Starting this month, I will be featuring a monthly post that details the rankings and sales of top comics. This is something I have always done for myself in order to keep track of a book’s popularity, potential for cancellation, or to weight the effectiveness of a stunt/creative team switch being used to boost a title’s sales. Personally, I find analyzing data to be very interesting and wanted to share it with the community, here, at Batman-News in case there are any like-minded individuals among the readership. Other than just throwing out numbers for you to look at, I will try to provide some commentary on what we can infer from the information at hand. While I don’t intend for these articles to be quite as entertaining as the ones critiquing a comic, I still feel that the evaluation of numbers can be just as telling as a review.
Here, we have the sales of the top 80 comics from October 2014. The chart is slightly thrown off by the inclusion of several miniseries/first issues. Many times, a #1 issue or new series will have an initially huge number of readers while people decide whether or not they wish to continue frequenting the title based on the contents. You also have those individuals who will buy anything with a #1 on it, just in case somewhere down the line it becomes worth money. In order to give you an idea of what an average month would look like, I have thrown in a chart for the sales of August 2014 below this one. I’m not using last months sales chart as the average, because it also includes too many uncontrollable variables, in the sense that it was DC’s Futures End month.
October 2014
August 2014
[table “3” not found /]Seeing as how these charts don’t show all the books we review on this site, since some of them fall below the 35,000 mark, I’m throwing this chart together so you can see where all the titles this site reviews fall (if I missed some, just tell me so I can add them in the future). It shows the month of October along with several previous months so you can see the change in sales. Numbers represent sales in thousands. The numbers for Batman Eternal and Futures End are the averages for the month in question, since they are weekly issues.
[table “4” not found /]Injustice, Justice League 3000, Red Hood, Batwoman, Batman Beyond and Batman 66 are all in the Danger Zone! A couple months back Catwoman was in the danger zone as well but managed to pull out of a nose dive. Lets see if these books pull any crazy stunts or bring a new creative team on board in order to draw in new readers! Batgirl’s 62,000 should be seen as an initial increase due to the creative team change. I expect it to drop back down to the 30s within 2 months to 3 months. Even with numbers in the 30s it would still be doing better than pre52 Batgirl, so I will count that as a win.
Now let us look at a fun little chart detailing, what I like to call, “How is the New52 doing?” It features several title that appeared both before and after the New52. The columns represent sales numbers in the thousands 10 years ago (October 2004), pre52 (August 2011), post52 (September 2011) , and then each consecutive year afterwards (October 2012-2014). NA means that the comic wasn’t around at that exact time. Also, the 2014 number for Nightwing is the newest issue of Grayson.
| Amanda Waller | N/A |
| Atom | Adam Cray |
| Atom Smasher | Albert Rothstein |
| Baby Boom | |
| Bane | ? |
| Big Sir | Dufus P. Ratchet |
| Black Adam | Teth-Adam |
| Black Manta | David |
| Black Orchid | Susan Linden |
| Black Spider | Eric Needham |
| Blackguard | Richard Hertz |
| Blackstarr | Rachel Berkowitz |
| Blockbuster | Mark Desmond |
| Bolt | Larry Bolatinsky |
| Briscoe | N/A |
| Bronze Tiger | Ben Turner |
| Bulldozer | Horace Nichols |
| Cameron Chase | N/A |
| Captain Boomerang | George "Digger" Harkness |
| Captain Boomerang II | Owen Mercer |
| Captain Cold | Leonard Snart |
| Catalyst | ? |
| Cheetah | Barbara Ann Minerva |
| Chemo | N/A |
| Chronos | David Clinton |
| Clock King | William Tockman |
| Cluemaster | Arthur Brown |
| Col. Rick Flag Jr. | N/A |
| Copperhead | "John Doe" |
| Count Vertigo | Werner Vertigo |
| Crowbar | Malcolm Tandy |
| Deadshot | Floyd Lawton |
| Deathstroke | Slade Wilson |
| Doctor Light | Arthur Light |
| Double Down | Jeremy Tell |
| Dr. Hugh Evans | N/A |
| Duchess | Lashina |
| El Diablo | Chato Santana |
| Electrocutioner | Lester Buchinsky |
| Eliza | N/A |
| Enchantress | June Moone |
| Enforcer | Mica Love |
| Firehawk | Lorraine Reilly |
