Comments on: Marvel Month-to-Month sales: June 2007

By: Shawn Hill

Shawn Hill — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:44:05 +0000

Mystic Arcana: The next one is Black Knight, with nice Tom Grummet art (who’s been missed since the Thunderbolts regime change).

Avengers Classics: Well, Paul, you certainly nailed my reasoning for not subscribing: all of the Essential Avengers look great on my shelf, and I can check in on them when I want to read the old stories. The addition of color isn’t that big of a plus, and the backups by Oeming mostly look like comic relief. We’ve already got Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to tap into the other sides of the old tales: now, if Art Adams or someone of equal stature were providing new backups …

By: Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » July 23, 2007: Surviving the Plastic Age

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:00:55 +0000

[...] ICv2 has released its look at June 2007 sales through Diamond Distributors to Direct-Market retailers; here’s the overview, market analysis, top-300 bestselling comics and top-100 bestselling graphic novels. It’s much the same as last month: The Usual Suspects are getting what they want, Marvel’s still wailing on DC, et cetera. Over at The Beat, Graeme McMillan has the month-to-month Marvel sales comparisons, while Marc-Oliver Frisch has the comparisons for DC, both now updated through June. [...]

By: Baines

Baines — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:30:54 +0000

“MYSTIC ARCANA debuting at 26k isn’t that bad, is it? Its sales seem a lot healthier than other thematic stuff like MARVEL WESTERNS, LEGION OF MONSTERS and the ROMANCE REDUX stuff.”

The Mystic Arcana above is an Illyana Rasputin story. She still has some fans, and there is the general X-book connection. Further, it was released while New X-Men has been doing its Quest for Magik storyline, bringing the character back to the minds of readers.

The rest of Mystic Arcana might find a colder reception, Though the next issue is Scarlet Witch, who might still be benefitting from her House of M appearance. And even Sister Grimm might sport a questionable enough outfit on the cover to encourage a few people to pick up the book and at least finish the series.

But it really doesn’t seem that much like Marvel’s other thematic stuff. One would hope characters like Magik and Scarlet Witch weren’t as poorly received as Western characters or semi-random monsters.

By: News and commentary about comics » Stark differences between Marvel/DC sales again

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:14:25 +0000

[...] Once again, there’s an amazing difference on display in sales, about how Marvel continues, no matter the low-ranking quality of any of their books now, to maintain [relatively] big sales, World War Hulk being the main example of the moment, whereas DC is falling way behind with a lot of their stuff just now. As Amazons Attack has shown, crossovers, at least at DC, may be starting to backfire (via Newsarama blog). [...]

By: The Four Color Media Monitor

The Four Color Media Monitor — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:47:15 +0000

Stark differences between Marvel/DC sales again…

Once again, there’s an amazing difference on display in sales, about how Marvel continues, no matter the low-ranking quality of any of their books now, to maintain [relatively] big sales, World War Hulk being the main example of the moment, whereas D….

By: Blog@Newsarama » June sales: Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn.

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:11:42 +0000

[...] Over at The Beat, Paul O’Brien and Marc-Oliver Frisch are looking over last month’s sales figures already. O’Brien looks at the Marvel’s supremacy: Once again, Marvel dominated DC in terms of direct market share, but this month’s margin is outrageously wide. In units, Marvel won by 48% to 29% – in dollars, 44% to 27%. That margin reflects the fact that Marvel are having a good year in the direct market, and DC… well, DC aren’t. [...]

By: Torsten Adair

Torsten Adair — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:59:19 +0000

Maybe I blinked, but are there comparisons for the overall Marvel data? Has their circulation increased? averages? and since events turn the graph into a bell curve, would it be possible to get something like a sliding average so that we can judge the present and future against the past?

By: Wraith

Wraith — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:37:42 +0000

Paul hit the nail right on the head about why many fans are’nt blown away by the Skrull revelation. This type of storyline has been done at least 3 times before to 3 different characters (Alicia Masters,Iron Fist,and Wolverine have all been replaced by Skrulls in past stories). The hype behind the whole Skrull invasion storyline is just another case of the Quesada regime taking an idea from the often (and unfairly) maligned 90’s Marvel comics and proclaiming that they have thought of the most BRILLIANT and BIGGEST story idea in years.

By: butch

butch — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:41:05 +0000

The purpose of the Mythos books is to end up with a painted TPB with all the origins of the Marvel icons (and movie franchises) that new and casual fans could pick up.

Sort of a modern version of Son of Origins.

Didn’t pick up any of them so far, but the FF one is intriguing me. Is the art on them as confusing as I’ve heard?

By: Randy Lander

Randy Lander — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:11:04 +0000

The Anita Blake gone missing for two months isn’t as weird when you consider that in July and August, Marvel is publishing a 2-issue Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton. Oddly sensible to not put two Anita Blake series out at the same time, I thought.

By: Sean W

Sean W — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:24:26 +0000

MYSTIC ARCANA debuting at 26k isn’t that bad, is it? Its sales seem a lot healthier than other thematic stuff like MARVEL WESTERNS, LEGION OF MONSTERS and the ROMANCE REDUX stuff.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:41:13 +0000

I agree with Paul. If I didn’t know that it was a big deal from outside of the comics, I wouldn’t have known it was a big deal.

Yeah, there was a Skrull running the Hand, that IS interesting, but it didn’t tell us much.

By: JD

JD — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:24:39 +0000

Re White Tiger: these delays are baffling, especially considering they’ve put the artist on Sub-Mariner.

By: Paul O'Brien

Paul O'Brien — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:58:17 +0000

Or maybe it’s because it’s a story idea we’ve seen before and it never amounted to very much. We already did “Wolverine turns out to be a Skrull” back in the late nineties. The Skrulls have tried impersonating government officials before. None of these stories were especially worldshaking. “Elektra is a Skrull”, in itself, is a pretty trivial plot development. Without the hype, I don’t think it would have even occurred to anyone that this was a big deal.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:56:19 +0000

Marvel is trying something different with Spider-Man, and I think it might just be the shot in the arm that both the character and the book need. I guess we’ll see.

It makes me happy to see so much success. When I look at the 6 or 12 month comparisons, there is very little that is worrisome. Yeah I like Blade and Antman, and I’ll be sorry to see them go, but kudos to Ironfist, Ms. Marvel, and Nova.