The Comichron: The Blog of The Comics Chronicles

First since 1968: DC takes Top 6 slots in October

2009-11-05T16:31:00.007-06:00

In one of the earliest releases of such data since Final Orders began being reported in 2003, Diamond Comic Distributors released its Top 300 Comics, Trade Paperbacks, and Market Share data today — releasing the full tables in addition to the usual advance announcement. With the release so early — and my own schedule playing a role — the Comics Chronicles estimates will be along a good deal later, but the charts for October are now online here.

They show something that hasn't happened in comics in a very long time — by my count, at least 40 years: DC swept the top of the list with the six-best selling comic books of the month, as ordered by retailers. Blackest Night again led the market, its fourth issue taking the top spot.

Marvel has taken the top six slots many times in the decade of the 2000s; in January 2005, it took the top thirteen slots. But DC's performance immediately stands out. The company has not taken the Top 6 in the entire Diamond Exclusive Era — and going further back shows few recent opportunities for it to have done so. While I have not scoured every month going backwards, the most obvious candidate was April 1993, when the return of Superman began in the line; the top five titles were Adventures of Superman, Action, Superman, another issue of Adventures, and Superman: Man of Steel. But in both the Diamond and Capital lists, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter #1 from Valiant took the sixth spot.

That sends us back to 1968, when DC had seven of the top eight comic books — and as Archie wasn't out every month, there may have been months when DC had the top six titles on the racks. Certainly, it had the Top 6 in months of 1966, when DC published 11 of the Top 12 comics and, again, the other ranking title, Archie, was only out nine times a year.

Of course, in that era, we're not looking at the same statistic; we're looking at overall sales, including newsstand, as opposed to direct market sales, which is what the Diamond chart represents. In the case of October 2009, it is possible that Marvel's newsstand and subscription sales on its higher-ranking titles might change the ranking somewhat. But as a direct market phenomenon, this appears to be a first for DC.

Marvel still led in overall unit and dollar market shares, though by a narrower margin than sometimes seen recently; Marvel had 98 comics in the Top 300, to DC's 96. Only 19 publishers were represented in the Top 300.

On the cover price front, the average cover price of comics offered in the Top 300 moved to $3.53, a new record high by three cents; the average weighted price of comics ordered was $3.46. The average cover price of comics in the Top 25 was $3.35. The median cover price in the Top 300 moved up a notch to $3.25; the most common cover price in the Top 300 remained at $2.99.

More estimates later. Stay tuned...

Superman sales, 1960-1987... and 50 years of Statements of Ownership

2009-10-26T17:09:00.006-05:00

By request — and finding that I had almost all of them — I have posted all the circulation data published in the main Superman title beginning in 1960 and running until DC stopped publishing sales data in 1987. By that time, the series had transformed into Adventures of Superman; it may appear to be information for two titles, but as far as the Postal Service regulations were concerned, it's all one series. (It recently changed back to Superman with #650, another restoration of a legacy title's historic numbering.)

Superman, we see in the yearly tables, was the #1 title for several years in the 1960s — and probably in 1963-64 as well, years in which DC published Statements with no sales figures. While the Statement of Ownership period at DC is only a chunk of the title's long history, I include a little bit about estimated sales before 1960 and after 1987. Everything from 1996 on can be found in the monthly sales charts here on site.

The Superman file is nearly complete; while I have numbers from 1960 and 1961, I do still want to see copies of the actual Statements for 1960 and 1961. (1961 is in #151; 1960's is probably in #143 or thereabouts.) If you locate these Statements, drop me a line. There are also ones without numbers from the 1940s and 1950s; those would be interesting to see just to add their issue numbers to the database.

And on the subject, it's that time again: Statements of Ownership for 2009 sales are now appearing in comic books offered by Periodical Class subscription. This means most ongoing titles from Marvel, Archie (including digests), and odd other titles including Mad. DC, Dark Horse, and Image titles do not publish Statements.

I'm gathering many of these on my own as usual, but if you find some and want to help, send clean scans (as well as the issue number and cover date of the series you find the Statement in) to me at jjm [at] comichron.com. Just the numbers will work, too, but note that I need the figures in every field — and, importantly, only the numbers for the average for the year; the figures for "issue closest to filing date" do not account for full returns and are not useful.

This is the fiftieth year for which sales figures will be available in Statements; in Archie, we'll soon have all 50 years!

September 2009 comics sales: Back in positive territory

2009-10-20T21:01:00.008-05:00

The third quarter held good news for the comics industry, with September’s five-week month boosting overall retailer orders of comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines into positive territory for 2009. Click to see the estimates for the month.

Direct-market retailers ordered about $6 million more worth of comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines from Diamond Comic Distributors than in last September; we’re ahead of last year overall by about $3 million, so this is the month that made the difference. We see resilience particularly in unit sales within the top-selling comic books list: The Top 300 is back over 7 million copies again, a 4% increase over the same month last year and a 12% increase in dollar terms.

Trade paperbacks remained just slightly off within the Top 100, but the industry is ahead for the year once the Top 300 comic books are added to the total.

The figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
September 2009: 7.05 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +4%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +4%
Versus 10 years ago this month: unchanged
Q3 2009: 20.84 million copies, -1% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: 56.22 million copies, -7% vs. 2008

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
September 2009: $24.57 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +12%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +23%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +33%
Q3 2009: $72.05 million, +12% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: $192.33 million, -1% vs. 2008

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
September 2009: $7.19 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -2%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +31%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +40%
Q3 2009: $21.27 million, -10% vs. 2008 when comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month
YEAR TO DATE: $60.36 million; down 9% when just comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
September 2009: $31.76 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +10%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +24%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +33%
Q3 2009: $93.32 million, +3% vs. 2008 when comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month
YEAR TO DATE: $252.66 million; down 2% when just comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
September 2009: $41.01 million ($45.16 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +17%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +34%
Q3 2009: $118.75 million, +4% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: $324.66 million, +1% vs. 2008, +35% vs. 2004

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.44; the average comic ordered cost $3.48. It’s unusual for the weighted price to be higher than the average price offered; this comes from the heaviest-selling comics being priced more expensively. Indeed, we see that the average price of the top 25 comics is $3.55. $2.99 is still both the median and the most common cover price for comics in Diamond’s Top 300.

What are the direct market’s chances for an up year in 2009? Last October was very strong, while last November was relatively weak. December was big, but not as big as October. We’re looking at an average of 7 million comic books a month just to stay even in the Top 300, meaning we need this September’s performance every month. We’re probably not going to wind up with more Top 300 comics unit sales this year unless we manage 8 million-plus a month; however, we’re well positioned for the Top 300 comics to end up ahead in dollar terms. Overall, my projection is for total orders to wind up around $430-445 million range; that’s a range that includes last year’s sales of $436.6 million. So without a serious collapse or explosion, we’re looking at an essentially flat year in dollar terms. We might be a point or two ahead or behind at most — which in 2009, seems like better news than we might have expected.

Looking back at what came before, we find one major landmark two decades ago...

September 2008's top seller was Marvel's Secret Invasion #6, with first-month orders of approximately 164,400 copies in the direct market, slightly fewer than the previous issue. Notably this month, Marvel topped 50% in the Final Unit Sales Market Shares for the first time since Diamond began printing final market shares. Check out the sales chart here.

September 2004's top-seller was Superman/Batman #12, beating out titles in a month that included Identity Crisis and "Avengers Disassembled" with final orders through Diamond of 139,500 copies. It was a month with sizable increases year-over-year across several categories. Check out the sales chart here.

September 1999's top-seller was Uncanny X-Men #374, with preorders of approximately 110,700 copies in the direct market. It wasn't as bad a month as some we'd seen in 1999; dollar preorders for the Top 300 comics were even slightly up in a month that included DC's weekly Day of Judgment.

Again like I mentioned last month, the number of copies preordered of the Top 300 comics in September 1999 was almost identical to the number of copies ordered in September 2009. But it is important to note that does not mean that comics' reach is unchanged this decade; completely apart from the 33% more money that retailers received for that same number of comics in 2009, the market now includes something it didn't have in 1999: millions more trade paperbacks, circulating through comics shops and through mainstream bookstores where comics weren't as prominent back then. Check out the September 1999 sales chart here.

September 1994 was ruled by a comic book with a cover price that looks right at home 15 years later: Marvel's Generation X #1, priced at $3.95. With a shiny wraparound cover, it was the top seller at both Diamond and Capital City Distribution, where it had orders of 124,200 copies. Overall sales were probably closer to half a million copies. It was an auspicious beginning, and Generation X would continue its run for several years, even inspiring a TV movie just a couple of years later — remarkably quickly, as media moved back then.

Considering that the #2 comic book, Spawn #25, cost less than half as much and still sold 10% fewer copies, the performance of Generation X #1 seems even more remarkable.

September 1989's top seller at Capital City, Diamond, and probably everywhere else was a landmark comic book: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #1, which I regard as the official beginning of the early 1990s comics boom. The first issue was so heavily ordered by retailers that DC, according to Maggie Thompson, grew concerned that retailers wouldn't be able to absorb the huge volume of copies they ordered. The publisher then spread the shipments out across four weeks, sheathing the issues in four different colored cover wraps — inadvertently providing fuel to the "variant cover" craze that followed.