| Flex | ? |
| General Zod | Dru-Zod |
| Harley Quinn | Dr. Harleen Quinzel |
| Havana | Odalys Milagro Valdez |
| Hawkman | Carter Hall |
| Iceberg | Charles Murray |
| Icicle | Cameron Mahkent |
| James Gordon Jr. | N/A |
| Javelin | ? |
| Jeon Jungkook | |
| Jess Bright | N/A |
| Jewelee | ? |
| Joker's Daughter | Duela Dent |
| Juan Soria | N/A |
| Karin Grace | N/A |
| Karma | Wayne Hawkins |
| Katana | Tatsu Yamashiro |
| KGBeast | Anatoli Knyazev |
| Killer Croc | Waylon Jones |
| Killer Frost | Caitlin Snow |
| Killer Frost II | Louise Lincoln |
| Killer Shark | N/A |
| King Faraday | N/A |
| King Shark | Nanaue |
| Knockout | N/A |
| Lady Liberty | ? |
| Larvanaut | ? |
| Light | ? |
| Lime | ? |
| Lord Satanis | Satanis |
| Mad Dog | Unknown |
| Major Disaster | Paul Booker |
| Major Victory | William Vickers |
| Manchester Black | N/A |
| Manhunter/Privateer | Mark Shaw |
| Marauder | ? |
| Maser | Harold Lawrence Jordan |
| Master Jailer | Carl Draper |
| Merlyn | Arthur King |
| Mindboggler | Leah Wasserman |
| Mirror Master | Evan McCulloch |
| Modem | Wesley Percival Sloan |
| Mongul | |
| Mr. 104 | John Dubrovny |
| Multi-Man | Duncan Pramble |
| Multiplex | Danton Black |
| Nemesis | Tom Tresser |
| Nightshade | Eve Eden |
| Oracle | Barbara Gordon |
| Outlaw | John Henry Martin |
| Parasite | Rudy Jones |
| Parasite | Joshua Michael Allen |
| Penguin | Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot |
| Persuader | Cole Parker |
| Plasmus | Otto Von Furth |
| Plastique | Bette Sans Souci |
| Poison Ivy | Pamela Isley |
| Power Girl | Karen Starr |
| Power Girl | Kara Zor-El |
| Psi | Gayle Marsh |
| Punch | Clyde Phillips |
| Putty | ? |
| Quartzite | ? |
| Rag Doll | |
| Ravan | N/A |
| Reactron | Ben Krullen |
| Reverse-Flash | Daniel West |
| Rick Flag | Richard Montgomery Flag |
| Sam Makoa | N/A |
| Savant | Brian Durlin |
| Schrek | N/A |
| Scream Queen | |
| Sgt. Frank Rock | N/A |
| Shade, the Changing Man | Rac Shade |
| Shimmer | |
| Shrapnel | Mark Scheffer |
| Shrike | Vanessa Kingsbury |
| Sidearm | ? |
| Silent Majority | ? |
| Silver Swan | Valerie Beaudry |
| Skorpio | |
| Sledge | ? |
| Slipknot | Christopher Weiss |
| Solomon Grundy | Cyrus Gold |
| Speedy | Roy Harper |
| Sportsmaster | Victor Gover |
| Stalnoivolk | Ivan Illyich Gort |
| Star-Spangled Kid | Courtney Whitmore |
| Steel | John Henry Irons |
| Tao Jones | |
| Tattooed Man | Abel Tarrant |
| The General | Wade Eiling |
| The Hunky Punk | Dorian Ashemore |
| The Unknown Soldier | ? |
| The Writer | Grant Morrison |
| Thermal | ? |
| Thinker | Clifford DeVoe |
| Thinker II | Cliff Carmichael |
| Twister | Theresa Zimmer |
| Velocity | Melissa Allen |
| Virtuoso | N/A |
| Vixen | Mari Jiwe McCabe |
| Voltaic | ? |
| Warrant | ? |
| Weasel | John Monroe |
| White Dragon | William Heller |
| Wildcat | Ted Grant |
| Windfall | Wendy Jones |
| Yasemin Soze | N/A |
| Yo-Yo | Chang Jie-Ru |
So, how are things going? For the most part, it is doing just as good or better. Batman & Robin and Catwoman, after their initial sales increases, have evened out to where they were before the 52. Nightwing and Detective also received a healthy boost in sales from the New52 that seem to have held up rather well after the decrease from initial sales.
Batman is somewhat of a special case. While 118 is way more than 51, it falls short of 149. Such high numbers have become somewhat uncommon occurrences within your standard running titles due to “specials” and all the diversity that currently exists. Back in the 80s and prior, if you had a story to tell, you just told it in the regular running series. Now, if something is deemed special, it gets a mini series or a prestige format book to highlight the excellence of the story. So while it is not at all odd to see huge numbers today, you just don’t see them in the regular titles, as the stories that pulled the larger numbers have been mitigated to specials. The other thing that has contributed to dropping the numbers is all the diversity: back in the day, Batman would sometimes pull in 250,000 to 300,000! This was due to the fact that you only had a certain number of titles to choose from. With a greater selection of books being published, the numbers end up getting spread over a larger variety of titles, rather than just a few.
As this is my first time throwing together an article like this, I welcome feedback on what you might be interested in seeing that wasn’t shown here, or any other thoughts you might like to share.
