On this week’s Multiversity 101, I’m going to get in depth on the sales numbers for month two of the DCnU. As you may have heard, the second month was an even bigger success than the first month (if you’re not checking out John Jackson Miller’s awesome work at Comichron you are missing out), with DC going from 43.04% unit market share in September to a staggering 50.97% in October.
And this isn’t because Marvel or anyone else is slumping in any way – it’s because DC is just doing that well.
I’m not going to try and hit on any of the same points JJM hit in his excellent analysis. Instead, I’m going to get into the numbers that he mentioned briefly in the Newsarama analysis article – the month-to-month changes for the new 52 – while also looking at how reorders of the first issues affected the overall ranking as well as what those reorders could mean for each book.
Please note that many of these numbers are inherently depreciated because of DC making many of the new 52 returnable. Based off reorders, it doesn’t really seem like they’re being taken up on the offer, but the numbers are without a doubt decreased (it seems by about 10%) in the estimates.
There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity
Before I get into the comparison of October sales versus September sales for the new 52, I wanted to note that things like actual product sales (as in copies of comics in a retail shop) and release buzz (as opposed to its cousin pre-release buzz) – both of the quality and ridiculousness variety – are mitigated by the ordering process retailers go through with Diamond Comic Distributors. Orders can be altered by retailers to a certain degree at a rather non-specific amount of time before arrival at their shops, but it’s a rather inexact science for someone like to myself to know what caused these changes. But I do my best, so take this all with whatever grains of salt you’d like.
When you look at the books that saw the greatest increase in orders and those that saw the greatest decrease, it becomes apparent that buzz and fan response was at least a little bit of a factor.
Overall, the new 52 have at least partially bucked the trend of high profile debut books decreasing in sales when month two hits, with 15 books seeing an increase in sales with issue number two.
The top five books in terms of percentage increase month-to-month are highlighted by two of the most critically acclaimed books of the launch, the flagship title, and two books that had their fair share of (mostly) negative publicity. They are:
– Animal Man, increasing by 16.03% (!!)
– Swamp Thing, increasing by 7.08%
– Catwoman, increasing by 6.61%
– Red Hood and the Outlaws, increasing by 5.83%
– Justice League, increasing by 5.81%
A few notes about these books could potentially reveal why they were the top five.
– Animal Man, Swamp Thing and Justice League were some of the first of the new 52 books released, which likely gave retailers the opportunity to bolster October orders once they saw that the overall response was positive from a critical and sales standpoint
– Justice League was the clear leader in press and the flagship title of the relaunch, getting the spotlight in prominent articles across the country
– Animal Man and Swamp Thing were two lower tier books (likely under ordered to a degree in month one) met with universal acclaim
– Swamp Thing and Justice League might actually have been under ordered due to no retailer returnability being included
– Red Hood and the Outlaws and Catwoman were…controversial to say the least. It seems fairly logical that these two week three books could have had enough time to see retailers adjust orders when readers came in because of the controversy (proving once again that there is no such thing as bad publicity)
Continued belowThe rest of the fifteen are a mix of books that earned strong fan response, didn’t fall in the final week of September (those in the final week had a far tighter timeframe for retailers to boost their orders) and books that likely were under ordered due to a lack of returnability (six of the fifteen fell into that category).
In short, it’s pretty easy to see what likely triggered those month-to-month increases.
However, No Publicity = 🙁
On the other hand, when you look at the five books that decreased the most, you find one book that likely dropped due to massive initial orders, one that probably dipped because retailers saw that readers responded poorly to it (and not in a controversial way), and three books that frankly didn’t have much buzz to them at all.
Those books are:
– Blackhawks, decreasing by 20.77%
– Men of War, decreasing by 16.12%
– Action Comics, decreasing by 15.81%
– Hawk and Dove, decreasing by 14.72%
– Green Lantern: The New Guardians, decreasing by 14.66%
Action Comics could easily be exempted from the list of downers simply because its month one number was massive (182,748 copies ordered), with retailers not wanting to miss out on a potential juggernaut with Grant Morrison writing Superman in continuity for the first time ever outside of his time writing the character in JLA. With time to adjust October orders for month two more than likely, I’m sure this was nothing more than a combination of correction based on September’s actual sales, fear of underperformance tied to this book not being returnable, and standard drop off.
