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Bleeding Cool Bestseller List – 14th January 2018 – "Seeing so Many Marvel Books Sell so Well Is Odd"

This is the Top 10 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.

Detective Comics #972 cover by Guillem March
Detective Comics #972 cover by Guillem March

Today sees the new Avengers weekly book… not quite top the charts. There was, after all, a Batman book out this week. But it did top Mister Miracle, which still performs miracles. And talking of miracles… Red Hood and the Outlaws peeps into the chart for the first time.

  1. Detective Comics #972
  2. Avengers #675
  3. Mister Miracle #6
  4. Action Comics #995
  5. Flash #38
  6. Phoenix Resurrection #3
  7. Star Wars Darth Vader #10
  8. Old Man Hawkeye #1
  9. Justice League of America #22
  10. Red Hood And The Outlaws #18

Thanks to the following retailers…

…who had this to say:

If Tom King writes it, it'll be #1… that's as true as truth gets these days. Otherwise, Marvel had a pretty good showing on this light week with 5 out of 10 slots– Avengers notably coming in at #5. People want to read and like this stuff! And #675 was a pretty solid jumping back on point. There were no other surprises to report… this 5 Wednesday month will like be very heavy on the back end with Metal & Doomsday Clock and the Swamp Thing one-shot all arriving later.

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It's opposite week at FFF as Marvel takes FIVE of the Top Ten spots for new releases. Avengers somehow managed to be our top seller beating out Flash and Detective Comics. Phoenix Resurrection made it to #3 followed by Old Man Hawkeye at #6, Venom at #7 and Darth Vader at #10. Mister Miracle is still selling well, but saw some drop off with older fans as it's not "The Mister Miracle they're used to".

X-Men Blue, X-Men Gold Annual and Cable sold well enough to make it into the Top Twenty which isn't unusual for the main books. Babyteeth and Coyotes were the only indie books to make it into the Top Twenty at #12 and #17 respectively. It's good to see Babyteeth still selling well on it's second week. I wish other indie books sold the same. Coyotes has dropped off a little since the first issue, but is still doing okay.

Granted, it wasn't a huge week to begin with, but seeing so many Marvel books sell so well is definitely odd. We'll see if Glaucoma Hawkeye and a weekly Avengers series can maintain the numbers. Phoenix looks like it's already missed the weekly mark. I don't see it suffering too much from that (especially since it only has two issues left) but if Avengers misses the mark as well (which I have a feeling it might) I don't see it recovering.

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I would say it was a low sales week but this has pretty much become the average now. A bit of an usual list too. An even split of BigTwo books with Avengers taking the top spot and Mister Miracle at #2. Action managed to beat Detective for 3rd and 4th place with Vader rounding out the top five. Bottom half was mostly predictable long box filler. What stood out was Old Man Logan beating both regular team X-Books and Flash not making the list at all. We're located in a college town. With students coming back soon and another comic book store closing in another nearby small town I expect our list to fluctuate a bit in the coming months.

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Action Comics has climbed the sales ranks every week beginning with the Oz Effect storyline and most likely also due to the looming milestone 1,000th issue. Avengers grabbed people's attention with the new arc as well as having a snazzy Mark Brooks lenticular cover. A lot of the DC fan favorites edged out Marvel as the top dog.

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There was a tie for top seller this week between Mister Miracle #6 and Sword of Ages #2. Mister Miracle was a no-brainer. It's showed up in at least our top 3 every time a new issue has come out since its debut, but Sword of Ages #1 just barely made our top 10 in its first week so its great to see people starting to pick it up.

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We've actually got a Marvel book in our top spot this week (well, sharing it [with Batman, of course]). The lenticu-riffic AVENGERS #675 kicking off their two-month weekly schedule co-rules the roost with DETECTIVE COMICS #972.

Further down the list we've got the reliably excellent MISTER MIRACLE #6 and standby titles like ACTION COMICS #995 (so close to that landmark #1000!) and STAR WARS DARTH VADER #10.

The tail end of the list is unusually crowded, as we had a seven-way tie for the bottom spot with titles like PUNISHER, TITANS, and the classic Excalibur reunion in the X-MEN GOLD ANNUAL.

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With the closure of another store the influx of new customers cleaned us out of a lot of titles on Wednesday. It looks like I will be able to get more in at least. Going to be a crazy month.

—-

Surprisingly, our best-selling Marvel this week was not Avengers #675, but Old Man Hawkeye #1. Marvel ended up with three books in our store's Top Ten (the aforementioned Old Man Hawkeye, Avengers and Darth Vader), while DC took the other seven slots. Marvel actually took 11th through 15th place, though, which means that they had eight of our store's top fifteen, which is a much stronger Marvel showing than we've seen in the past couple of months.

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Sales of note:

Mister Miracle #1 VF $4 Sold a Mister Miracle #1 from the new series. Great to see such a good series is still getting attention six months in.

Wonder Woman NYCC Silver Edition #31 9.6 $400. This lovely con exclusive was a CGC signature series edition with Gal Gadot's autograph.


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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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