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Statistical Comics: The Charts Tint Darker

mayhem_01_meltdown-440x650The comics charts have been posted, with ICV2 giving their own statistical estimations of sales. So what can we learn?

A lot got published this month, including that infamous week of Marvel's 39 regular titles. Blame it on convention season, blame it on the end of the publishing quarter, blame it on the boogie, but it squeezed a lot of other comics down the chart and possibly off the shelf.

The top twenty seems to make the case for the $3.99 price point, with eleven at that price, two at $4.99 and seven at $2.99. If people are voting with their dollars, they're adding an extra one. Of course, crossovers do help, with out of that top twenty, thirteen titles being either a Dark Reign or Blackest Night-related book. Will comics ever get lighter again, as was once promised post-52?

However, it's worth noting that the figures for the big events, Captain America Reborn #1 and Blackest Night #1 come nowhere close to the highs reached by Civil War a few years ago, when the $3.99 price point was an oddity.

1 232.59 CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN #1 (OF 5) $3.99 MAR 193,142
2 213.28 BLACKEST NIGHT #1 (OF 8) $3.99 DC 177,105

Both these books were supported by a retail incentive multiple cover scheme, which really seems to pay off for this kind of title.

3 142.08 BATMAN AND ROBIN #2 $2.99 DC 117,986

But the third most popular book, Batman And Robin #2 was happily a $2.99 title without any kind of extra incentive or seeming to cross over with anything much.

5 131.78 GREEN LANTERN #43 (BLACKEST NIGHT) $2.99 DC 109,426
6 126.52 GREEN LANTERN #44 (BLACKEST NIGHT) $2.99 DC 105,063
15 99.25 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #38 (BLACKEST NIGHT)

The Green Lantern titles seems to be the greatest sakes improver this month, hitting the fifth and sixth slot with estimated North American sales at over a hundred thousand, and even Green Lantern Corps hitting eighty thousand.

4 140.72 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #600 $4.99 MAR 116,857
8 111.20 INCREDIBLE HULK #600 $4.99 MAR 92,343

And the big issue numbers do Amazing Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk proud, #600 being the charm it seems (though the provenance of that Hulk issue number is still up in the air)

The best selling non-superhero book is Buffy at thirty-one, fifty-seven with Dark Tower if you think Buffy is a superhero, or Walking Dead at eighty-three as the best selling non-superhero, non-licensed title. The first non-front-of-Previews book is The Boys at number seventy eight. And the first book that was never published by a front-of-Previews publisher is Barack Obama: The First Hundred Days #1 from IDW at number one hundred and forty-three, with Irredeemable at one hundred and forty-three and Crossed at one hundred and fifty-two.

My own Doctor Who: A Room With A Deja View finally wanders in at number two hundred and eighteen, well behind the first issue of Tony Lee's ongoing Doctor Who series at a hundred and eighty.

Wasn't it intriguing to see Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem comic in the Diamond charts, at one hundred and ninety-fifth place, not for the standard issue but the exclusive cover version prepared for Meltdown Comics in LA, estimated at over 9000 copies?

Is that the most copies ordered by one comic store to date?


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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