Oh, it’s on! Perhaps inspired by a headline The Beat came up with just to give a link a fresh spin, Marvel has just announced that Ultimate Comics SPIDER-MAN #1 broke their own record for first-day sales of a new release. Not a whisper of a real number of course, but then, that’s par for the course.
As David Brothers points out at length, and Spurgeon sums up in what might be termed Spurgeon’s Caveat, as long as we have only an abstract discussion over degree and nothing solid to go on…it’s all hype.
On the other hand, good for Marvel. As I said of JUSTICE LEAGUE, if UCSM #1 had NOT set a record, it would have been bigger news than if it had.
This week, the world met Miles Morales in the pages of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 – and loved it!! And as a result of Miles’ worldwide attention, fans new and old flocked to the Marvel Comics app for iOS devices, resulting in the best first day of sales for a new release to date! The relaunch of Ultimate Comics, the genre-defining imprint for a new generation fans, has everyone buzzing and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 is the latest salvo to set the world on fire!
“I am completely humbled by the support and success of Mr. Miles Morales in both print and digital” said writer, Brian Michael Bendis. “Nothing frustrates an author more than his work not being able to get into the hands of the people that want it, and now with the Marvel Comics app we can!”
“We’ve been doing the day and date comics for about a year now since the launch of Ultimate Comics Thor #1, and each subsequent release has not only seen increased sales within the app, but we’ve also seen a great trend in which the print comic reorders increase exponentially,” added David Gabriel, SVP of Sales. “We’ve been pushing to make Ultimate Comics Spider-Man our top release to date, and the results we’ve seen both here and in print certainly show us that we’re heading in the right direction.”
Haven’t jumped into the Ultimate Comics Universe yet? Well there’s no better time than now! Learn all about how a regular kid from Brooklyn will soon learn an all new meaning of power and responsibility, courtesy of superstar creators Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli. So what are you waiting for True Believer? Head to the Marvel Comics App and see what everyone is talking about, today!
Let’s rearrange the deck chairs.
Numbers or it didn’t happen!
I’m glad for this, as a digital publisher myself, glad to hear that comics are making a decent shift to digital platforms.
But is it profitable enough to be sustaining? Does it mean that comics are finding their way to a broader audience than they would specifically through comicshops? All this information is available to digital publishers at the flick of a switch. When has it ever been a bad idea to talk about who’s buying your product? When did understanding the new consumer base become a protected trade secret?
Not making the numbers available, to my mind, means that the publisher either lacks the wit to interpret the data or the integrity needed to admit that they might be doing something wrong. Can anyone find a justifiable reason not to release these number other than “we don’t have to”?
I’m glad for the success of this comic, I really am. But it’s all just glad-handing hype to say you’ve broken a record without letting people know what the record is.
Bullshit title.
Maybe you should change it to:
Marvel announces Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 broke THEIR OWN Digital Comics Record
Don’t tell me this site is turning into a bleeding Cool – lets suck up Marvel’s arse – site.
You also forgot to mention the title doesn’t even feature Spiderman. I’m over expensive comics where nothing happens.
“as long as we have only an abstract discussion over degree and nothing solid to go on…it’s all hype.”
And if everybody released actual numbers all we would have is SPIN — as each corporation, its reps, and fans, would explain how whatever number showed their own “side” was doing the best of all.
And now the Marvel digital record and the DC digital record must fight! To the digital death!
The Digital Comics Event Horizon:
(Also known as the Ka-Zar Moment)
Digital will become mainstream when a publisher moves a print comic book over to digital-only distribution.
This is similar to when Marvel Comics moved Ka-Zar, Micronauts, and Moon Knight to Direct Market distribution only, avoiding the heavy returns from newsstand distribution.
This will be accelerated by Diamond Digital Comics (launching in September?) where a store has access to a digital back-issue bin. Stores will shift paper sales from marginal titles to digital copies, to improve their profit margins and reduce unsold inventory.
Pure hype. Even Bleeding Cool didn’t post this. It’s a CBR or Newsarama type of thing.
Torsten,
Ape Entertainment now publishes Pocket God monthly comics exclusively for the iOS platform. With digital sales of issue #1 now over 125,000 units and total sales on just 8 issues far, far above that… Well, digital IS mainstream whether the direct market crowd knows it or not.
Torsten, that happened almost two years ago (November 2009), when Archie took Betty & Veronica Spectacular digital-only. Of course, that wasn’t a regular serial publication — they only put out a handful of specials under that title online.