Capital's initial orders were astonishing for that day and time: 216,050 copies, meaning that with other distributors and the newsstand, LOTDK #1 is likely the first million-copy seller for the comics market in several years — perhaps even since the 1977 issues of Star Wars.

Incidentally, not one of the four pastel-wrapped versions (which our collecting circle referred to as "the Crayola-covers: salmon, periwinkle, raw umber, and flesh") is worth more than any other today on the secondary market. My own survey of eBay five years ago found 70 copies in a one-day search.

Finally, September 1984's top comic book was Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #9, known colloquially as "the issue after the Spider-costume one."

This report begins my fourteenth consecutive year of Diamond estimates; more to come, both looking back and ahead, in the future.

Top comics for September 2009

2009-10-15T15:18:00.004-05:00

Just back from Baltimore Comicon and the Diamond Retailer Summit, where it was great to talk about the industry with a lot of very smart people — including the folks that have generated the sales charts studied here for years. And the beat goes on — with the rollout of Top 10 lists and market shares for September 2009.

As the charts behind the link show, it was basically a static month at the very top of the list: Blackest Night #3 was the top seller, the series repeating in the top spot. The order of the next three was also identical to August 2009, with the September issues of Captain America: Reborn, Batman and Robin, and Green Lantern reprising their rankings from the month before. The $4.99 Wolverine Giant-Size issue was the top debut, at fifth place.

The trade paperback list was led by the fifth Buffy Season Eight trade. The seventh DMZ trade ranked in third place; I had a nice conversation with series creator Brian Wood at Baltimore, who has raised many good points online about the things that the Diamond charts don't capture. As I've mentioned here many times before, the fine print's here on the site for a reason — and it's always good to remember what the charts are and what they aren't.

The detailed figures and my estimates should be along soon. Stay tuned!

Diamond Summit

2009-10-08T17:07:00.002-05:00

If the Diamond September sales figures are released over the next several days, it'll take a while to get to them — as I'll be heading to the source, attending the Diamond Retailer Summit in Baltimore. I'm a featured guest for Dark Horse Comics, promoting Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and our 2010 Mass Effect series), and will at booth #205-206 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesday. My last Diamond event was its retailer roadshow back in late 1995 following all the distribution changes — and my last retailer event was probably the last San Diego Expo in 2001 (I think), so it'll be really good to see everyone again!

Before that, I'll be at Baltimore Comicon — no set schedule, but I'm sure you can find me at the Dark Horse booth (#1503) from time to time. Be sure to drop by!

August 2009: Flashbacks to the past

2009-09-29T10:18:00.007-05:00

Continuing our look at what came before August 2009, we find some interesting landmarks...

August 2008's top seller was Marvel's Secret Invasion #5, with first-month orders of approximately 165,900 copies in the direct market, a few thousands copies less than the previous issue. Check out the sales chart here.

August 2004's top-seller was Astonishing X-Men #4, beating out the third issue of Identity Crisis with final orders through Diamond in August of 145,600 copies. It was a very strong month overall, with double-digit increases year-over-year across several categories. Check out the sales chart here.

August 1999's top-seller was Uncanny X-Men #373, with preorders of approximately 116,300 copies in the direct market. It just got worse and worse for the direct market in the summer of 1999, with percentage drops in all categories. Interestingly, the number of copies of the Top 300 comics preordered that month, 6.77 million, is identical to the figure for ten years later, August 2009. However, the August 2009 comics had a retail value 31% higher, showing clearly the effect of cover prices. Check out the sales chart here.

August 1994 was "Zero Month" in the DC Universe, with titles publishing #0 issues in the wake of Zero Hour: Crisis in Time the month before. The top "zero issue" took fifth place at Diamond, Batman #0. The top seller for the month was another split decision between the two distributors, with X-Men #37 on top at Capital City Distribution and Spawn #24 leading the list at Diamond. The top seller between the two is likely the X-Men issue, given its stronger newsstand presence and its subscription base; notably, as well, this is the period when Marvel was producing both $2.95 "deluxe" editions and $1.50 regular versions of its X-titles. It's the enhanced version that's ranked #1: Capital City alone sold 106,800 copies of the issue, bringing total sales across all channels were probably closer to half a million copies.

August 1989's top seller at Capital City was Batman #440, the first part of "A Lonely Place of Dying," the storyline notable for introducing Tim Drake as a replacement Robin. "Lonely Place" gave DC an opportunity to really capitalize on the attention following the release of Tim Burton's Batman film, which was still in theaters in August; Capital City's preorders on the issue were 122,550 copies, putting the true total in the 500-600,000-copy range.

Finally, August 1984's top comic book was one of the most famous comic books of the 1980s, Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #8. Many of the changes in Secret Wars didn't last for very long. The change to the black Spider-Man costume introduced in this issue lasted longer than some, making the first issue of the regular series with the costume a modest collectible in its day.

And while that change, too, was reversed, the costume's real legacy involves the character Venom, spawned years later.

August 2009 comics sales remain steady

2009-09-28T23:43:00.007-05:00

The sales estimates for August 2009 are now online here; thanks for your patience. August with its four ship weeks managed to look a lot like July with its five, which in recession-ese means "steady as she goes" once again.

The dollar value of all Marvels ordered in the Top 300 Comics and Top 300 Trades was, in fact, almost identical to July’s figure — within a couple of hundred dollars! DC’s performance was very close, as well, slightly beating its July total thanks to the performance of Blackest Night. DC took four of the top 10 slots on the periodical charts.

Dollar sales of the Top 300 trade paperbacks slipped again, off 16% against a very hard comparative month: Watchmen's re-release moved more than 43,000 copies in August 2008.
But combined Top 300 comics and Top 300 trades were up by 1%. Basically, the top comics made up the million dollars the top trades lost. The overall figure is close to flat versus last year for the third month in a row.

There continue to be many more heavily-discounted trades moving through the system this year than last; as in previous recent months, adjustments have been made to the overall estimate to retain as much of an apples-versus-apples comparison as is possible. Slightly more merchandise value at cover price entered the direct market than the $36.15 million figure indicates.

While sales of a number of mainstream titles are finding new lows, in aggregate, unit sales for the Top 300 comics are comfortably ahead of where they were five years ago — and far ahead in dollar terms.

Notable this month is one of the highest rankings of Archie in the direct market age, with its landmark 600th issue (and marriage storyline) landing in 35th place. Archie's overall sales are always understated by the Diamond tables, since it has significant newsstand sales; it's unclear what impact the anniversary issue will have on its newsstand draws, so it's difficult to say how many copies will be in circulation. Of course, Comichron followers know we need only go back forty years this year to find Archie as the #1 title in comics!

The figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
August 2009: 6.77 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +8%
Versus 10 years ago this month: unchanged
YEAR TO DATE: 49.17 million copies, -8% vs. 2008

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
August 2009: $23.3 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +5%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +30%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +31%
YEAR TO DATE: $167.76 million, -2% vs. 2008

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
August 2009: $6.73 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -16%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +18%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +54%
YEAR TO DATE: $53.17 million; down 10% when just comparing just the Top 100 each month

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
August 2009: $30.03 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +1%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +28%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +33%
YEAR TO DATE: $220.9 million; down 4% when just comparing just the Top 100 each month

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
August 2009: $36.15 million ($39.9 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: down less than 1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +31%
YEAR TO DATE: $283.65 million, -1% vs. 2008, +35% vs. 2004

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.45; the average comic ordered cost $3.44. The median price — the middle price of all 300 comics — was $2.99. $2.99 was also the most common price of comics appearing in the Top 300.

The historical look back at Augusts past will follow in a later post. Stay tuned!

Diamond Top 300 lists for August: Prices steady

2009-09-14T16:49:00.008-05:00

Diamond Comic Distributors rolled out the full charts for sales of its Top 300 Comic Books and Trade Paperbacks to retailers today; it will be a while before I have the analysis with sales estimates online, but you can see the full charts now, along with the order index numbers. Full market shares also appear; click the image at right to see the dollar shares more clearly.

A few items of note at this stage: Sales levels look at a glance to be relatively similar to last month's, but we'll have to look more closely. Cover prices for comics in the Top 300 didn't move much — the average title offered cost $3.45, with the average comic book ordered priced at $3.44. The median price for new comics offered remained at $2.99, and that was also the most common price for new comics.

The trade paperback and graphic novels list was led by the tenth Walking Dead volume and included releases from Boom and Avatar in third and sixth places (Irredeemable Vol. 1 and Franekstein's Womb respectively). Both those products are under the $10 mark, but it does appear this was the highest placement for Boom in the trade tables to date. Avatar posted an Alan Moore paperback in fourth in March.

Full sales estimates coming soon...

