Mayo Report: DC Comics Sales Rise Slightly in February, While Overall Market Dips

[CBR News]

"Dark Knight III" led DC to a solid month, while the overall market dipped by 500,000 units from January.


Full article here.

[Leach]

Hit the nail on the head about Red Wolf. I was really excited to see the 1872 Timely again, only to not see it. Very disappointing.

[ArcticKillerStar]

I completely agree with the article. The constant renumbering and relaunches might be good, financially, in the short run but not in the long run. Why bother sticking to a comic if you know that 1 year from now the whole thing will be wiped as if it never existed? How can you possibly justify the last Uncanny Avengers run, which lasted for what, 8 issues? And Marvel is now pretending that it never existed?? It's beyond pathetic.

PS: I'm really torn about Miles Morales and Miguel O'Hara in the regular Marvel U. I frankly don't think it's good to have 3 Spider-Men running around, just as I don't think it's good to have 2 Captain Americas, 6 Hulks (like we had until recently, thank God), etc. I understand the diversity issue and in the case of Miles I know how he is a very well-liked character and I'm not saying to cancel his series. I'm just saying: it's not good for the character, period.

[ArcticKillerStar]

Hit the nail on the head about Red Wolf. I was really excited to see the 1872 Timely again, only to not see it. Very disappointing.

I read the first two issues. My problems are: 1) He doesn't have any interesting power; 2) Red Wolf was a character created in the 70's but Marvel is pretending that he never existed and this is a brand new character. I don't like this disregard for continuity and 3) the book seems completely removed from the rest of the Marvel U. Either they change the creative team or it will be canceled very soon

[Android]

"Dark Knight III" led DC to a solid month, while the overall market dipped by 500,000 units from January.


Full article here.

The article is inaccurate!
DC's sales inside the Top300 in February were a mere 1.55m units (25.4% out of 6.1m total)!!! That number was 1.64m in January!!! So despite the new issue of DK sequel DC continued to plummet.
They did not rise at all and February was far from solid!

[superheroes for hire]

A serious problem from the reader perspective is the shear number of titles released by both Big 2 publishers. Not only does this create competition with other publishers for my comic dollar and interest, but also competition within one publisher's line-up for my dollars and interest! If I'm too caught up in 5 Batman titles or a Marvel crossover event every month, how can they expect me as a reader to become a regular reader of the lower performing books? The only way I can even find some of those books is to pre-order them online, because my LCS only stocks maybe 1 or 2 copies that I may or may not be able to snag. Or look at the Spider-Man or Avengers problem right now - which series are the main ones we should read? Marvel doesn't know, the readers don't know, and the LCS doesn't know, so no book gains great traction. As long as the publishers keep trying to flood the market, they will continue to struggle building readership. On a related note, the comics industry should be getting really alarmed that the baseline readership for many big titles is so low. All of the various gimmicks mask the real readership numbers, and as John Mayo points out some of these gimmicks are losing their potential to boost readership in the long run.

[JediMindTrick]

I completely agree with the article. The constant renumbering and relaunches might be good, financially, in the short run but not in the long run. Why bother sticking to a comic if you know that 1 year from now the whole thing will be wiped as if it never existed? How can you possibly justify the last Uncanny Avengers run, which lasted for what, 8 issues? And Marvel is now pretending that it never existed?? It's beyond pathetic.

The problem as I see it at this point is that no one in charge at Marvel is concerned about the long run. Like pretty much everyone the real #1 goal of all employees at Marvel is keeping their job and earning a paycheck. If they don't produce immediate results they won't have a job in a few years anyway so they will keep using whatever gimmicks they can to bolster sales in the short term even though long term its causing harm.