Sales of ANAD Marvel falling off a cliff?

[Username taken]

Ok -- let's keep this simple.

Yes, the books selling at around 15K (such as Black Knight) are in danger of being cancelled.

No, this does not mean that ANAD Marvel is "falling off a cliff".

1 Dark Knight III: The Master Race 3 $5.99 DC 146,044
2 Star Wars 16 $3.99 Marvel 110,407
3 Batman 49 $3.99 DC 102,689
4 Spider-Man 1 $3.99 Marvel 99,951
5 Deadpool Mercs For Money 1 $3.99 Marvel 90,186
6 Deadpool 7 $9.99 Marvel 88,264
7 Darth Vader 16 $3.99 Marvel 81,147
8 Power Man and Iron Fist 1 $3.99 Marvel 79,069
9 Amazing Spider-Man 7 $3.99 Marvel 75,357
10 Justice League 48 $3.99 DC 72,704
11 Amazing Spider-Man 8 $3.99 Marvel 71,599
12 Spider-Man Deadpool 2 $3.99 Marvel 69,801
13 Walking Dead 151 $2.99 Image 67,381
14 Batman Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 $3.99 DC 64,444
15 Old Man Logan 2 $3.99 Marvel 63,932
16 Invincible Iron Man 6 $3.99 Marvel 63,234
17 Obi-Wan and Anakin 2 $3.99 Marvel 58,431
18 Avengers Standoff Welcome Pleasant Hill 1 $4.99 Marvel 57,559
19 Mighty Thor 4 $3.99 Marvel 56,568
20 All New All Different Avengers 5 $3.99 Marvel 51,740
21 Harley Quinn 25 $3.99 DC 51,495
22 Uncanny X-Men 3 $3.99 Marvel 50,382
23 All New X-Men 4 $3.99 Marvel 50,160
24 Saga 34 $2.99 Image 49,363
25 All New All Different Avengers 6 $3.99 Marvel 48,022
26 Doctor Strange 5 $3.99 Marvel 47,933
27 Amazing Spider-Man 1.3 $3.99 Marvel 47,892
28 Batman Europa 4 $4.99 DC 47,776
29 Extraordinary X-Men 7 $3.99 Marvel 47,219
30 Detective Comics 49 $3.99 DC 45,300
31 Harleys Little Black Book 2 $4.99 DC 45,030
32 Spider-Gwen 5 $3.99 Marvel 43,796
33 Daredevil 4 $3.99 Marvel 43,741
34 Uncanny Avengers 5 $3.99 Marvel 43,618
35 All New Wolverine 5 $3.99 Marvel 43,149
36 All New X-Men 5 $3.99 Marvel 42,402
37 Guardians of Galaxy 5 $3.99 Marvel 40,581
38 Kanan 11 $3.99 Marvel 38,370
39 Paper Girls 5 $2.99 Image 37,206
40 Superman The Coming of the Supermen 1 $3.99 DC 37,033
41 Batman and Robin Eternal 18 $2.99 DC 36,819
42 Deadpool and Cable Split Second 3 $4.99 Marvel 36,644
43 Batman and Robin Eternal 19 $2.99 DC 36,415
44 Superman 49 $3.99 DC 36,318
45 Batman and Robin Eternal 20 $2.99 DC 36,127
46 Batman and Robin Eternal 21 $2.99 DC 35,770
47 Totally Awesome Hulk 3 $3.99 Marvel 35,709
48 A-Force 2 $3.99 Marvel 35,571
49 Wonder Woman 49 $3.99 DC 35,398
50 Green Lantern 49 $3.99 DC 35,237
51 Uncanny Inhumans 5 $3.99 Marvel 35,145
52 Flash 48 $3.99 DC 34,903
53 Flash 49 $3.99 DC 34,407
54 Batman Superman 29 $3.99 DC 33,662
55 Batman Arkham Knight Batgirl and Harley Quinn 1 $3.99 DC 33,061
56 Superman Wonder Woman 26 $3.99 DC 32,108
57 Action Comics 49 $3.99 DC 31,496
58 New Avengers 6 $3.99 Marvel 31,188
59 Ms Marvel 4 $3.99 Marvel 30,916

All above 30K and well above cancellation levels.

Not all are necessarily doing as well as prior to the relaunch... but the MAJORITY are certainly not even close to "DOA" as you are claiming.

And we have yet to see how Civil War 2 may -- or may not -- boost sales.

Next time tell the whole story instead of selectively choosing to focus on the negative -- and ignoring other factors such as increasing digital sales, which can be up 1/3 of what is shown on the charts -- to back up your arguments.

It's obvious that you have an agenda here -- which is fine -- but don't expect people not to see through your bias when you are primarily focusing on low-selling (or "unstable") Marvel titles, many of which -- such as "Drax" -- no one expected to sell amazingly well, regardless.

(And you can't negate Star Wars without factoring in the fact that people might have bought other Marvel books instead, based on having a limited budget for comics).

This is a rhetorical argument, regardless -- if you like your glass half-empty... then so be it.

Quoted in agreement. Sales are good.

Deadpool, All New Avengers Iron Man, Uncanny Inhumans, Daredevil and All New Wolverine are selling more now than before the relaunch.

So no, sales are not falling off a cliff.

[nightw1ng]

I think Marvel has a pretty good idea of what books will and will not sell before they even release the first issue. They are in a very good place financially. With ANAD, I think they are experimenting with newer properties as well as refreshing some old ones with different goals in mind besides just selling lots of units. Sometimes titles are released so Marvel can retain a copyright. With titles like Squirrel Girl, Weirdworld, or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, they are clearly trying to appeal to untapped markets. Even if the comics don't sell well, they may think it would do well in another format like digital, collected trades, cartoons or merchandising. One of the Marvel's purposes now is basically to be an IP factory.

