash older concepts which is the real problem I see with them. But I see why that happens. When you've got Doctor Doom to play with as a writer, why would you go with someone else?

 

[hippie_hunter]

In the end, the Sinestro Corps War did very little to affect the status quo; it may as well not have happened. Compare that to Annihilation, where the event had real ramifications for the stories that followed. Sinestro Corps War? Just another day in the life of a GL. And once it moved to Earth, I knew that the event wouldn't have any real consequences. Same thing happened with Annihilation: Conquest.

The status quo for the GL books changed quite a bit. Green Lanterns are now able to kill and the Guardians created the Alpha-Lanterns using Manhunter technology to ensure that the Green Lanterns do their job properly. There are now multiple corps. Ganthet is no longer a Guardian for the Green Lantern Corps as well.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah, now they fight other guys with rings constantly, rather than actually patrol and protect the universe.

 

[Blader5489]

The status quo for the GL books changed quite a bit. Green Lanterns are now able to kill and the Guardians created the Alpha-Lanterns using Manhunter technology to ensure that the Green Lanterns do their job properly. There are now multiple corps. Ganthet is no longer a Guardian for the Green Lantern Corps as well.

Yeah, I know that the Lanterns can kill now, but I don't know...that doesn't feel like a very big outcome of what was a huge war. The fact that the main GL book is spinning its wheels with Hal's origin isn't helping things either.

The Alpha Lanterns or Ganthet's absence from the Guardians have had barely an effect on the book. Something substantial could and probably will come out of those changes, but as of now, they don't feel all that important.

 

[Blader5489]

I tried it out and I'll preface by saying I liked ultimates 1, 2 and the social commentary seemed right in that for what it was, but it feels forced as hell here. Oh no the earth is being polluted, let's make a new one with hippies and flowers and no guns and just one big giant super robot that will protect us while we dance around the camp fire in our tie dyed t-shirts. What, the giant robot thinks all humans are dangerous and will eventually eliminate everyone? How could we not have seen this coming? It's not like there have been thousands of variations on this concept from west world to terminator.

You seem to be missing the most obvious point of CAP: a war machine painted in the colors of the American flag, traveling all over the world and forcibly disarming every country it considers a threat.

But I'm mainly just getting FF now for Hitch's art, which is glorious.

 

[Spare-Flair]

Ironic and hilarious how you hear all these stories about people cancelling Spider-Man from their files or entire comic book shops nolonger ordering it to protest BND...

And yet Amazing Spider-Man issues are ranked #8, #14, #16 in total comics sold in April!!! Haha! Combining the entire line, all 3 issues sold that month, then ASM outsold everything except Secret Invasion (barely below it).

 

[iloveclones]

^^ How many threads are you going to post that in?

 

[venom892]

Ironic and hilarious how you hear all these stories about people cancelling Spider-Man from their files or entire comic book shops nolonger ordering it to protest BND...

And yet Amazing Spider-Man issues are ranked #8, #14, #16 in total comics sold in April!!! Haha! Combining the entire line, all 3 issues sold that month, then ASM outsold everything except Secret Invasion (barely below it).

But have you noticed sales have dropped since the first issue of BND?Also notice how each issue goes down in rank?

 

[Spare-Flair]

^^ How many threads are you going to post that in?

I posted it here first and then my thoughts in the ASM thread. They are different posts. That's not many threads.

 

[Spare-Flair]

But have you noticed sales have dropped since the first issue of BND?Also notice how each issue goes down in rank?

Yes, we'll see how it does next month and if the trend continues to go down. It's still #2 overall in total sales for the title.

 

[Kirk Langstrom]

But have you noticed sales have dropped since the first issue of BND?Also notice how each issue goes down in rank?

Again; sales have dropped on ALL titles...not just ASM.

 

[fifthfiend]

Hahahaha, Hitch does seem to come back to the same elements of costume design over and over. The new FF costumes, for example: Raised seams? Check. Bodysuit-style overall design? Check. Random bits of ribbing? Check. Gloves with cut-off fingers? Check.

Raised seams on uniforms is the new pouches on uniforms.

Also, gloves with cutoff fingers is the new superfluous belts.

Except that Thor's still wearing superfluous belts.

 

[fifthfiend]

And yet Amazing Spider-Man issues are ranked #8, #14, #16 in total comics sold in April!!! Haha! Combining the entire line, all 3 issues sold that month, then ASM outsold everything except Secret Invasion (barely below it).

Uh yeah, a lot of comics have better sales numbers if you take three different comics and count their sales numbers as one comic.