Diamond August top sellers out: Blackest Night overtakes Cap

2009-09-10T14:28:00.008-05:00

It's that time again. Diamond Comic Distributors started the monthly roll-out of comics sales information today with its release of the top ten sellers in the month of August for several categories. DC's Blackest Night, which came in second place last month to Marvel's Captain America: Reborn #1, claimed the top slot with its second issue. The second Cap issue came in second place. DC took three of the top four slots, thanks to Batman and Robin #3 and Green Lantern #45.

Marvel had several debuts, with Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 and The Marvels Project #1 making the Top 10. Eight of the top 10 comics were priced at $3.99, with the other two at $2.99.

Image's tenth volume of Walking Dead was the top-selling trade paperback to retailers in the month.

Marvel led in both unit and dollar market shares, with the dollar shares at 39.7% for Marvel versus 33.16% for DC. Dark Horse came in third in both categories, followed by Image and IDW.

As we can see from the link, this is, again, just the Top 10, without order index numbers; those will follow here soon, with the actual estimates later on. In the meantime, we might note that August 2008, while not having any #1s in the Top 19, did have both Final Crisis and Secret Invasion continuing, so it remains to be seen how well this August's slate will compare in the aggregate. Notably, only three of the Top 10 comics last year were priced at $3.99, so it's almost certain that the average weighted price for comics ordered will go up.

More to come. Stay tuned...

Warner forms DC Entertainment; Levitz steps down

2009-09-09T13:10:00.004-05:00

Ten days after Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced today the formation of DC Entertainment, intended to leverage DC comics properties more directly into Hollywood productions.

The comics company, headquartered in New York City, now comes more directly under the film studio's management. Diane Nelson will run DC Entertainment, according to the corporation's public release, reporting directly to Jeff Robinov, head of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group. Paul Levitz, longtime publisher of DC and president of the company since 2002, will return to writing comics for the company.

It's been a historic couple of weeks for the comics business — and this, plus Disney's purchase of Marvel, may be seen by many as the center of the comics industry changing from one coast to the other. (That explains the big shadow that passed over the Midwest!)

Paul Levitz, it will rightly be said by many, is fully of the comics industry, having started as a collector and fanzine publisher decades ago. He and Paul Kupperberg advertised their Etcetera fanzine in the second issue of Comics Buyer's Guide, then known as The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom, in April 1971. He's had many roles at DC over the years, and can clearly be said to have had not just a ringside seat for many moments in comics history, but an active role in shaping the industry's development, with the cultivation of lines such as Vertigo and, critically, the trade paperback. DC was a leader in making collected editions part of the business model in comics; if not for them, the comics industry would be in far worse shape financially today.

Levitz also played a major role in shaping the current direct-sales market for comics. When Marvel bought Heroes World Distribution and withdrew its comics from direct-market distributors in 1995, reports from insiders at the time were that Time-Warner, looking to react, had a variety of options on the table, including rerouting comics distribution through Warner's other distribution channels — a move that, if taken, could have dramatically changed the direct market, perhaps leaving no direct-market distributors standing to accept Marvel when it gave up on self-distribution in 1997. Levitz, by reports, fought strongly for an in-industry solution to the distribution situation — the result being the exclusive contract with Diamond. While the single-distributor situation that eventually resulted has had its critics over the years, it is almost certainly true that bringing an external, non-industry distributor into the picture would have ramped up uncertainty far higher than it already was in that volatile time.

What does the ownership — and, today, in DC's case, management of the two largest publishers by Hollywood mean for the comics industry? First, it's not clear that much will change in either case — both have been part of corporate America for a long time, answering to boardrooms of people outside the industry. The more important element, as mentioned above in the distribution case, is that there remain people at the production and distribution levels who understand the medium, its delivery systems, and what consumers expect. I don't see how that changes.

More importantly, at this time in history, it's not a bad time for a publisher to be considered something more than "just a publisher." Thanks to the happy historical accident of the comic-book direct market and its non-returnable marketplace, comic books are probably the healthiest sector of the entire magazine industry: The vast majority of our publications are pre-sold, and as noted, trade paperbacks give us a place to continue profiting from our past works. By contrast, the returnable magazine market is in a shambles, and book publishing is facing challenges of its own. These are good times to be considered not just a company whose business is putting ink on paper, but a foundry of ideas.

So it's another red-letter day. Something about the morning of September 9 in the hobby market — exactly ten years ago, Hasbro announced the purchase of Wizards of the Coast (and my first child was born — the news that had my attention that day).

And as a further personal note, I should say that in my many years researching the state and history of the industry, Paul was supportive and helpful on many research projects. We did not always agree on what the numbers meant or how I presented them, but I think he respected the need for retailers and other interested parties to have useful information. I look forward to reading more of his comics in the future!

When the first DC comic hit the stands

2009-09-08T10:43:00.011-05:00

After writing about the considerations that went into figuring out when Marvel Comics #1 might have hit stands — including a look at the file copy from Jacquet Studios, which produced the comic book — I received some interesting material from Glen Cadigan relating to an even earlier title — the first DC publication.

Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson launched what would later become DC with New Fun, an oversized tabloid with black-and-white interiors not long after the monthly Famous Funnies began. "As most people have forgotten," Cadigan said, "not only was Lloyd Jacquet the original editor of the first Marvel comic ever published, but he was also the editor of the very first DC title, New Fun #1, which has a cover date of February 1935." Last year on eBay, he writes, a copy of New Fun was sold — depicted here — that included the following letter from Jacquet:

1-11-35
New FUN — hot off The Daily Eagle press — goes on sale today from coast to coast. Take this copy home — try it on the youngsters from 2 to 90 — and see them go through this live, modern idea of a kid's mag, filled with original comics and features!

Lloyd Jacquet, Editor
P.S. How do you like it?

Cadigan said he supposed the letter was written for retailers — but as he only saved the scans from the auction, he couldn't refer back to the listing to see if it was any more specific as to the issue's origin or its provenance. I would imagine Jacquet's likely audience might also include colleagues in the publishing community; there might also be advertisers and distributors in the potential audience, if those contacts were inside Jacquet's domain to handle for Wheeler-Nicholson.

"In any event," Cadigan wrote, "it gives a specific day for the shipping date of New Fun #1 (1-11-35), which is either less than a month or about a month-and-a-half from the cover date, depending upon whether February means the first or last day of the month." I would assume that is indeed January 11 and not the international November 1 — though both days would have been Fridays in 1935.

Another mystery is what's written on the cover of the issue — Cadigan made out words which might be "Better Boston" or "Batter Barton" on top, but the two words below are even less clear. It's not obvious that they're from the same hand as the accompanying letter.

So what does it say about when the issue hit the stands? Cadigan notes that something else to look at is that Timely may have had different business practises than National did in 1935, and five years later things may have been different across the board. "But in 1935, the same man that packaged Marvel Comics # 1 put a February cover date on a book that was printed in January, so it's something to consider."

It's a very interesting data point — if there's more information as to the background of thin interesting letter and issue, I'd love to hear it. And, just as with the Pay Copy of Marvel #1, it adds its own set of variables. Did the printing press send Jacquet his copy of New Fun at the same time it shipped to the newsstand? Or did it ship Jacquet his copy earlier, in which case we’re awful close to that February issue coming out in February, against known later newsstand practices. But maybe that logic hadn’t been established yet. Either way, yeah, were looking at a comic in his hand pretty close to the cover date.

The Marvel Pay Copy continues to be the real wild card in this. The July dates are payment dates; that’s pretty clear. But was Jacquet or his associate going through an issue they had in hand and marking checks as they sent them — meaning they had the comic book in July — or were they using the file copy later on as a double-check, just making sure once the issue is in hand that everyone’s gotten their money? Because those dates could have been written at any time, August, September, or October.

There is another concern that comes out of seeing a publisher start from a one-month gap and go to a two- or three-month gap, because it means we’re doubling up on issues at some point on the true monthlies. If we’ve got...

Jan ship, Feb cover
Feb ship, Mar cover
Mar ship, Apr cover

...and we somehow go to what we had later...

Jan ship, Apr cover
Feb ship, May cover
Mar ship, Jun cover

...then we’ve got months where two comic books coming out, and they just kept advancing the cover date. Now, this is common practice for magazine publishers, slipping a 13th issue into the year and advancing cover dates (as opposed to inserting a “Summer” issue” or whatever). The ship-date-to-cover-date gap grows, but you’d only know when the shift happened by recording every arrival date. Particularly if issues are released on a four-week system, an added 13th issue would be imperceptible.

But it does create challenges if we're trying to figure out when certain historic issues actually shipped. This is side project #24 here at Comichron, but there does seem to be enough information out there to at least sketch out a skeletal framework of the changing shipping-versus-cover date gaps for each publisher across time.

As Ron Goulart writes in Comic Book Culture, money was an issue for Major Wheeler-Nicholson on New Fun, and "he often didn't get around to paying his artists the small fees — usually five dollars per page — he'd promised them." Lloyd Jacquet himself quit after months of non-payment, as did his successors Sheldon Stark and cartoonist Whitney Ellsworth, Gerard Jones writes in Men of Tomorrow. Maybe a Pay Copy of New Fun would have come in handy for the major — especially if it were valued at today's prices!

