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Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, 8th April 2016 -"Picking Up Some Momentum With X-Men Gold"

Published Sun, 09 Apr 2017 11:00:14 -0500

This is the Top Ten Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, as compiled by a number of comic stores from their sales on Wednesday and Thursday. It measures what are known as the "Wednesday Warriors", those who can't wait to the weekend to get this week's comics. We salute you, and the keenness you bring to your passion.

As Walking Dead outsells every Marvel title – and every DC title but one, Marvel begins to gain ground again, with X-Men Gold #1 doing… okay.

Batman #20
Walking Dead #166
X-Men Gold #1
Superman #20
Justice League #18
Star Wars #30
Paper Girls #13
Captain America Steve Rogers #15
Nightwing #18
Star Wars: Rogue One #1

Thanks to the following retailers

Rodman Comics of Ankeny, IO
Fat Jack's Comicrypt of Philadelphia, PA
Yesteryear Comics of San Diego, CA
Dr. No's Comics & Games Superstore of Marietta, GA
Ssalefish Comics of Winston-Salem, NC
Famous Faces & Funnies of West Melbourne, Florida.
Comix Experience, San Francisco, CA
Graham Crackers Comics – 11 shops in Illinois/Wisconsin
Velocity Comics, Richmond VA
Geek Out, Burleson, Texas
Alter Ego Comics of Lima, Ohio
Comix Experience Outpost, San Francisco, CA
Hourglass Comics, BC, Canada

Who have this to say

Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls #13 topped our bestseller list this week, outselling all other titles by at least double. Marvel had a strong showing this week, with three titles in our top ten, all of which star female protagonists. Love & Rockets was in our top five, proving once again that the Hernandez Brothers are worth the wait. Black Cloud #1 from Image finished out our list. Jason Latour, Ivan Brandon, and Greg Hinkle's high-concept fantasy comic follows the exploits of Zelda, a woman whose dreams are more literal than most. It's always great to see when people are hungry for new creator-owned titles.

Marvel's X-Men Gold #1 came in at fifth place in our store, which proves that readers will come back to Marvel superhero titles if they feel they're getting a superior product. Image had one book in our store's top ten (Walking Dead), Marvel had two (the aforementioned X-Men Gold and Star Wars), DC had six, and the indy comic Tuskegee Heirs #1 cracked our top ten due to an in-store signing by creators Greg Burnham and Marcus Williams.

X-Men Gold had a reasonable, if not impressive start. Not so much Royals, which dropped drastically from Inhumans Prime. Iron Fist also had a massive drop from issue One, as did America. The Star Wars Rogue One adaptation probably should have come a lot sooner than now, but it did all right.

Paper Girls is still bringing in the fans, and Walking Dead shows little sign of slowing down. Extremity dropped far from the first issue, but still strong. Black Cloud has all the hype. Candy Mountain doesn't seem to be finding an audience, though.

Batman still rules the roost, and Superman, Justice League, and Nightwing are still selling strong. Cyborg is diving and diving deep, and Deathstroke is in a bit of a slump, which will pop back up for the crossover and then dive back down when it switches to monthly (and $3.99.)

Silver Age DC was all the rage this week, with strongest interest in Flash and Green Lantern.

X-Men Gold came in very strong, though not strong enough to topple Batman from the #1 spot. Amazingly Star Wars still stays in the top 5 when it comes out, and multiple Marvel books made the top 10 with interest increasingly growing for the Secret Empire event…

Lots of decent back issue sales, though nothing I can put my finger on as a trend. Someone picking up a bunch of Human Fly comics and another person getting Marvel Two-In-One issues or Gold Key Dark Shadows or multiple Batman Shadow of the Bat comics doesn't speak of any kind of patterns that I can discern.

Still nice to see many customers digging through the boxes and picking up what catches their fancy or tickles their nostalgia.

X-Men Prime and the conclusion of IvX did a tremendous job of generating sales on X-men Gold. The art looks stellar in it and Cullen Bunn can sell a book. Batman and Walking Dead are our two most subbed books and the "I am Bane" arc has generated a lot of extra sales off the rack. Star Wars Rogue One sold almost as many copies as Star Wars this week. Coheed and Cambria is popular amongst our customer base and as of right now Amory Wars is almost sold out.

There's always a few people late to the party, and we sold a huge run of the final issues of several DC New 52 titles as well as the first half dozen issues of the corresponding Rebirth books. Big books included Avengers #87 and a CGC Daredevil #183 signed by both Jon Bernthal and Charlie Cox.

