The Overall Top 10
- Amazing Spider-Man #1 (532,586)
- Superior Spider-Man #31 (135,484)
- Batman #30 (96,140)
- Batman Eternal #1 (96,140)
- Justice League #29 (78,912)
- Batman Eternal #2 (76,878)
- Hulk #1 (73,551)
- Original Sin #0 (73,024)
- Batman Eternal #3 (72,457)
- Batman Eternal #4 (70,917)
The sales slump is officially over. Amazing Spider-Man takes an early (and perhaps impenetrable) lead for top-selling comic of the year, moving over a half million units. The final issue of Superior Spider-Man sold well, but not in the same league. Both were very expensive books, pricing out at $5.99 a pop. I do wonder whether or not it is the excitement of seeing Peter Parker back as Spider-Man, the fact that it is another Amazing Spider-Man #1, or whether Dan Slott told a good enough story to warrant the massive sales for this issue? Perhaps it is a combination of all three, but I would anticipate a massive drop between issues #1 and #2 as the sales figures level out.
The biggest question will be whether or not Amazing winds up selling better than Superior over the long haul, as Superior did spend most of its time on the Top 10. Marvel managed to place a couple more titles in the Top 10, though Batman certainly dominated the majority.
Eternally Yours
Batman is amongst the top-selling titles every single month, with sales that typically average around 115k. Detective Comics usually averages around half of Batman‘s numbers, while placing in the Top 25. Batman: Eternal is an interesting story, because being a weekly series, there is a certain stigma with the cost associated to collecting the title. At a $2.99 price point, it is a dollar less than either Batman or Detective Comics, which should help a little bit. It would certainly be consistent with buying two double-shipping Avengers titles in a month.
I do wonder what the sales will finally average out to after a few months of it being on the shelves. There is a certain inconsistency that comes along with having different writers working on the same title, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Batman: Eternal eventually wound up selling at around the same rate as Detective Comics does. I would expect it to appeal mostly to Batman die-hards over the long term.
Wally West
The Flash #29 – 33,241
The Flash #30 – 33,300
The Flash Annual#3 – 32,447
There was a lot of talk about Wally West not being introduced at the beginning of the New 52. I certainly believe in their reasons for doing it, and expected that, given how much people were talking about Wally finally returning, it would cause a spike in sales. I guessed wrong… sales on The Flash #30 were only slightly higher than The Flash #29, though it was only a cameo at best of Wally in #30. But even the Flash annual which truly was the introduction of Wally West didn’t have the sales spike I would have expected (though annuals almost never sell as well as the regular issues).
The new creative team of Robert Venditti and Van Jensen and Brett Booth know how to build up a story, so I would certainly expect the sales to rise a bit in the coming months as people get to know and enjoy the “new” Wally West. Overall though, given the current sales figures, I wouldn’t anticipate the changes to the series causing it to break into the Top 50, which is kind of unfortunate.
Guarding its position
Guardians of the Galaxy #12 – 55,454
Guardians of the Galaxy #13 – 56,764
Guardians of the Galaxy #14 – 53,976
Guardians of the Galaxy opened to very impressive numbers in March of 2013, topping the sales charts by a fair margin. Now, just over a year later, while the series has shed about 75% of its issue #1 totals, the book still maintains its place as a strong seller in the Marvel Universe. The impressive thing to note here is that the sales aren’t just steadily declining, they do maintain a consistent average, which I’m sure has something to do with the superstar creative team on the title, as well as the movie coming up.
Guardians of the Galaxy (the movie) will be released in August, and the question will be how much it impacts sales of the title. Obviously, I wouldn’t expect a massive influx of new comic readers to pick up the book, but it could gain some more traction amongst current comic readers — provided the movie is quality. Given the somewhat checkered history of Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s good to see that it continues to place in the Top 25, and that Marvel seems to view it as a cornerstone of their universe.
Debuts: Impressive and otherwise
Inhuman #1 – 58,309
Southern Bastards #1 – 38,029
Aquaman and the Others #1 – 34,056
Lots of titles started this month, including the new Hulk series, Iron Fist, Nightcrawler, Elektra, Sinestro, Secret Origins, Rai, and of course Batman Eternal and Amazing Spider-Man. Besides Hulk and Spider-Man, Inhuman was the highest selling new Marvel title, and it certainly deserves the “new” classification far more than either Hulk or Spider-Man. It has a quality creative team, and certainly looks to maintain positive sales figures.
Southern Bastards had excellent sales as a new Image #1 (especially not featuring Hickman or Fraction), and the early word is that Southern Bastards is a quality comic well deserving of the sales.
Finally, Aquaman and the Others is one of the new DC titles to be released this month. Certainly, nobody expected it to be at the level of Batman: Eternal, and it did manage to best the main Aquaman title by a couple of thousand copies, but where will that leave it after the usual drop in sales from the first few issues? Aquaman and the Others is already trending to be near the bottom of the Top 100 in sales by issue #3, which again begs the question of why Aquaman, a book placing in the 60’s of the Top 100 would need a spin-off title.
Serenity leads the way
Serenity Leaves on the Wind #4 – 42,269
Serenity Leaves on the Wind #3 – 37,516
Serenity Leaves on the Wind was Dark Horse’s top seller in January when issue #1 was released. For the next couple of issues, Serenity took a back seat to The Star Wars, while still maintaining decent sales. Issue #4 has finally managed to knock The Star Wars off the top of the Dark Horse food chain. I also find it very interesting to note that issue #4 increased its sales by almost five thousand more copies than issue #3. Serenity has the star power to continue to be one of the titles that Dark Horse can lean on once they lose the Star Wars license, and seeing it building a fan base and looking like it has the makings of a consistent seller, it certainly perks up the long term outlook for Dark Horse.
Thanks to Comichron.com for all its hard work behind our monthly sales figures!