Disney buys Marvel: Historical notes on a historic pairing

2009-08-31T10:36:00.022-05:00

According to Wall Street sources, the Walt Disney Company will acquire Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in stocks and cash. Comics industry observers and fans alike are already discussing the potential implications of the news, and will be for days — but at first blush, it appears to complete, in an ironic way, a trip that Marvel began in the summer of 1991, when Macandrews and Forbes sold 40% of Marvel to the public. [Update: See our timeline of Marvel ownership events.]

That sale created a stock that sparkled throughout the early 1990s speculator bubble period in comics, with Marvel buying additional assets along the way in financier Ronald Perelman's attempt, in his words, to form a "mini-Disney." Dan Raviv quotes Perelman in Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival:

"It is a mini-Disney in terms of intellectual property. Disney's got much more highly recognized characters and softer characters, whereas our characters are termed action heroes. But at Marvel we are now in the business of the creation and marketing of characters."

And market it did. There were a wide range of acquisitions in that era: trading-card makers Fleer (July 4, 1992, for $265 million) and Skybox (March 9, 1995, for $150 million); comics publisher Malibu (1994) and distributor Heroes World Distribution (Dec. 28, 1994); and sticker manufacturer Panini ($150 million) and magazine publisher Welsh. Marvel, itself, was on television with X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons and was working a mailing list with millions of names of young consumers, brought together through its own publishing efforts and co-branding promotions that put Marvel characters' names on supermarket shelves everywhere. By the end of the first half of the 1990s, Business Week reported, Marvel's stock was one of the five fastest-growth stocks in the first half-decade.

Marvel was doing business with Disney then, publishing Disney comics from 1994 to 1997 — though only using characters in the Disney cartoons appearing in theaters and in the "Disney Afternoon" slate of TV shows — the classic Ducks characters and reprint material remaining at Gladstone. That was one of Marvel's later forays into the "youth entertainment" market during that high-flying period for the stock; it's part of what pushed Marvel's title output high even after the comics market collapse began in earnest in 1994.

By the mid-1990s, of course, the debts incurred from Marvel's string of purchases — plus continuing malaise in the comic-book industry — forced Marvel to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 27, 1996. Marvel emerged two years later after a bitter court fight that found financier Carl Icahn in control of the company for a time; the new firm's publishing slate had shrunk a lot by then, and would continue to shrink further before the comics industry righted itself at last this decade. Disney comics at Marvel were essentially gone by then, Disney's comics offerings in the United States pared back to what was at Gladstone and later Gemstone — and a few properties have landed more recently at Boom! Studios. (Disney's worldwide comics presence, by contrast, has long been more robust.)

Disney's original comics connection, of course, goes back almost as long as comic books have been around. Mickey Mouse Magazine first appeared from Western Publishing in the summer of 1935. That magazine would evolve into the venerable Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, beginning in October 1940. Its publishing history demonstrates the timeline of Disney publishing in general: under the label of Western's distributor Dell until 1962; at Western Publishing imprints Gold Key/Whitman from 1962 to 1984; at Gladstone (a company, by its own name, formed to celebrate classic Disney comics) from 1984 to 1990 — and then came Disney's attempt to publish comics under its own name, from 1990 to 1993. When the aforementioned split of properties between Marvel and Gladstone followed from 1994-97, Marvel actually distributed the Gladstone comics to the newsstand market under the Marvel/Disney imprint, as Brent Frankenhoff shows at CBGXtra.

Disney characters have had a major influence on comics, but notable is the influence of comics on Disney. Donald's wealthy Uncle Scrooge McDuck first appeared in "Only a Poor Old Man," in Dell Four Color #386, in March 1952; the character created by comics legend Carl Barks would migrate back into the larger Disney cartoon pantheon.

Marvel, again, also goes back near the dawn of comics publishing — with the first appearance of the Marvel name on a comic book from Martin Goodman's publishing company 70 years ago. Marvel's route to the 1991 public offering took it through holders at Cadence and, finally, Hollywood production company New World Entertainment when Perelman bought the company in January 1989. New World had intended to spin Marvel characters into films, but its reach was limited — mostly TV movies. It's of note that Disney buys Marvel at a time when Marvel is now a player on its own right in the film-making scene; 20 years ago, the impact of such an announcement would have been much different.

Of the announcement itself, it does appear clear that Marvel's film successes — plus the unraveling of the film rights to most of them, which took a long time — make the company an attractive purchase for Disney, particularly as the audience for its characters skews more male than the probable existing Disney customer base.

On the publishing side, which is what The Comics Chronicles focuses on, it would appear that there are opportunities for new products, and to get existing products into different venues, depending on how quickly synergies can be realized. It's difficult to see how changes to distribution could be on the horizon: Disney may have its own channels to reach the book trade with its products, but Diamond remains the only way to reach the direct market with the volume Marvel requires — that was shown in the Heroes World years — and it could well be that Diamond's specialization in comics gives it structural advantages against other book distributors that might potentially handle Marvel comics to the book trade. An interesting question is the newsstand, in decline for the magazine market in general; Disney may have additional relationships which might help Marvel on that score.

Also, at long last — there is finally a parity between the two major players in the comics industry when it comes to corporate ownership: DC has been owned by Time Warner for years, whereas Marvel had always been either a corner of a smaller conglomerate or on its own; now, the major two comics publishers are owned by two of the largest media corporations in the world.

A developing story for the industry, and certainly an important day in the history of comics — this could arguably be judged the most important single event in comics this decade.

Update: In response to questions of how Disney comics performed at Marvel when it published them, we can look at any of the known numbers from months from September 1996 onward until the end of the deal, in early 1997. It was at the end of the venture, and Disney Comic Hits was about all that was left — we can see it as the lowest-selling Marvel title in September 1996, in 256th place with 6,500 copies sold in the comics-shop market. Gladstone's numbers were similar. However, Disney Comic Hits was clearly a mail-order play as well for Marvel — the Statement of Ownership for the title put average monthly sales for 1996 at 60,732 copies, with a whopping 28,277 copies sold via subscription. Marvel was doing a lot of work with mailing lists at the time; that's an astonishing figure for subs. That may point to another place where corporate synergies might work to develop a sector of comics industry sales; subscriptions are not a major part of comics circulation except for among younger-reader titles, where direct-marketing efforts are more often targeted.

Update II (of a series, collect them all): Noting the $4 billion dollar price tag Disney paid for Marvel, that sale price is probably reasonably close to the number of comic books Marvel has sold in North America in its 70 year-history. The last back-of-the-envelope estimate I ran put the number of comic book copies sold across all Marvel incarnations from Timely to today at somewhere north of 4 billion units. (We might also note that purchase price is the equivalent of more than a billion comic books, if sold at today's prices!)

Another interesting bit of trivia is that, when last I ran a count of how many different comic books had been published in the United States by the various publishers across time, DC led Marvel by several thousand issues. Marvel had more titles with different names, but the typical DC series ran longer. My hunch is that if you were to parse out all the Disney-related comics from their individual publishers — particularly, those that Disney might have the continuing rights to — that probably closes the gap. It's not that meaningful a figure, except to the extent that it increases the reprint library for the fused companies. As prolific publishers go, the Marvel/Disney share of U.S. comics publishing history could thus be something close to DC's, by virtue of Disney's large slate in the Golden and Silver Ages.

Update III: A Title Spotlight is now on the site showing the sole Statement of Ownership that appeared in Marvel's Disney Comic Hits. I have not found any other Statements in other Marvel Disney series; they didn't run long enough. If you have found any, let me know.

July comics sales: Flashbacks to the past

2009-08-23T21:33:00.010-05:00

And now let's continue our look at what came before July 2009 — when Captain America Reborn #1 topped the charts with approximately 193,000 copies ordered by comics shops through Diamond...

July 2008's top seller was Marvel's Secret Invasion #4, with first-month orders of approximately 175,400 copies in the direct market, just slightly less than the previous issue. Check out the sales chart here.

July 2004's top-seller was Superman/Batman #11, eclipsing other strong contenders including Avengers #500 and Identity Crisis #2. Superman/Batman had final orders through Diamond in July of 143,720 copies. Check out the sales chart here.

July 1999's top-seller was Uncanny X-Men #372, with preorders of approximately 123,200 copies in the direct market. It was another disappointing summer month for the direct market, hoping to claw back from its worst slump then or now. It says something about the relative health of the industry today that comics shops ordered more copies of the Top 300 comics last month than ten years ago — at a dollar value 42% greater! Check out the sales chart here.

Although it's not the title that topped the charts in July 1994, Zero Hour: Crisis in Time was the most memorable phenomenon of the month. DC's five weekly issues of Zero Hour took sixth through tenth place at Diamond. What was the #1 book of the month? There was a split decision between the two major distributors, with X-Men #36 topping the charts at Capital City Distribution and Spawn #23 edging it out at Diamond. With its enhanced cover, the "Phalanx Covenant" X-Men #36 sold for $2.95, a dollar more than the Spawn issue — and it's certainly likely that when newsstand and subscriptions are figured in, X-Men had more copies in circulation. Capital City alone sold 125,550 copies of the issue, and total sales across all channels were probably closer to half a million copies.