A nice, varied list this week. Of course all the chatter in-house was about Marvel's diversity & artist comments the prior weekend… this isn't the way to dig out of the hole in which they've buried themselves, and I hope they listened to the feedback. DC won out the week with #1 (Batman) and the most titles in the list (4), but it was pleasantly surprising to see Image do as well as they did. Extremity has retained the heat #1 has generated, looks like another hit!

Of the "Big Two," DC continues to show it's dominance over Marvel with giving readers what they want. Batman squeezed into our top slot this week, but Sovereigns and Rogue One were only just behind. The only other DC books in the top 10 for us were Nightwing and Harley Quinn, and NO Marvel titles slipped in. Post-apocalyptic titles did well this week with Walking Dead, Tank Girl, and Extremity leading the way, but Courier #1 placed just outside of our top 10, and sold well. Rounding out our top 10 were other great indie books like Amory Wars Good Apollo and Eleanor & The Egret.

Along with Courier, Kill Shakespeare, Colossi, Brave Chef Brianna and Faith all were just outside of our top 10.

Marvel Inhumans fell flat again with Royals, and X-Men Gold. Spider-man/Deadpool was the highest placing Marvel book for us this week, but still didn't crack the top 15. Many customers have been following the developments of what Marvel execs have been saying online, and we have had several sub customers drop some Marvel titles. All other companies had sub increases this week.

Pretty average week at FFF for our Top 10. DC is still comfortably in control of our main sales. Image (and Oni) did well and actually have a strong showing with their titles selling more than some other Major publishers. Our full Top Ten is #1 Batman, #2 Justice League, #3 Paper Girls, #4 Superman, #5 Walking Dead, #6 X-Men Gold, #7 Injustice Ground Zero, #8 Nightwing, #9 Green Arrow, #10 Green Lanterns. Marvel only had four books in our Top 20 (with one being a three week old book). Image on the other hand had a pretty strong week with six books in the Top 20 (and two in the Top 10).

Marvel is chugging along (picking up some momentum with X-Men Gold and Star Wars), but my fear is they'll get cocky and blow it all by putting out more books that nobody wants at prices nobody will pay. X-Men Gold is enjoying healthy sales so far, but a $4 price tag twice a month isn't going to do it any favors in the long run. Star Wars was #11 this week and Darth Maul #2 was at #14 which is astonishing for a book that's been out for three weeks. I wish the rest of their Star Wars book could do so well. Hell, I wish ANY of Marvel's other books were doing that well.

On the Indie side, Paper Girls enjoys the luxury of being written by my favorite writer, so we tend to push it pretty hard when it comes out. Walking Dead equally does well because of other reasons. Black Cloud, Rock Candy Mountain and Extremity were #15, #19 & #20 respectively. It's awesome to see Image do so well, especially since they've been putting out some solid titles recently. Oni Publishing's new book Kim Reaper was a store favorite this week and placed just shy of the Top 10 at #12. People we've never seen before have been coming in to pick it up, hopefully they keep coming back for the rest of the issues.

This week we've sold a good chunk of Walking Dead back issues from the early 100s as well as a handful of earlyish Saga. Amazing Spider-Man from the Gauntlet era and Bronze Age Batman also sold better than usual. As usual, X-Men, Punisher, and Wolverine sold steadily. Early DC Rebirth is still selling well which is great to see.

People wanted X-Men and they put their money where the mouth was and picked it up. This was the best selling X-Men #1 in years and the book was even good. Star Wars titles helped push the numbers even higher this week and Batman performed amazing as usual by almost hitting the century mark.Loser of the week was America #2 which i cut my order by 80% and still could not sell out….I expected it not to perform,but i still hoped that it would have sold out since my numbers were so low…no such luck.

Detective Comics, Amazing Spider-Man and Wonder Woman are the back-issue mover with huge chunks taken out of the bin. Will need to replenish ASAP to keep up with demand. Thought Guardians of the Galaxy would be moving better and it has not even moved the back-issue needle.

Surprisingly weak sales with a new Batman out. Usually each time Batman came out there would be a spike of people who picked up his book along with their regular comics. Walking Dead of course made the top ten for Image. Star Wars was the only Marvel book to make it into our top ten. Nothing went gangbusters or anything this week. Honestly a disappointing start to the month for us. Read that a different store in central Iowa is closing. Never a good thing to read.

People are getting into back issues of Wolverine. People want to read about "their" Logan. Not as an old man but the one in their mind they think is Wolverine.

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