It happened again: DC’s lenticular covers in September dominated the sales charts, as they took over 40% of the unit share and over 34% of the dollar share in the comic market, easily outdistancing Marvel. This comes as no surprise, as the same thing happened in the much maligned Villains Month from last year, and while it seems these Future’s End issues with 3D covers were generally considered to be better than their predecessors, they’re still primarily crafted by fill-ins and wholly fit into the category of “gimmick.”
That said, big sales are arguably good, as September saw gains in revenue compared to even last September (although there were slight decreases across the board in units sold, meaning comics were just more expensive this year) during a year that has seen numerous doomsayers come out of the woodwork once again about the future of comics. I’m very curious as to how these lenticular covers sold once at the retail shops that ordered them, as from my personal experience, my shop still had stacks and stacks of them on their shelves.
Even with the Future’s End month dominating overall, Marvel’s “Death of Wolverine” event took the top two spots of the charts, which is certainly a big deal for the House of Ideas bottom line considering they were priced at $4.99.
All this saw the ascendant Image pushed down a bit in terms of market share, but that’s likely an artificial deflation given that the market was expanded with DC’s enormous (they shipped 44 more titles than even Marvel, and nearly 100 more than anyone else) and highly marketed month. We’ll see next month, but once again, this proves that retailers and readers can’t resist shiny covers, regardless of what may be inside the covers themselves.