But July 1994 was a "lackluster" month overall, to use the term in Capital's report. Internal Correspondence, speculating on why sales were off in what was supposed to be the peak order month for the year, put the blame on proliferation of titles, lack of quality titles, and cover prices. "Have comics simply priced themselves out of competition with other forms of entertainment?" asked Capital co-owner John Davis. "In the past, fans could afford to buy all of a publisher's releases each month. Given the current $2 to $2.50 price of most comics, that is no longer possible." (Demonstrating it's not a new debate at all — though to be exact, while Capital did figure a $2.51 average price for products in July 1994, that's not a weighted average. The top 50 comics had an average price of $1.90.)

July 1989's top seller at Capital City was Batman #439, concluding Marv Wolfman's "Batman Year Three." It was all Batman all the time in that first full month after the release of Tim Burton Batman film; the top four were another issue of Batman and two issues of Detective Comics. Capital City's preorders on the issue were 108,800 copies, and the true total is at least in the neighborhood of half a million.

Finally, July 1984's top comic book, both at Capital and most probably everywhere else, was Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #7, continuing the year-long mega-cross-over. Next month would come the new Spider-costume...

Modest recovery continues in July comics sales

2009-08-21T09:52:00.005-05:00

The summer seems to be breathing some life back into comics sales figures in several categories, according to The Comics Chronicles analysis of July 2009 comics ordered from Diamond Comic Distributors.

The decline in Top 300 comics unit sales has slowed, and we picked up a few points in Top 300 comics dollars, thanks to six comics above the 100,000-copy mark. There was a generally stronger slate of event comics for July than in previous months, and it was our best month of the year for both Top 300 comics units and dollars so far.

Dollar sales of the Top 300 trade paperbacks continued their June pace, off 9%. Between frontlist comics and trades, the gap narrowed to 4% — and the overall figure, including backlist trades and magazines, appeared to be even or just slightly ahead of last year, by less than 1%.

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
July 2009: 6.91 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -4%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +13%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +3%
YEAR TO DATE: 42.4 million copies, -9% vs. 2008

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
July 2009: $24.18 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +3%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +36%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +42%
YEAR TO DATE: $144.46 million, -3% vs. 2008

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
July 2009: $7.35 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -11%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +34%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +70%
YEAR TO DATE: $46.44 million; down 9% when just comparing just the Top 100 each month

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
July 2009: $31.53 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: up less than 1%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +35%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +43%
YEAR TO DATE: $190.87 million; down 4% when just comparing just the Top 100 each month

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
July 2009: $41.59 million ($44.3 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: up less than 1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +49%
YEAR TO DATE: $247.5 million, -1% vs. 2008, +35% vs. 2004

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.43; the average comic ordered cost $3.50. The median price — the middle price of all 300 comics — was $2.99. $2.99 was also the most common price of comics appearing in the Top 300. The 300th place comic book is again above 4,000 units sold.

While the overall figure for the month is flat or narrowly ahead, a caveat mentioned a few months ago returns this month, because of the heavy degree of promotional discounting done on softcover and hardcovers sold to retailers in the month. While some deep discounting happens in every month, July 2009 saw substantially more than July 2008 — well over than $1 million more books going into stores this month at less than half what the publisher usually receives. This has introduced some error into the “overall” statistic, as there is a wider than usual gap between wholesale and retail sales this month. I have adjusted to remove items that retailers basically got for free so as to keep the year-to-year comparisons valid — but I think the upshot at the end of 2009 will be that retailers wound up with more dollars worth of stock in their stores than the overall sales figures reflect — hopefully, they can turn those books into something close to their cover value.

Again, it looks a decent summer, compared to what it might have been. It's not time for Cousin Larry and Balki to do the Dance of Joy, but there isn't the carnage some feared, either.

The historical look back at previous July comics sales will be coming in a separate post soon.

Diamond July Top Sellers released; Cap Reborn on top

2009-08-13T11:41:00.005-05:00

Diamond Comic Distributors began the monthly roll-out of comics sales information today with its release of the top ten sellers in the month of July for several categories, and the charts find Marvel's Captain America: Reborn #1 in the top slot, followed by DC's Blackest Night #1. With a top-ten chart that includes two more "Blackest Night" issues and 600th issues for both Amazing Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk (also an anniversary for Tales to Astonish, but who's quibbling), the recent spate of comparatively event-free months seems to be past.

As can be seen from the link, these are just the top ten, not indexed; more will come later. We can see from this that only one item was at $2.99 in the Top 10 comics list; all else was at $3.99 or $4.99. Last July — a month with relatively fewer "big event" issues — all but two books were at $2.99. However, Top 300 comics unit sales last July were at 7.2 million copies, one of the better months for the year, so there still could be some steep comparatives overall.

We also see quite a lot of hardcovers in the Top 10 graphic novel list as compared with last July — but it may not make much difference to the overall, since that month included a Watchmen re-release and retailers bought a whopping 19,000-plus copies of the book. (Numerology fans may find something fun in seeing 100 Bullets Vol. 13: Wilt on the list — the latest in a play on numbers in the 100 Bullets TPB titles. 13 is, of course, Wilt Chamberlain's number.)

The Top 10 Publisher market shares can also be seen; the rankings for both units and dollars were Marvel/DC/Dark Horse/IDW/Image/Dynamic Forces (Dynamite). Interestingly, except for Boom and Viz flip-flopping in the unit and dollar lists, the rankings within the two lists were identical. This doesn't happen often, and could be associated with a growing parity between unit and dollar shares between companies. When there was a lot of divergence on pricing, we'd see publishers with much higher dollar shares and lower unit shares and vice versa. We may be getting more cost-covergence as the market looks toward $3.99.

More to come...

A Marvel Mystery: Fixing a date for Marvel's 70th anniversary

2009-08-12T14:32:00.004-05:00

Marvel Comics celebrated its 70th anniversary — dating from the shipment of Marvel Comics #1 — on August 11 in a variety of locations, and events are continuing through this week. Some have asked how a specific date could have been fixed for a book that shipped so long ago. In truth, as I said when Marvel consulted me a good ways back to research the date, there probably wasn't a single date.

Comics back then were generally post-dated — like all magazines on newsstands, publishers didn't want newsdealers pulling them off the shelves because they saw a cover date. Marvel was no different. But with Marvel #1, specifically, most copies actually have a black circle over the date, on the cover and inside, with November stamped on it. That suggests to me that they were probably really encroaching on the original October cover date — or, at least, they didn't like the number of weeks left between the ship date and October.

But there's another element in the mix: the "Pay Copy" of Marvel #1, the world's most valuable single copy of a comic book in 2001, before it sold for a lot less in 2007. The book had interior markior markings saying the dates that the Jacquet Studio (which Marvel, then Timely, had bought the art from) paid their freelancers. Those dates are all late July 1939. But it is hard to say that that proves the book has printed and in their hands before July — they could have been recording the earlier dates of payment. (I am guessing they were not paying on publication, but after the work was turned in.) That argues for August or September for the book’s release. And in any event, I'm not sure the date the comic book was printed is the important thing — we could well imagine Timely and its partners having books back from the printers before the newsstand received them.

So the Pay Copy is interesting, but what we really would like to see to prove when it hit standsis a copy with a newsdealer’s date-received stamp. Alternatively, someone could get a look at the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s records for Timely one of these days (though as Timely was just starting, the book might not have been audited). Another route would be to find a newsstand photograph where we can ID something known, like a Life Magazine cover. There aren't a lot of methods for dating something that far back, but those are three.

In any event, I think it is safe to say it came out before October/November, as the cover date says; somewhere between the earliest Pay Copy date in July and, probably, September. But as to a specific shipping day — a day for Marvel to point to for the 70th anniversary — again, I don’t think there is one. The distributors would have all shipped on different days. Even when we do have arrival stamps from comics in those days, multiple ones do not agree. Comics were not regarded as having any timely merit in those days, so the distributors would not have cared when they got the books to their stores (unlike, say, Life magazine). So I don’t think there's a lot of evidence that one day in this stretch is more deserving than another — though if more can be found, it certainly would be of interest!

Updated market share graphics -- now with IDW

2009-07-28T19:55:00.003-05:00

The graphics section here on the site — including comics market shares across time and unit and dollar comics order trends, both recent and for the entire Diamond Exclusive Era — have been updated. I didn't intend to let this slide for so long, but other projects intervened.

In any event, an addition this time out can be found in the Diamond final order dollar market share graphics, which now include IDW. The "other" category in the graphics had been increasing in size lately due to IDW's growth — it topped 5% for the first time earlier this year — and so the change was due:

For the moment, the addition of IDW trendlines is limited to the Diamond Final Order graphics. It can and will be added to the narrower categories, but it's a labor-intensive proposition. Likewise, some data remains to be added to the market share graphics before 2003. IDW does not appear regularly in Diamond's Final Order charts before 2003, but there may be individual months here and there in which it made the list.

