Sales Discussion: Batman, Bat- Family and Related Titles

[ZuLuLu]

Could you show me your source that thousands of folks stormed these 2nd hand shops to buy comics based on exposeure following the movies?

Invincible and The Boys entered the charts [Amazon also] so did Sweet Tooth and Sandman.

Your assumptions or your personal observations in the shops you frequent aren't indicative of whats actually going on.

Either way second hand or new, new fans are new fans. The ones who buy 2nd hand will still translate into cash at some point. Through Merch, new comics support or ticket sales.

While it is not talked about as much as indie books during the lead-up and sometime after their movies tv series, a lot of Marvel comics do see sales rankings improve on Amazon, several Black Panther books saw sharp improvements, runs by Coates, Preist, and others were in the top 100 on Amazon for a long while.

Since WandaVision, Scarlet Witch's complete collection has never left Barnes and Noble (B&N) Marvel's top 20 best-selling list and for most of that time it was in the top 5 it is only recently sales have dropped. Note B&N records are updated weekly and take historical sales into account, from their approximately 600 stores.

Captain Marvel sales have since become steady enough, that it went from a book that was constantly being canceled and relaunched to a recent solo run that will hit 50 issues this month.

The Falcon and Winter Soldier mini went from being a dud in terms of monthly sales to a Marvel's to 5 sellers in trades on B&N during the tv series.

Riri Ironheart trades was not in the top 100 on B&N is currently ranked at #69 and both Bendis and Ewing run jumped in sales on Amazon after the recent Black Panther movies.

Moon Knight has 4 trades on Marvel's top 100 on B&N, that was not the case before the tv series.

There are other examples but Loki, Hawkeye and She-Hulk trades did see sales boost on both Amazon and B&N.

The problem with Marvel and DC is that most of the time their movies and tv shows are not directly related to a specific comic run so the sales improvement is spread across different books whereas with indie even with changes to the source materials these comics tend to have straight runs, so book 1 of Invincible, The Boys, Sweet Tooth and Sandman all saw a sharp improvement in the case of Ironman, Thor, Captain America there are numerous book 1 people can pick from.

That is why Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow saw an increase in sales because Gunn referenced a specific book, if Gunn had said he was just making a Supergirl movie several Supergirl books would have seen improved sales but it would have been less noticeable.

[cranger]

Disclaimer: All of this is nonsense since these monthly charts are too flawed to randomly compare two issues.

The new Scarlet Witch ongoing debuted at #3, beating Nightwing's milestone #100th issue.

These numbers are not able to be used for what you are trying to use them for here. There is considerable drop off of ASM between #17 and 18 and I doubt it is because people decided not to buy the next issue. The system ICv2 uses gives books releases earlier in the month an advantage. For the record, SW #1 has two additional weeks of sales over NW #100.

Anyway this is not an example of a sales increase, there were no sales at all to increase from. That is just the typical #1 issue speculation. It helps that it has the first appearance of an MCU character. The only 'increase' you can point out here is that NW went from 23rd to 4th in the charts.

[Avi]

Disclaimer: All of this is nonsense since these monthly charts are too flawed to randomly compare two issues.

These numbers are not able to be used for what you are trying to use them for here. There is considerable drop off of ASM between #17 and 18 and I doubt it is because people decided not to buy the next issue. The system ICv2 uses gives books releases earlier in the month an advantage. For the record, SW #1 has two additional weeks of sales over NW #100.

Anyway this is not an example of a sales increase, there were no sales at all to increase from. That is just the typical #1 issue speculation. It helps that it has the first appearance of an MCU character. The only 'increase' you can point out here is that NW went from 23rd to 4th in the charts.

By that logic, there's no increase to be recorded at all.

Scarlet Witch might be a #1 but NW #100 is an over-sized anniversary issue with variant covers by incredibly popular artists (Jim Lee, Dan Mora, Jorge Jimenez, George Perez and Campbell as an upcoming fan favorite), and the Perez cover might only be a collage but is still getting published post-mortem.

[cranger]

By that logic, there's no increase to be recorded at all.

Scarlet Witch might be a #1 but NW #100 is an over-sized anniversary issue with variant covers by incredibly popular artists (Jim Lee, Dan Mora, Jorge Jimenez, George Perez and Campbell as an upcoming fan favorite), and the Perez cover might only be a collage but is still getting published post-mortem.

Of course one can see an increase in sales from Nightwing #99 to #100, I am not sure why you are looking for something in what I wrote that I clearly did not intend.

If Marvel just ended a volume of Scarlet Witch and relaunched it with a #1 then one could point to an increase in sales, but there is no previous volume close enough to make that comparison. That is my objection, not what the increase could be attributed to.

[skyvolt2000]

Disclaimer: All of this is nonsense since these monthly charts are too flawed to randomly compare two issues.

Tell that to the folks who use those charts to attack certain titles all the time.

Especially the ones they don't think should exist.

Or feel certain books shouldn't beat Bat books yet guess what it happens. It happens a lot and funny DC does not act like it's the end of the world.

There is considerable drop off of ASM between #17 and 18 and I doubt it is because people decided not to buy the next issue.

Easy what variants were not there for issue 18?

17 had 6 and two were Disney characters doing Fantastic Four tribute in color and BW and first appearance of Insidious Six.

18 Only had 3 and an X-Men team appearance and Ben Riley as a new villain.

So yeah that would cause a decrease.

[cranger]

Tell that to the folks who use those charts to attack certain titles all the time.

Especially the ones they don't think should exist.