Hawk and Dove was one of the most poorly received books of the new 52, and that fact combined with it featuring two characters who aren’t exactly A-list likely contributed to the diminished number.
The other three books – along with a lot of the other large declines out of the new 52 – were ones that weren’t met with much buzz at all (although in Green Lanterns: The New Guardians case, it also had pretty high month one orders that were bound to drop significantly). They more than likely had their fair share of people try them out simply because they were other new 52 books, but with the second month it seems logical that retailers would reduce orders simply because they lost the prestige of being a new 52 #1 and that the lack of significant buzz would cut into impulse buys and word of mouth sales.
I do want to note that it’s too be expected that any high profile first issue is likely to be met with a steep drop off when issue two hits. It’s the nature of the business, and anything from the new Ultimate Comics Spider-Man to the smallest of titles often sees that very thing. Many of these books – including the ones I highlighted – likely had a significant portion of their decrease attributed to that standard pattern of comic sales.
Reorder Insanity!
I figured that sales were going to go up for some books and drop for even more – that much was pretty obvious. The thing that really shocked me about the October sales for DC wasn’t the sales for the second issues, but the reorders for the first issues.
Think about this: Aquaman, a book that might have been a little under ordered in month one despite a fan favorite creative team, had reorders for its first issue that totaled more units than new issues of Marvel hits like Bendis and Maleev’s Moon Knight, Deadpool and the Fear Itself tie-in Journey into Mystery in October. It finished 88th for the month, a scant 58 units behind the new issue of new 52 title Men of War.
All in all, if you count up the total reorders to date for new 52 books (including September reorders of Justice League #1), you have over 717,000 total units sold (note: it’s uncertain if all of those books are reorders or simply Diamond balancing out the returnability depreciation they weaved into the numbers). When combined with the original orders for the new 52, those reorders push the sales of the #1 issues up to over 4.1 million units. Compare that with the top 52 selling books for DC in October of last year and you have growth of a staggering 114.98% year-to-year.
Continued belowWhile, once again, the quality of the comics and the buzz behind them can only be counted on to be a partial factor in terms of why certain books were reordered more than others, you can look at the numbers closer and you start to find a few familiar names pop up once again.
If you add the October reorder numbers into the original September sales for the #1 issues and then compare the new sales ranks amongst the new 52 versus the previous ranking the book had with just September sales factored in, it tells a pretty compelling story.
Six books jump by three spots or more in the DC charts for #1 issues, as the aforementioned Aquaman and the well-received first issue of All-Star Western jumped five spots, the buzzed about launches of Demon Knights and Grifter jumped four spots, and the controversial Catwoman and the omnipresent Animal Man jumped three spots.
While it doesn’t paint a perfect picture, it is pretty telling when a book like Animal Man was ranked 35th in September but it had the 19th most reorders out of any book. Readers are responding to the most buzzed about and quality books DC has to offer, and retailers are responding it kind.
Of course, that doesn’t explain the fact that the badass, blue mohawk monster that is OMAC (which is pretty beloved amongst the comic reviewing community) had the 50th most reorders out of the 52, but like I said earlier, this data can be interpreted in a lot of different ways, but it is no way an exact science. It should be taken with a grain of salt, but feel free to take my assumptions and make your own ideas out of them.
The Bottom Line
There is one irrefutable fact: DC is killing it.
Well, that and that even the staunchest Marvel supporter would agree that this has to be good for the industry. Some would look at the numbers and think that DC isn’t just doing better but Marvel is doing worse as well, but they would be wrong. Marvel’s unit share number has dropped because there are simply a lot more units being sold out there, so their previous numbers earn them a smaller piece of the pie now.
For the first time in a while, the sales of monthly comics do not look like they are in dire straits. In fact, things are looking pretty damn good (let’s leave the flagging trade paperback/OGN sales out of this), as overall numbers are now up on the year by 1% after being down 7% on the year as recently as July.
When I originally wrote about the DCnU in this column, I predicted DC to take the first month by a large margin and their unit share lead to decrease a bit with each passing month until things tightened up dramatically.
For once, I am more than willing to eat crow: I was wrong.
While a portion of DC dominating the charts so thoroughly can be attributed to the massive reorder numbers, you have to give credit where credit is due: the line-wide #2 orders only dropped a little less than 5% from #1.
For such a massive undertaking, a steep drop would have been expected, but to see such a flat line and even growth in parts isn’t just encouraging for DC, but for the entire industry.