The reader will note that Crossgen remains in the market share graphic for the whole Diamond Exculsive Era (seen above as the brown line). The reason is similar: it's a big enough chunk of the miscellaneous grouping that the "other" category leaps quite a lot without it in the picture. It's also a case where the graphic itself appears to tell a story, which is what good graphics should do.

June comics sales: Flashbacks to the past

2009-07-28T12:23:00.008-05:00

Continuing the look at what came before June 2009 — when Batman & Robin #1 topped the charts with approximately 168,500 copies ordered by comics shops through Diamond...

June 2008's top seller was Marvel's Secret Invasion #3, with first-month orders of approimately 175,700 copies in the direct market. Check out the sales chart here.

June 2004's top-seller was Identity Crisis #1, which stands just before the most recent wave of free-standing limited series, rather than ongoing series, serving as the hubs for events impacting entire comics universes. Issues of such series topped the charts five times in 2005 (Infinite Crisis, House of M), eight times in 2006 (Infinite Crisis, Civil War), six times in 2007 (Civil War, World War Hulk), eight times in 2008 (all Secret Invasion). Despite the "Crisis" name, Identity Crisis is probably not properly considered as part of that wave — being more of an independent story without the kinds of tie-in issues we saw for some of those later, more purely cross-over events — but it appears to have set the stage for later success this decade. The first issue had first-month orders of 163,100 copies copies in the direct market. It was boosted considerably by later reorders — 5,900 copies in July, 4,400 in August, Check out the sales chart here.

June 1999's top-seller was Uncanny X-Men #371, with preorders of approximately 125,600 copies in the direct market. 1999 was, by contrast, a year where not much at all was happening with major events, and Uncanny topped the charts ten months in a row. Check out the sales chart here.

June 1994's top seller was another X-Men issue — X-Men #35, from "adjectiveless" version of the series. It was the consensus leader at both Diamond and Capital City Distribution, outselling the original X-title by nearly 10%. Capital City alone sold 108,650 copies. While the Statement of Ownership reported overall sales of 614,075 copies, that's deceptive, as it's an average of months going back into the second half of the blockbuster year 1993; X-Men sales for the second half of 1994 were far lower, as evidenced by the next Statement that appeared, reporting average sales of 332,889 copies per issue.

June 1989's top seller at Capital City was Batman #436, beginning Marv Wolfman's "Batman Year Three." It was the first of two issues of Batman that sold that month, #437 coming in second place. The first Tim Burton Batman film was released on June 23rd (the sneak preview was June 22) — and it had a significant impact on the direct market, with Batman titles topping the charts for the entire rest of 1989, including the multi-cover Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, regarded by many (including this commenator) as the title launching the 1990s comics boom in earnest. Capital City's preorders on the issue were 118,650 copies, and the true total is at least in the neighborhood of half a million.

Finally, June 1984's top comic book, both at Capital and likely everywhere else, was Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #6, continuing the year-long mega-cross-over. As free-standing cross-over series go, this is one of the granddaddies!

June 2009 comics sales: Almost tied at halftime

2009-07-23T21:41:00.004-05:00

A lot of things put off finishing the calculations this month — half the industry is in San Diego, and I've busy promoting my new projects (both my new Star Wars ebook and news of my new Mass Effect series were released this week). As it is, I'll be doing the usual comics-sales-through-history notes in a separate, later post. But the estimates for June 2008 comics orders are now complete and online, and they show an industry that is in a lot better shape at midyear than many would have imagined.

A nice rebound in aggregate Top 300 comics sales helped overall orders for comics, trades, and magazines nudge slightly ahead of June 2008 — and I mean slightly, a difference of $60,000 or so. The numbers for the second quarter were ahead 4%, not quite recovering the ground lost in the first quarter. Overall dollar orders in the direct market at midyear stand at nearly $206 million, off about 1%, or less than $3 million, from the same period last year. The "long tail" of trades is where the difference is being made up, as Top 300 Comics units, dollars, and Top 300 Trade Paperback dollars are all off for the year to date by 10% or less.

The figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
June 2009: 6.56 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: down 2%
Versus 5 years ago this month: unchanged
Versus 10 years ago this month: +1%
Q2 2009: 18.92 million copies, -7% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: 35.49 million copies, -10% vs. 2008

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
June 2009: $22.7 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +23%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +36%
Q2 2009: $64.06 million, -3% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: $120.28 million, -4% vs. 2008

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
June 2009: $6.04 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -35%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +15%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +35%
Q2 2009: $20.76 million, -17% vs. 2008 when comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month
YEAR TO DATE: $39.09 million; down 9% when just comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
June 2009: $28.74 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -3%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +31%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +36%
Q2 2009: $76.88 million, -6% vs. 2008 when comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month
YEAR TO DATE: $159.34 million; down 5% when just comparing just the Top 100 TPBs each month

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
June 2009: $37.03 million ($40.57 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: up less than 1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +25%
Q2 2009: $114.79 million, +4% vs. 2008
YEAR TO DATE: $205.91 million, -1% vs. 2008, +33% vs. 2004

Right off, we see an interesting thing: When we look at the month of June across time, the Top 300 comics are generating unit sales within a very narrow range: 6.56 million copies now, 6.66 million last year, 6.53 million 5 years ago, and 6.52 million 10 years ago. That’s a 100,000-copy range, scarcely one hit title. Yet roughly the same number of units is generating 6% more dollars than last year, 23% more than five years ago, and 36% more than 10 years ago. Such is the change in pricing!

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.50; the average comic ordered cost $3.46. These are both records, and as noted here earlier, $2.99 is still the most common cover price for comics in Diamond’s Top 300, although that balance has changed a lot this year and $3.99 is catching up. The gradual changeover to $3.99 for many publishers is having amplified effects on the charts, relative to some of benchmark pricing changes in previous years; few publishers are stopping at the intermediate $3.50 step, and $2.99 to $3.99 matches the previous record jumps by percentage, from 15¢ to 20¢ in the mid-1970s and 75¢ to $1 in the late 1980s. The problem is that we really can’t look at the 75¢ to $1 records to see how it affected unit sales, because it was right at the beginning of that boom, where numbers on everything were going up because of the explosion in the number of comics outlets. There may be clearer effects visible in the 15-to-20¢ example, but I don’t know how useful info from a largely newsstand model will be.

In any event, at least the month of June shows unit orders holding relatively firm, despite the pricing trends.

The Top 100 Trades were off a great deal against June 2008; as described in the post on how graphic novel pricing has changed, last June's list had more hardcovers and more higher-priced products than June did this year. Still, as much as we hunt for the effects of price resistance in new comics sales, it's not unreasonable to expect that a recession might hit the big-ticket items to a more pronounced degree. We'll see as the summer progresses whether this is part of a larger trend.

Revised graphics are on the way, but in the meantime, some updates have been made to the Vital Statistics section. The Diamond-era records section now includes information as to how many publishers have had books in the #1 slot since 1997 (four: Marvel, DC, Image, and Dreamwave); the longest run for a title in that time at #1 (Uncanny X-Men, 10 issues in 1999); and the greatest number of consecutive months that a single publisher has had the #1 title since 1997 (Marvel, in a 27-month stretch that ended in April 2009).

And the #1 books for all months since 1996 have been updated on the Top Comics page. Seeing them all together notes a little numerological oddity: The issue numbers of the #1 books from December to May were #8, #583, #583, #3, #853, and #53! I suspect the Illuminati...

Oh, yeah — if you're looking in on us from the main site, there should now be a Flash module at left sending the Twitter feed. If you have the latest Flash version and it's not coming up, let me know — these things can be a little wonky.

How graphic novel pricing has changed

2009-07-14T11:25:00.009-05:00

The Diamond June 2009 order estimates are still in process, as I get pieces into place — but an increase in periodical sales year-over-year seems likely, along with a coincident drop in dollar orders for Diamond's top-selling trade paperbacks. This is a combination that has occured in individual months before, and in one year overall – 2003, a year that, as previously discussed here, had some similarities to things we've seen in 2009.

With attention on increases in the costs of new comics — and the recession's possible role in reducing unit sales — it's worth looking at something rarely examined: What's happening with pricing for the trades and graphic novels retailers order most often?

While Diamond produces a Top 300 TPB list right now, we can look at Top 100 comparisons now going back five years:

AVERAGE PRICE OF TRADE PAPERBACKS within the Top 100 TPBs June 2009: $19.34
June 2008: $20.88
June 2007: $17.31
June 2006: $16.77
June 2005: $16.17
June 2004: $14.56

MEDIAN PRICE OF ITEMS ORDERED within the Top 100 TPBs
June 2009: $15.47
June 2008: $17.95
June 2007: $14.99
June 2006: $14.95
June 2005: $12.99
June 2004: $9.99

PRICE OF THE AVERAGE TPB ORDERED within the Top 100 TPBs
June 2009: $19.09
June 2008: $19.85
June 2007: $17.75
June 2006: $16.43
June 2005: $15.57
June 2004: $15.35

MOST COMMON PRICE OF TPBS in the Top 100
June 2009: $14.99
June 2008: $19.99
June 2007: $9.99
June 2006: $9.99
June 2005: $9.99
June 2004: $9.99

Which measure is most useful? The weighted price — that third statistic listed — is generally more stable from month to month, less tossed by the balance of offerings. (The reason the median price in June 2009 falls at $15.47, a price no title was at, is because we're looking at an even number of items — and the 50th and 51st items in a price ordering were priced at $14.99 and $15.95.)

