Now, I can't tell if you're messing with me, or if you're seriously trying to explain the article to me by just repeating the article.
DC moved more dollars in December, and Marvel moved more units. The latter is no surprise because Marvel has been flooding the market for some time now. Not sure how else to put it.
Well, Kick-Ass is a creator-owned project of Mark Millar and John Romita's. So, yeah.
Now, to be fair, by publishing KICK-ASS via Icon, Marvel is seeing more from it than if Millar & Romita Jr. had published it with another company. Even 1% is better than 0%, after all.
Comic Chronicles has posted the Top 300 list as well as the Top GN lists with hard numbers here:
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2010/2010-12.html
For the THIRD month IN A ROW, no comic book has sold 100k. To be fair, in November, BATMAN: THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE missed that mark by about 500 copies, and it may hit it if it gets a reprint. This month, however, no comic sold 90k. This would be the 4th month in 2010 in which no comic sold 100k; most of those being in the final quarter. Marvel's best selling comic, NEW AVENGERS #7 (which was one of only two comics Marvel had in the Top 10 sellers list), did not even sell 68k in Dec. 2010.
Marvel and DC it seems are increasingly becoming big fish in small ponds. And as the pond has shrunk this year, it seems DC's fish has been able to not exactly gain sales, but not lose them to the degree that Marvel has. It's thus no surprise that FEAR ITSELF is coming, and we'll see if the crossover jazzes up sales. SIEGE #1 and #2 were among the top selling comics of 2010 overall, and even that was below the sales of, say, SECRET INVASION.
AVENGERS has seen such ups and downs since Bendis launched it. It sold 89k back in November and under 68k in December. That's nuts, unless you consider how many variant covers AVENGERS #7 had, versus #8. Still, AVENGERS #6 lacked too many variants in October and it sold 73k, so the trend is steadily downward even for Marvel's peak titles. NEW AVENGERS #7 actually saw a modest gain of about 1,000+ sales from November. Still, it's not a good sign when Marvel's top books can't even break the 70k barrier. It may be noticed that out of DC's 8 of the Top 10 sellers, 6 were priced at $2.99 (and 9 DC books in the Top 20 were priced at $2.99). Want to know how many Marvel books in the Top 20 were priced at $2.99? Exactly zero. In fact, the best selling Marvel book that was priced at $2.99 is a technicality; NEMESIS is priced at that (it sold at #22 of the Top 25), but it's another Mark Millar Icon book, so he owns the rights and sets the price. In fact the first Marvel house book that is priced at $2.99 is X-MEN LEGACY, which in December sold at #29 of the Top 30. DC only had 5 books in the Top 30 that were priced over $3.99 (although one was a Batman Annual priced at $5, and another was BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT #1 which was the top seller of the month).
To a degree, Joe Q departs the EIC chair at a time when in terms of the multi-media empire, Marvel is doing better than it ever has. In terms of raw comic sales, it's doing about as well as 2001-2002 (and even that may be modest). It seems clear to me that the $3.99 price point has outlived it's usefulness at Marvel. It may have allowed them to keep raw profits up in 2009 and into 2010, but as 2010 shifts into 2011 it has now cut fans to the bone. Marvel have announced an awkward and confusing series of price cuts, but even they have admitted in interviews that fans may not notice them until around March or April. DC, meanwhile, is being eager to get fans to notice their price cuts NOW. Of course, David Gabriel, not the EIC, sets comic prices. But if the EIC and all of the editors and Joe Quesada the chief creative officer all unified and wanted the prices cut next month, I have no doubt they would.
HEROES FOR HIRE #1 debuted within the Top 60 (at #59) with just over 30k. That's not too bad of a debut, but I still wouldn't bet money that it survives past issue six or seven.
AVENGERS ACADEMY #7 saw a sales climb over November of over 1,700 copies; granted, it was an issue that not only featured Hank Pym's latest costume change, it had 2-3 variant covers. Still, anything that trims the bleeding. Even that boost brought it to about 27,700 copies, or below AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE's lowest sales point of 28k. It will last to at least issue twelve, but who knows where it will be past that. Even Christos Gage gushed about how rare it is to be writing a Marvel book that was recently launched and lasting to see a full year, which is as honest as it is sad.
SPIDER-GIRL debuted to just under 24k sales, and issue two is down to just over 21,600 copies. Given that it's not uncommon to see sales for a second issue drop 10-20% from the debut, this isn't a bad drop at all. The question, though, is how long it stays north of 19k, which seems to be Marvel's cut off point for ongoing series lacking FOREVER in the title (and even X-MEN FOREVER 2 is being canned with issue #16). Add it to the heap of new launches sold with a $4 debut issue and then switching to $3 regular issues.
ASM only shipped one BIG TIME issue in December (it will ship three in January), and it landed in the 55k range, which is the high side of average for an issue of ASM in the post-BND era. Since shifting to a thrice monthly format, ASM has been capable of sales spikes for specific stories into the 68k-70k range, but usually averages about 52-55k for "typical" issues. While that's low for ASM, keep in mind that it was combined with what were Spider-Man's B and C titles, which usually sold lower. Still, I think if ASM's "merger" was a larger success, we would have seen all the X-Books or even all the Avengers books combined into a similar format.
After months of neck and neck, there is now a clear distance between Bendis' Avengers books and Brubaker's SECRET AVENGERS of over 13k. It's sales are shifting into revealing that it really is the Avengers C-book. I mean, it's a series that brags about having Shang Chi as a guest star and has featured no notable villain. The roster faces more villains in guest appearances in other books than in their own; they took on Dr. Bong in a recent Deadpool guest appearance.
Still, it is amazing how low the sales thresholds are for December 2010. SUPERIOR #3 sold under 32k and made the Top 50. WHAT IF? SPIDER-MAN sold at under 19k and made the Top 100. If Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona were still on their RUNAWAYS run, which averaged about 23-25k, it would have been solidly in the Top 80 for months and looked better than it did years ago.
IRON MAN/THOR is selling far below DnA's usual sales on space books; THANOS IMPERATIVE remained at 29k for most of it's run, while IM/T has slipped to below 16k. Of course, it happens to be "just another Iron Man and/or Thor" book in a month saturated with them. In contrast, HEROES FOR HIRE #1 was a better debut for them.
It truly is amazing to see the low sales for all those Deadpool books (two of which are getting canceled in March, with DEADPOOLMAX shifting into a mini, so I hear). There were countless voices screaming at Marvel that they were spamming DP too much, that if they'd just stuck to a sane amount of books, like maybe 1-2, he would have been set for maybe half a decade. Now he's starting to shift into territory similar to equally spammed characters of the 90's like Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Venom. Why does Marvel insist on learning every lesson the hard way?
It seems Marvel within the last six years or so just learns every lesson too late. The time for a modest price cut was early 2010. In 2011, it's time to get more drastic if Marvel wants to continue avoiding the sorts of issues that magazines saw in 2008. Again, is isn't so much that DC has gained massive ground, it's that they've lost less ground within the last quarter than Marvel has in terms of comic sales. Marvel is better off in terms of alternate media these days, but DC's starting to come back from hibernation. Can Marvel fend off a revived DC now like they did in 2006?
"THREE" has boosted sales for FANTASTIC FOUR, but only gets them back to where they sold in May. The Hickman run has, sadly, seen the worst sales dives in recent history for the Four. Under Waid, JMS, and Millar, the series never fell below 50k. Even during the McDuffie run, it was rarely below 40k long.
ICV2 also has their own analysis and figures:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19112.html
