Re: Final Crisis: I agree with Paul’s column, where he discusses the numbers as not that bad at all (compared to exceeding all expectations Secret Invasion). I think this one is a sleeper, too. The story is building to include more major players, the art is rock-solid, and word of mouth is going to work in its favor. All we’ve got to judge by in May is anticipation based on Final Countdown. IE, there wasn’t any, the series made no sense. But Grant Morrison isn’t Paul Dini.

As you seem to know what your doing blogging wise, do you know what the best time of the week is to blog and have them read?…

If they wanna use WS as their licensed properties brand, fine. But why keep doing relaunch after relaunch of WSU? Are they afraid of ticking off Jim Lee if they completely axed their superheroes line?

I’ve heard the same speculations about LOVELESS, CROSSING MIDNIGHT and THE EXTERMINATORS, so I’m skeptical. It’s possible, but it’s just as possible that SCALPED is being allowed to continue for reasons which have nothing to do with sales.

It does seem to be getting more good press and professional support than any other current Vertigo book in recent memory, after all. Depending on how much rope they’ve got for this sort of thing, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to give the book some time to find an audience, even if the numbers weren’t there yet.

“While I don’t know if I entirely agree that understanding in one issue is always reasonable (do you always know what’s going on by page 50 of a novel?)”

Not quite the same thing, really, as you are given an entire novel all at once to be read at your own pace, as opposed to divided up into 6 or more parts published once a month. Ditto with movies. You don’t get the first 25 minutes of the movie, then a “To be continued in 30 days” banner.

I think it might have to do more with the rise of the trade paperback. Back even 20 years ago, comics were rarely if ever traded. For that matter, a lot of storylines were shorter too. Now everything is traded, and often stories are stretched out to better fit a trade volume.

Anyway, you have a lot of new or current readers, myself included, who read trade paperbacks as much or perhaps even more than they do issues. When they do, it’s mostly in one sitting, or at least much quicker than they would were they to wait a month for each installement.

Even serialised comics with volumes do this, particularly Manga. There’s still a ‘to be continued’, but there’s simply more story per installment.

I think that’s where the mentality comes from more than anything.

When it comes to classic comic themes, Sinestro delivered. The books didn’t rely on anything particularly “catchy,” nor were they saturated with gimicky hero death. The same thing happened with the Resurrection of Ras a Ghul.

A similar type of mini-epic within the pages of Flash or Green Arrow would have seen modest boosts I believe rather than the mess they seem to be in now.

Sinestro Corps War proves that fans are still right there ready to gobble up floppies. And the lingering effect demonstrates that if its done right, we’ll stick around. Many of these other titles that are failing demonstrate that if you jerk our chains too hard, we’ll spend our money on something else.

Now we don’t know what the initial print runs were, but I think we can take it for granted that if the print runs are so low that even selling out can’t bring a profit to Vertigo then they wouldn’t produce it at all. So we have to assume that those sales are reasonably substantial. But we also know that the trades are only selling alright as far as first month direct market US sales are concerned. Which leads me to suspect that the book is selling at a relatively much better rate somewhere else.

That wouldn’t be entirely surprising when we consider the subject matter. A crime story set on an Indian reservation isn’t exactly the kind of thing calibrated to sell in the direct market outlets. But it might well be the kind of thing that sells in the bookstores.

The other circumstantial evidence is the very fact that the book hasn’t been cancelled. It’s 18 issues in now, which is a lot of issues for a book with first month periodical sales that low.

“However, as soon as you attempt to determine trends, you are engaging in interpretation, which is not exactly editorializing, but it’s still a bit removed from “straight” reporting”

Personally, I can live with that description. I regard the column as a piece of critical, independent analysis and commentary – all opinions expressed are, of course, those of the author, et cetera, yadda yadda. That said, I agree with Paul that the primary objective is to make trends visible.