From these tables, we see that June 2009 pales next to June 2008 in part not simply because of unit sales — but because the the prices of the most popular trades were simply higher that month — and much higher than in June 2007. New comics prices last month may have set a record, but the price of the typical graphic novel offered and ordered actually went down, at least in the Top 100.

A major factor is the number of hardcovers. Here's the counts from the last few years:

HARDCOVERS in the Top 100
June 2009: 18
June 2008: 20
June 2007: 13
June 2006: 8
June 2005: 4

These are minimum counts — there might be a few hardcovers I didn't identify from the title.

Another thing that's going on involves manga; when more of these lower-priced volumes make it into the Top 100, all measures above usually drop. Relatively fewer manga appear in the June 2009 list than in months earlier in the decade, and two of them are at $19.99. The $9.99 price point, the most common one on the list from 2004 to 2007, finds far fewer entries today.

Something important to remember is that the Diamond trade list is ranked by unit sales, not by dollar totals. So when you do have a phenomenon such as, say, a weakening in demand for manga in the direct market, the items replacing them in the Top 100 are more likely to be more expensive — and in the case of hardcovers, much more expensive.

These are just individual months — a rolling average might find different results. There seem to be a number of things in play in the TPB charts from month to month — the popularity of manga and the mix of publisher offerings are only two. But if the recession plays a role in shaping the chart, we might well find it in the luxury or high-end items — the hardcovers and prestige editions. If we were to see prices in one or more of these categories continue to drift downward even as new comics prices increase, that might suggest fewer big-ticket items being ordered — or offered.

Diamond June 2009 Sales Rankings

2009-07-09T15:07:00.013-05:00

Diamond Comic Distributors released its top-seller charts reporting its sales to comics retailers in North America for the month of June today, and the June charts now appear on Comichron, along with some initial data massaging. (Publisher names have been identified, average prices have been calculated, and links have been established to Amazon sales rankings for TPBs where they exist. Our sales estimates will follow in a few days.)

Notably, those average prices made June 2009 a record-breaker. The average comic book offered in Diamond's top-sellers list sold for $3.50; the average price of all comics ordered was $3.46. The first of those figures ties an all-time monthly record set in November 2008; the second figure is an all-time record high outright. The previous record was $3.41, set in January, February, and March of this year. The Diamond-era records page has been updated.

Something new is that $3.50 is actually the median price (or middle price) of all comics offered within the Top 300. The price had been sticking at $2.99, even as the averages went up past it; there were enough lower-priced titles in the catalog to keep the median lower. This is a jump we've been watching for during recent times, and it finally happened this month. However, the mode — the price most comics within the Top 300 are at — remains at $2.99. There are 138 comic books priced at $2.99 in the Top 300; 116 priced at $3.99. The intermediate step of $3.50 only accounts for 24 titles.

The rankings find that Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's Batman and Robin #1 took the top spot, followed by Marvel's return of Steve Rogers in Captain America #600. Cap, priced at $4.99, was the top dollar comic book.

DC's Final Crisis hardcover was the top-selling item on the graphic novels list. The top six were the same for both unit and dollar market shares overall: Marvel, DC, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, and Dynamic Forces.

As with last month, Diamond sent out a second resorting of the list in addition to its Top Independents file — a "Small Press" chart listing the Top 25 publishers outside the Top 10 publishers. (This added one title — Archie, in 307th place — to the overall data set.) Diamond also released two new lists, sorting the Independent and Small Press graphic novel sales, listing 25 items each. Diamond Director of Marketing Dan Manser said the new lists represent more ways to look at the charts, spotlighting titles for retailers and readers.

Again, estimates will be along soon, but it looks at first blush that June is at least better than the moribund May. If, for example, Batman sales held steady to what they were equal from month, this month's Top 300 list would then include 7% more units and 12% more dollars. However, fluctuations in that title from month to month could cause these estimates to vary in either direction. June 2008, while less challenging to beat than May 2008 was, still included Secret Invasion #3, Ultimate Origins #1, and Final Crisis #2, so there are still challenging comparatives — but this June at least has the benefit of more high-profile releases than the previous month did.

More later. We're now on Twitter; follow us for updates when the estimates become available.

1997 comics sales estimates now fully online

2009-07-03T17:08:00.003-05:00

The Diamond comics rankings and estimates for 1997 are now finally online here with the addition of pages for October, November, and December 1997.

It's a period that saw major drops year-over-year against some pretty big events — November 1997 unit and dollar sales were off more than a quarter (!) versus the Superman wedding month of November 1996. But December also included the year's top-seller, Darkness #11, which with its eleven covers proved the death of the variant-cover craze was greatly exaggerated. And the quarter included the "Heroes Return" relaunches, setting some of Marvel's flagship titles off on their third volumes.

I also discovered that the Diamond Final Order Market Shares actually began two months earlier than I figured, in August 1997. Beginning with the October shares, the market shares appeared in Diamond's Dateline retailer newsletter — but the August and September shares appeared in Diamond's Dialogue magazines for October and November. The August and September 1997 Final Order Shares have been added to their respective pages and will eventually be added to the market shares graphics.

Gale Storm -- and Charlton's approach to photo covers

2009-06-28T20:55:00.009-05:00

In last week's post on celebrity comics appearances — and some of my earlier work to index them — I mentioned that there were a lot more photo-covers throughout comics history than readers of today's comics might imagine. Gale Storm, who passed away at 87 this weekend, is proof of this, appearing in and on the covers of more comics than most TV stars of the last generation.

Started as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy in 1952, Storm's popular My Little Margie series bounced back and forth between CBS and NBC — even airing for a while on CBS' radio network in original episodes made just for audio with the same stars. After the show left the air in 1955, she starred in The Gale Storm Show on CBS and then ABC — making her a prime-time fixture for most of the 1950s. She appeared on the comics racks, too — Charlton's My Little Margie ran 54 issues from 1954 to 1964 — longer than either TV series combined. (Overstreet values the final issue, featuring Margie fawning over The Beatles, over any issue of the series but the first.) Charlton would do at least 70 Margie comics, including issues in two spinoff titles. Dell, meanwhile, had the rights to The Gale Storm Show, where Storm appeared on the cover of Dell Four Color #1105.

Which brings me to a couple of points: First, yes, the photo cover data is included in the new DVD version of The Standard Catalog of Comic Books — though how quickly you can search for individual names depends entirely on your computer, since it's in PDF form. Second, looking at the covers of Storm's comics — may she rest in peace — reminds me of something I noticed doing research for the Catalog: You can see just from the photo covers how widely publishers in the 1950s and 1960s varied when it came to such things as their technical abilities and studio cooperation. Dell's photo covers were usually first rate — promotional stills reproduced fairly sharply in good color, with few artifacts from cropping.

Other publishers fell somewhere down the scale — until you get to Charlton, which, sadly for My Little Margie collectors then and now, shows they were either only getting black-and-white stills, didn't have the ability to strip color separation images together, or both. See for yourself by taking a look at the Grand Comics Database's cover matrix for Margie — the early issues, while the TV show was still running. Stills reused; images worked into art covers in some novel ways; and all in black and white. (One might imagine they simply didn't have the requisite images — that's life for magazine editors then and now. But you'd have to imagine that if anyone at the Hal Roach Studios or the networks were paying attention to the comics, the stick figures of Margie #7 might have been a tip-off!)

I'm an old fan of TV comics — years before my first pro comics writing work, I developed an I Love Lucy series that never appeared, running aground at its publisher on licensing issues. They're a reminder of a different time — and that comic books inspired by stars like Gale Storm once had quite a long run in the world of comics. And while photo covers today are more of a sales tool for variants, they were once standard operating procedure for a lot of publishers. Some procedures were just more sophisticated than others!

[Image kudos to the GCD!]

Michael, Farrah, and Ed: Degrees of celebrity comics

2009-06-25T21:38:00.015-05:00

A few years back, one of the stranger additions I made between the first and second editions of The Standard Catalog of Comic Books involved celebrity comics. We'd indexed hundreds of covers with photographs of real people — ranging from a very young Elizabeth Taylor (on the covers of Miss America Vol. 4, #3 in 1946 Sweet Sixteen #4 in 1947, among others) to all kinds of appearances of Cassandra Peterson, also known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. So we added a database field for "photo cover subject"; it may still be in the current DVD edition, findable via the link above, though I have not checked.

Part of the fun was actually figuring out which movies the promotional stills were from — it wasn't always noted in the comics, and had to be figured out from a combination of the release date and cross-referencing the filmographies of the actors appearing. And then the database could be used to pull up every appearance — so when we saw Angela Lansbury on the cover of Walt Disney Showcase #6 with the cast of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, we knew we could also find her with Mark Stevens on the cover of Movie Love #16 two decades earlier, promoting Mutiny!