[yet another]

ah, I was wondering about that. I wasn't sure if it counted copies ordered, or copies delivered. If it is indeed copies delivered to shops, then basically a lot of books listed have wildly inaccurate numbers posted. I mean, they're always inaccurate, but much more so this month.

Definitely looks to be comics delivered.

I seem to remember Marvel sometimes sending (via Diamond) double the amount of comics ordered of some issue because they wanted to make sure enough copies were available. The extra comics did not cost the retailer anything extra, but they still showed up in the "sales" chart.

[Mockingbird]

I'm pretty sure those numbers only include the U.S. and don't include digital. So they're pretty useless when it comes to estimating the actual numbers - we already know Ms Marvel tends to race right past other titles in terms of digital sales.

[aja_christopher]

I think Marvel has a pretty good idea of what books will and will not sell before they even release the first issue. They are in a very good place financially. With ANAD, I think they are experimenting with newer properties as well as refreshing some old ones with different goals in mind besides just selling lots of units. Sometimes titles are released so Marvel can retain a copyright. With titles like Squirrel Girl, Weirdworld, or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, they are clearly trying to appeal to untapped markets. Even if the comics don't sell well, they may think it would do well in another format like digital, collected trades, cartoons or merchandising. One of the Marvel's purposes now is basically to be an IP factory.

It's also important to consider that these first issues (like Black Panther and Spider-Man) often cost more than regular issues and tend to sell almost double the number of subsequent issues.

So if you can sell 100K of a $4.99 [$500,000 gross profit] first issue vs. 30K-40K of subsequent $3.99 issues [$160,000 gross profit], you've already generated quite a bit of money on the first -- and often second and third -- issues, which potentially makes up for any later losses in sales numbers, depending on how much the numbers may, or may not, drop.

Likewise, when you take into account reprints (which can go into 2nds and 3rds and even 7ths for books like Ms. Marvel) -- along with variant covers and the like -- there is potential for even more profit on these higher-priced initial copies of a run... and then you have the matter of trades and digital copies of those first issues, which can generate even more money, especially for books like Squirrel Girl, which probably do even better in those kinds of markets.

As someone else pointed out, this is a great way for Marvel to experiment with finding out what sells and how best to maximize the profitability of each new title.

I won't argue whether said experiment is successful or unsuccessful without all of the facts, but I do know that if I can make a quick $500,000 -- and do this repeatedly for certain books by relaunching them -- as opposed to a slow, yet steady $150,000 every month (minus recurring production and distribution costs) then it seems smart to at least see if this is more profitable overall than selling a lot of "regular" titles like X-Factor, Punisher, and Venom for years at 20-30K per month and $2.99-$3.99 per issue.

For me, as a consumer, the deciding factor is that you normally get better artists (Stelfreeze, Pichelli, Opena, Immonen, Alphona, etc) on the initial runs and the opportunity to start with a fresh story, where continuous runs often grow stale and repetitive -- especially after 20-30 issues or so, depending on the writer. I know I usually buy all of the first dozen or so issues of a run but by the time a book hits issue 15 or so -- and often start resorting to less skilled artists to meet deadlines -- I've often moved on to something new, and will buy issues of my "old" favorites at my leisure.

Of course there are exceptions, but in general, relaunches also equal new takes on certain characters and a sense that the title is being "refreshed" by being "rebooted" (as with Sam Wilson leading into new Steve Rogers books, Jane Foster leading into new Odinson books, and Doc Ock leading into new Peter Parker books, etc).

This is another reason I say that it's probably best to wait and see how things go. Marvel probably knows all of this, which is why they plan out "events" like Civil War 2 well in advance to (potentially) boost flagging sales.

Is this a "successful" way to experiment with sales? Well, it wouldn't be much of an experiment if we already knew the answer to that question.

[Username taken]

I think Marvel has a pretty good idea of what books will and will not sell before they even release the first issue. They are in a very good place financially. With ANAD, I think they are experimenting with newer properties as well as refreshing some old ones with different goals in mind besides just selling lots of units. Sometimes titles are released so Marvel can retain a copyright. With titles like Squirrel Girl, Weirdworld, or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, they are clearly trying to appeal to untapped markets. Even if the comics don't sell well, they may think it would do well in another format like digital, collected trades, cartoons or merchandising. One of the Marvel's purposes now is basically to be an IP factory.

Exactly.

Like I've always said, there's never been a point that Marvel didn't have low selling titles.

Even popular books today like X-men, Hulk, Thor and even Avengers have experienced low sales in the past.

[CrimsonEchidna]

One thing I think has gone unmentioned that I want to throw out there;

I did a quick comparison of February last year and February this year since the narrative have been about how sales are down this year. February 2015 has inflated numbers when you look at it; both Darth Vader and Spider-Gwen #1 sold over 250k. Star Wars #2 was at over 150k.

That doesn't change the fact that there's been cooloff (significant in some cases) to titles like Amazing Spider-Man and Thor, but Stars Wars' drop is also worth mentioning.

[MajorHoy]

I'm pretty sure those numbers only include the U.S. and don't include digital.

Since it's mostly what Diamond reports, they don't handle digital sales and I don't know if they handle any foreign distribution or not. Diamond also doesn't handle newsstand distribution, but that doesn't matter here since Marvel stopped supplying to newsstand dealers a few years back.