For the last couple months, DC has been dragging in sales….but the March numbers finally give me something worthwhile to report on!
If you follow the Monthly Sales Report that I publish here at Batman News, you’ll notice that I haven’t done one in the last two months. If you’ve been wondering why, it’s because these numbers have been too depressing to deal with. Each month I have gathered the data, and been too downtrodden to bother sharing them. Plus, what would I even have to say? “Nothing new to report, everything is continuing its downward trend toward cancellation.” That’s just not any fun. But if you want a quick recap, everything in January went down except for small rises in Titans Hunt and Batman/Superman. February wasn’t much different, with everything continuing to plummet except for rises in Harley Quinn, Batman/TMNT, and Batman. But now, let’s get onto March’s good News.
Below you will find a chart detailing the 31 comics that this site reviews, along with the total sales for this month and several previous months. Numbers displayed are in the thousands.
*Keep in mind that these numbers represent physical copies sold. Numbers for the sales of digital comics are not currently being reported to the general public. Also, be aware that comics like Injustice are available in the digital format before print. This means that the bulk of their real sales are hidden to us.*
[table “37” not found /]9 comics saw an increase for the month of March! But the most impressive increase came from Batman #50. It saw an increase of 60,717 in sales from February to March coming in at a whopping 163,406. That makes it the 3rd highest selling Batman comic of the entire New52 run, preceded only by issue #1+2. Yay Batman!
Now, before we all strip down to our birthday suits and go running through the streets in jubilation, it should be noted that most of the books that saw an increase all had Batman v Superman variant covers attached to them. And by my standards, that isn’t a real increase, just a temporary boost. The comics that saw genuine increases were Catwoman, Batman/TNMT, and Batman. Both Batman/TMNT and Batman were already on the rise in February and continue to show strong growth into March. While Batman #50 did have a variant cover attached to it, I highly doubt it was solely responsible for the titanic increase we saw. I don’t think one needs to be a genius to figure out that it’s because Batman is finally back!!
To me, the most interesting numbers are coning from Batman/TMNT. It started off at 134 and then went to 52, 64, and now at 65. The initial 134 is everyone showing up that just wanted a #1, so the decrease from 1 to 2 isn’t all that shocking. What is interesting however, is that after the initial drop, it has only gone up. This is somewhat counter to the traditional model for comic sales. Good word of mouth must be spreading about this comic because DC has issues 2nd printings of the first two issues to fulfill reader demand. #1 actually made an additional 22,000 in Jan and Feb, while #2 made an additional 16,000 in Feb and Mar. I’m guessing that the additional sales are from the people who jumped on the book late at issue 3 and 4 and backtracked to get #1 and 2.
While this month saw plenty of increases, it has me wondering if sales from now till June are just going to bottom out. Knowing that June is a restart of sorts, and that most of what we will get from now till then will be filler, I wonder how many readers will go down with the ship. I’m very curious to see how low the numbers get on some of these books before things rebound in June with the all new #1s. I mean, just look at how low some of those numbers already are. Half our books are between 11 and 19k. Most of these are on the slate to be cancelled, while the other half are continuing forward in some form or another.
Nightwing/Grayson Numbers
Continuing with my breakdowns for the entirety of a titles run thus far, you will find Richard Grayson’s numbers below. For those of you that don’t like scrolling and scrolling through an endless sea of numbers, you will find a handy visual aid below to sum things up for you.
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Turns out that Grayson #1 is actually the highest selling issue from Dick’s New 52 run thus far, followed by the Death of the Family tie-ins presented in Nightwing #15+16. While it’s fun to look at character compared to themselves, what we really like to see is versus battles. So lets compare Grayson to my last breakdown: Batgirl.
A neck to neck photo finish is far more exhilarating than when one opponent gets decimated by the other. That is why I choose to compare these two. As you can see, they are very similar in most respects. So similar in fact, that it might be hard to tell who actually came out on top. The totals are 2,205,148 to 2,223,455. That is a difference of only 18,297! Definitely a close race. Care to guess who won? Place your bets now…the winner is in the spoiler tag below.
And the winner is…RICHARD GRAYSON!
Just for fun, let’s throw in the Batman numbers so we can give Dick and Babs an inferiority complex.
Ouch!
March 2016 – Top50
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