His name is Everett Watford. He is seventeen years old. He is putting on a comic convention in Chicago. He says; My goal is to showcase independent comic book creators and people trying to break into the business primarily from Chicago. I plan to have artists booths to showcase their wares and a pre-party to have…
Here are a few of the things Marvel has got planned to help promote the Avengers Vs X-Men crossover through the summer. And do you know what? I think it might just work. Avengers Vs X-Men #1 is a new reader jumping on point, for those unfamiliar with the current Marvel universe. Possibly obvious, but…
This is the planned artwork for Archie Comics #635 in July, leaked to Bleeding Cool. As earlier rumoured, it will tell the story of the global protest against massively unequal redistrubution of wealth and power, under the title Occupy Riverdale, echoing the Occupy movements present around the world. This continued the further progressive storylines from…
Grace Randolph, as well as looking at tomorrow’s comics today, takes on Benderspink’s blatantly open plans to use Arcana to publish comic books as a way to get Hollywood interested in their ideas… as well as evangelising for the medium of comics. Get your injection of Grace Randolph’s Stacktastic, half of her Think About The…
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It was recently reported that Justice League #1 by Jim Lee and Geoff Johns has sold over 200,000 advance orders for August, along with six or seven other DC titles selling over 100,000 each in September. And this is being reported as astounding when compared to other news that big time comic books just aren’t selling even 100,000 these days.
Except there’s a statistical disconnect here.
I’m not doubting those figures, indeed they may be the first true statistics on comic book orders we’ve received for quite some time. The Justice League total will include the Combo pack version as well (though it won’t count both the digital version and print version in the Combo pack… I did check).
But the six books selling 100,000 or more isn’t quite as spectacular as some make out. Because unlike those ICV2 estimated sales that much of the industry has obsessed over, there’s no underestimation of sales, a charge they’ve always had.
And they include UK orders, which the ICV2 numbers miss out, and which adds from ten to fifteen percent onto the sales of DC books.
On that basis, it would be easy to argue that a book that gets around 85-90,000 reported preorders from ICV2 sales in reality actually breaks that 100,000 mark every time.
Alos, while Justice League has not had any extra discount or returnability applied to it, some of the 100,000+ books have. We are after all looking at sales to retailers, based on what they guess they can sell to consumers, backed with a returnability programme or extra discount if they increase those orders. Some of those sales will be going right back to DC, unsold.
However, from the other side, the orders are not complete and DC will be receiving additional reorders every day. They are still to be listed on the Final Cut Off Order system.
So I’m not saying that the king has no clothes. These are impressive numbers for the books, and it is likely that DC will dominate more of the chart in September than usual. And may well keep it up for successive months. It’s just a little more realistic to put these figures in some kind of context.
Courtesy of Midtown Comics‘ listings and skipping the trades, here’s a look at the Marvel solicitations for May 2012. One word of warning, the credits on these do get mixed up, especially when there are double shipping issues – and there are a lot of those this month. But those pictures sure are pretty. AGE…
We already showed you what the DC Free Comic Book Day retailer customizable version would look like. Now we have the Marvel version, only available to retailers who order vast quantities. It’s intended to be used in mailshots or attached inside local newspapers, or given away in mass drives, each copy featuring the details of…
FastCoCreate has a new interview with Alan Moore talking about Watchmen – accompanied by the first art from Darwyn Cooke from the Minutemen book. It seems an odd article for DC Comics to have agreed to provide such artwork for, as negative as it is, including such paragraphs as; More recently, Moore says some lawyers…
Welcome to the Justice League Of Hanna Barbera, by Brazilian artist Daniel HDR. Can’t Boom just buy the rights and make this happen?
Neal Adams writes for Bleeding Cool, about Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich; Fellow creators, we can help Gary Friedrich without taking any kind of position in his case with Marvel. Gary is sick, and he’s about to lose his house, and though he will tell you he is not destitute, he needs help. If I…
This is the cover to Aquaman #7 by Ivan Reis and Joe Prado, the first part of the two part story “The Other League” by Geoff Johns. And from the solicits for issues 7 and 8… Who destroyed Atlantis? In the start of a new storyline, we follow the hunter as he stalks and kills…