Or feel certain books shouldn't beat Bat books yet guess what it happens. It happens a lot and funny DC does not act like it's the end of the world.




Easy what variants were not there for issue 18?

17 had 6 and two were Disney characters doing Fantastic Four tribute in color and BW and first appearance of Insidious Six.

18 Only had 3 and an X-Men team appearance and Ben Riley as a new villain.

So yeah that would cause a decrease.

Variants are more often going to cause noticeable bumps on Diamond charts than ComicHub, because a lot of the bump from variants are with incentive covers where the extra copies ordered to reach the thresholds never get sold. Those extra copies show up on Diamond as ordered by shops but not on ComicHub because it only tracks sales to customers.

This was just one example, it is not hard to look at the charts being used to see that books released at the beginning of the month tend to have higher sales. Just look at December ASM #15 and #16. The dropoff to #16 is huge and it had more variants than #15. Look at December's Moon Knight #18 on sale the last week of December which does not rank in the Top 50 and then Moon Knight #19 on sale the second week of January and placing 17th.

This chart cannot be taken at face value, which I know has been pointed out in this thread, but it needs repeating so the more people who know this can dispel the lies when people attack books. Not that sales should ever be used to attack a book anyway.

[Felipe Silveira]

Variants are more often going to cause noticeable bumps on Diamond charts than ComicHub, because a lot of the bump from variants are with incentive covers where the extra copies ordered to reach the thresholds never get sold. Those extra copies show up on Diamond as ordered by shops but not on ComicHub because it only tracks sales to customers.

This was just one example, it is not hard to look at the charts being used to see that books released at the beginning of the month tend to have higher sales. Just look at December ASM #15 and #16. The dropoff to #16 is huge and it had more variants than #15. Look at December's Moon Knight #18 on sale the last week of December which does not rank in the Top 50 and then Moon Knight #19 on sale the second week of January and placing 17th.

This chart cannot be taken at face value, which I know has been pointed out in this thread, but it needs repeating so the more people who know this can dispel the lies when people attack books. Not that sales should ever be used to attack a book anyway.

But to better show the increase in Nightwing sales, just see that it used to be in the TOP50, then it went to the TOP30 and this issue 100 got TOP10. If he stays in the TOP30, it's a big thing for the character (and I don't even like this run).
Not to mention monthly sales, Nightwing was one of the few DC series to go to HC before TPB. In Brazil, the launch of the first TPB was chaos, the publisher Panini was simply not prepared, it sold out on pre-sales, and those who bought it on Amazon (like me) only received it 1 month after the launch because they did not have enough stock to supply their own store from Panini, online stores and newsstands (yes, here in Brazil comic books are still being sold at newsstands).

[Vordan]

Drake’s Robin book was cancelled, guess that means the sales were **** after all. Hope they give Damian the Robin book back.

[Rac7d*]

Drake’s Robin book was cancelled, guess that means the sales were **** after all. Hope they give Damian the Robin book back.

Oh certainly time to prepare for the fun verse and Damian media needs to be available. He should be set for the next few years.

[Frontier]

Drake’s Robin book was cancelled, guess that means the sales were **** after all. Hope they give Damian the Robin book back.

The weird thing is Damians' book generally do well sales-wise but always suddenly end/get canceled.

[the1&onlyE.]

The weird thing is Damians' book generally do well sales-wise but always suddenly end/get canceled.

Normally, it's because of events or relaunches. Robin, for instance, was cancelled because of Batman vs Robin. Williamson even said that, even before he started writing it, he knew that the book was a ticking clock.

[Aahz]

Cancelation at issue #10 and #19 seems odd, usually they go for multiples of 6.

Maybe they do a larger wave of cancellations and launches of new books with the Knight Terrors event.

But cancellation after 10 issues of a Robin series due to low sales is really embarrassing.

[TheKryptonMan]

The weird thing is Damians' book generally do well sales-wise but always suddenly end/get canceled.

I really enjoyed Damian's Robin book, and really the story told in Batman vs Robin could have been told in that book . Today Damian could still have the Robin book ongoing and doing well .
Tim's book on the other hand had really terrible art for me anyway . It could have survived with better art work in my view . Unless the numbers have been really bad , which I don't know.

[Vordan]

I really enjoyed Damian's Robin book, and really the story told in Batman vs Robin could have been told in that book . Today Damian could still have the Robin book ongoing and doing well .
Tim's book on the other hand had really terrible art for me anyway . It could have survived with better art work in my view . Unless the numbers have been really bad , which I don't know.

They were never great. Maybe a better artist might have helped, but Batgirls had pretty good art and that didn’t save that book.

[Fergus]

Normally, it's because of events or relaunches. Robin, for instance, was cancelled because of Batman vs Robin. Williamson even said that, even before he started writing it, he knew that the book was a ticking clock.

Rebirth and Jon Kent ended RSOB
Supersons was ended because of 5G
Robin 2021 was never planed as an ongoing because of Batman v Robin.

I see a trend. These titles didn't end just because of reboots more like they ended because DC wanted to use Damian to build other characters and they needed a bad guy. Super Sons is a great concept but Tomasi's OG series reset Damian in a lot of ways simply to set up that relationship.

RSOB could have just carried on into Rebirth when 5G turned into FS DC managed a Robin title and BvR could have happened in the Robin Title or not have anything to do with Damian. It didn't have to end for him to be in that title.

DC could have kept RSOB as an ongoing. Doing what they do with other Batfam titles following a reboot. carry on or re-start.