That level of detail was probably more fun for us film buffs to figure out than it was useful for collectors of celebrity memorabilia. But it certainly brought home exactly how much of it there was. The sales on the Obama Spider-Man issue may have been phenomenal, but the novelty factor was only in who was depicted. Based on that earlier work, I would venture that at least 1% — and perhaps 2% of all American comic books have depicted a real individual, either photographically on the cover, or in the story itself. The age of comics like Roy Rogers and The Adventures of Bob Hope may have passed, but if you look at all the faces that have appeared in comics over the years, you'll see a fair number of ones familiar from real life.

Anyway, to put that new feature of the database through its paces, we did a feature briefly at Comics Buyer's Guide that drew on the celebrity comics connection — where we'd look to see just what the "comics presence" of various real people was. It was often associated with a memorial angle — and it reminded us of just how many ways there were for a real person's visage to make it into a comic book. Non-fiction biocomics. Authorized appearances of real-life people as characters, as in the Hope and Rogers cases. Unauthorized appearances in fictionalized contexts, as in the Obama case, or in parodies. And while you probably wouldn't, say, consider an issue of Star Trek to be a celebrity appearance because the visuals of Kirk are based on William Shatner — not unless Shatner appeared on a photo cover — a celebrity memorabilia collector might not see a distinction. I've certainly seen actors being handed issues of comic books to sign featuring characters they portrayed.

The passings this week of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson brought to mind some of the different ways that familiar faces made their way into comics. They all appeared in Mad, for example — and variously in Cracked and Crazy. Then you've got a lot of McMahon appearances in regular comics continuity, because The Tonight Show frequently is used as a plot element. The earliest is probably the most famous...

...from 1967's Amazing Spider-Man #50 by Stan Lee and John Romita, the famous "Spider-Man No More!" issue. McMahon thus functions as other public figures do — he's part of the Spider-Man narrative just as Obama is.

Fawcett appears in a lot of comics in the 1970s — but almost exclusively in the ads. Ads for T-shirts and, yes, that poster. There weren't any Charlies Angels comic books in those days, so no photo covers — that would only be able to happen someplace like Marvel's Pizzazz, its version of the 1970s tween mag Dynamite! Outside of the parody magazines in the 1970s, I've only been able to locate a character she portrayed — Holly-13 from Logan's Run #3, drawn here by George Pérez and based on her movie character. (But, hey, it's Pérez Farrah from 1976.)

Jackson appears in biocomics form in Rock & Roll Comics #36 in 1991 — I would be surprised if that's the only one like that. No one ever took a comics license for the Jackson 5 animated cartoon, but Jackson appears frequently in parody — and also as an extra in various places where pop-culture characters came in handy. He's in one of the pin-ups in Superman #400, for example. Eclipse produced Captain EO in 3-D in 1987, based on a Jackson character; part of a production for EPCOT Center, Eo was no Thriller, but Capital City sold nearly 5,000 copies of them.

We also get a sense of his pop culture impact during a particular time through a character he partially inspired: Ace, the mysterious cycle-riding figure introduced in Peter David's 1985 Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #5 — and reappearing again in #6 the following year. I talked to Peter about the character in 1999, and he said the inspiration was part Jackson (his magical music-video elements manifesting as mutant powers here) and part Prince (or at least, "The Kid" character from Purple Rain — I always assumed Ace was more Prince, myself). You can see the times a bit here; music videos were hitting the comics. (We might have normally taken that as a harbinger that the fad aspect of videos was about done, as Dazzler signified for disco...)

There's a lot more to be said about celebrity comics in general, and this is not any kind of exhaustive list here — nor is it intended to be. Just a look at some various ways real-life folk have made it into comics, prompted by the week's sad news.

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for search help!

Batman at 20 — and how comics movies affect comics sales

2009-06-22T13:35:00.007-05:00

Twenty years ago on Tuesday, by my watch, Tim Burton's Batman opened in wide release (the sneak preview was the 22nd) — and opened, by my reckoning, the super-hero era of motion pictures we're still experiencing today.

There had been comic-book movies before, of course, going back to the serials — and the the Richard Donner Superman movies introduced comics characters to the blockbuster age of filmmaking. But the bandwagon really doesn't begin moving until June 1989, with Batman's record opening — a time in which the comics shop market is in full flourish, and when Hollywood technology is beginning to open doors thought shut. There are certainly slow periods for comics films after 1989 — but as digital imagery progresses and Marvel untangles its complicated film rights, comics movies become the staple we know today.

I personally saw the film a dozen times theatrically — those are the stubs at right, and for the curious, here are my reminiscences about that strange exploit, including some thoughts what Batman did for to the comics psyche beyond its value as a film. You can also read Comics Buyer's Guide's contemporaneous reporting of how fans beforehand were indeed very skeptical — and consider the film's box-office success and impact on pop culture in that context.

Relating to the material here on The Comics Chronicles, the film also comes up in one of the most frequent questions I receive here on the site: whether movies based on comic books help sell comic books. My personal theory on this first appeared in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1598 (Nov 2004); you can see some of the responses and alternate theories it generated here. I also posted what follows last summer, before the blog archives crash — so this is a good time to restore it:

The simplest way to put it is that movies have historically helped comics sales in comics shops — except when they didn’t. A frustrating answer, but it fits the facts. Digging deeper, we can refine that answer a bit to explain why some movies help and others don’t. In my observations, cinematic cross-over sales into comics shops are a function of:

• how well the movie does;

• how recognizable the character is as a comics character;

• how widely available the related merchandise is when the movie comes out; and

• how much cash comics retailers have on hand.

A few cases:

Case #1: Batman (1989). Many people, including most comics fans, were skeptical of this movie before it came out; Beetlejuice didn’t say “Bruce Wayne” to most people. To a degree, Madison Avenue had withheld judgment, too — the result being fewer licensed products on sale in advance of the film in mainstream stores.

There were some, to be sure, but for a brief, shining week or so, you could walk by Spencer’s Gifts without seeing Bat-everything — and past there to the comics shop, which had loads of Batman goodies from over the years. Comics shops had the most Batman-related product available to meet the interest in that second half of June — and sales reflected that.

A recovery was already underway that summer, following the previous black-and-white collapse — and leading up to the giant bubble market of the early 1990s. But the added attention surely helped the Batman comics franchise, which reeled off a series of hits in the second half of the year.

By contrast, when Case #2: Batman Returns (1992) came out, all the mainstream outlets had already been hip-deep in Bat-memorabilia since the month after the first film came out. Warner had a first-tier fast-food licensee this time around in McDonald’s; with the first film, it had been Taco Bell.

The result of this saturation was that comics retailers said it didn’t contribute much to their already stellar years, despite its decent box-office. Retailers’ share of its success was smaller. (By this time, too, the comics market boom was at an intensity where any contribution from outside would have been harder to notice.)

Case #3: Men in Black (1997), demonstrated that when the mainstream audience doesn’t know characters are from comics, there’s no bounce whatsoever for the hobby. Many hardly remembered Men in Black was from comics — and Marvel itself barely put out a couple of comic books to capitalize on it. In the declining market of that year, any blip would have been noticeable: none was.

Case #4: X-Men (2000), might have involved a little of this effect, since the fact that Uncanny X-Men had been the top-selling comic book for nearly two decades was news to the general public. But the bigger problem was that comics shops were at the end of a seven-year recession and had no money to advertise their presence as a place to “read more about it.” The comics recession was worse than the one Batman had opened to, and there were likely fewer shops, to boot. The handout comics at the theater touted Toys ‘R’ Us, not comics shops.

Things were so tight that three consecutive stores I visited had ordered no extra shelf copies of X-Men at all the week the movie hit theaters.

That’s why Case #5: Spider-Man (2002), comes closer to the mark of a “comics movie that helped the comics.” Most retailers had experienced five consecutive growth quarters by the film’s release, and we, as a community, had the resources to tell the world we existed with Free Comic Book Day, and finance the “last mile” to bring new customers to the shop.

The film’s effect on the aftermarket was clearly visible, as well — the outside attention combining with the then-relatively new Comic Guaranty Corp.’s grading services to result in an explosion in Silver Age Spider-Man prices on eBay and elsewhere.

Those are some example cases — and there are certainly cases that don’t fit neatly into the formula. It’s not always possible to know whether the movie is really helping, or whether it’s something else. But the lessons from the past seem to be that shops that had related merchandise already in stock and the finances necessary to advertise that fact did best when focusing on films that were recognizable as comics properties in the general culture — yet not so ubiquitous that licensed goods were everywhere.

This was only ever a first-cut analysis — and it is, obviously, centered on the direct market. Sales of trade paperbacks in mainstream outlets are certainly another story — and far more likely to be driven by cinematic attention, since they’re already out where the new buyer is. There are also later cases I haven't considered. I am aware that some have done some extensive research into specific box-office performances relative to comics sales, but I haven't seen any of that published. I'll link as they're brought to my attention.