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Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, 19th May 2019 – Speculators Abandon Naomi and Immortal Hulk?

Published Sun, 19 May 2019 13:00:18 -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 till the weekend to get this week's comics. We salute you, and the keenness you bring to your passion.

It's a Batman week, so Batman tops the chart, but it is notable that the overwhelming dominance has gone. It only just topped The War Of The Realms which only just topped Justice League which only just topped Uncanny. Everything is now mid-list…. and even Naomi makes it in.

Top ten best-selling comics of the week:

Batman #71
The War of the Realms #4
Justice League #24
Uncanny X-Men #18
Amazing Spider-Man #21
Immortal Hulk #17
Spider-Man Life Story #3
Guardians of the Galaxy #5
Superman #11
Naomi #5

Thanks to the following retailers:

Ssalefish Comics, Winston-Salem & Greensboro, North Carolina.
Comix Experience, San Francisco, California.
Dr. No's Comics & Games Superstore of Marietta, Georgia.
Fat Jack's Comicrypt, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Graham Crackers Comics – 12 stores in U.S.

Who had this to say:

It didn't strike me as a week where many books came out until I checked the sales figures and it was much better than expected. Batman was the top seller and that is no surprise at all. Immortal Hulk on the other hand, while still a strong seller, has had a marked drop. The readers are still reading it and enjoying the story and the number of subscriptions is still high, but shelf copy sales have slowed. I guess the days of buying issues and flipping them for $80 a month later have passed and that has been noticed. Naomi keeps clocking in strong with a lot of readers, not just speculators, which leads to meaningful sales every month. I think the paperback is going to be a huge seller for us.

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The big news for us, I think, was that neither NAOMI #5 or IMMORTAL HULK #17 sold even half of what the previous issues sold. Looks like the speculators have abandoned them en masse?

The lovely LITTLE BIRD leads our flock this week, followed closely by the splendid SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY. BATMAN is nearly supplanted by ALEXANDRIA OCASIO CORTEZ & THE FRESHMEN FORCE. After that it is a fairly standard Marvel and DC split, though Boom's FIREFLY is a bare single copy below WAR OF THE REALMS (which limps into spot #8)

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Seven Marvels and three DC's in our store's top ten this week, with DC's flagship title, Batman, falling to fifth place. And judging from the phone calls we got from customers who got home, read this issue, and then said, "please take this title off my list–it's just not good any more," our Bat-decline is far from over. If DC can't improve their quality and give readers what they want, they may be looking at a sub-20% market share in the not too distant future.