Comixology Sales Charts: The Terrifics Looks Like a Hit and Captain Marvel Tops a Big Marvel Sale (Week of 3/28/18)

Continuing our look at how the Comixology sales ranks relate to the Diamond print estimates, here’s how things looked last week.

The initial methodology is to compare the current issue on the Comixology top 20 chart (issues pulled the evening of 4/1) with the last issue we have print sales estimates for from the Comichron February chart, except for Doomsday Clock and Metal  which both last shipped in January.

The conventional wisdom that’s been handed down over the last few years is that the digital audience has more of less the same reading habits as the Direct Market Print audience.  I’ve had multiple publishers tell me that digital sales of new issues are roughly 10-15% of print sales and the titles more or less have the same proportional popularity in digital as in print.  Maybe a couple titles switch places on the sales ranking list, but largely the same.  The bestsellers on the newsstand were not always the same bestsellers as in the Direct Market, so it doesn’t seem like that should necessarily be the case with digital.  There will be a little bit of mismatch because these are more weekly than monthly ranks and it isn’t clear exactly how Comixology defines the reporting periods, but if you look at comics sales, you learn to live with the data available.

As was the case the last two weeks, the chart had a large number of Marvel $0.99 discounted digital trade paperback collections on it.  This is starting to seem like a regular thing, but I suppose we should wait and see if there’s another batch of this week’s new digital tpb collections this Wednesday.   We’ll start with the chart of just the new single issues and then look at the chart with the sale items in it.

Comixology Rank	Issue	Previous Issue Print Sales Est.	Previous Issue Diamond Rank
1	Doomsday Clock (2017-) Issue #4	157,714	1-Jan
2	Saga Issue #50	38,734	37
3	Dark Nights: Metal (2017-) Issue #6	149,076	2-Jan
4	Detective Comics (2016-) Issue #977	51,856	14
5	The Terrifics (2018-) Issue #2	45,493	20
6	Injustice 2 (2017-) Issue #51	Digital First
7	The Flash (2016-) Issue #43	46,040	19
8	Avengers (2016-) Issue #686	39,486	32
9	Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps (2016-) Issue #41	28,340	69
10	Invincible Iron Man (2016-) Issue #598	30,242	61
11	Wonder Woman (2016-) Issue #43	35,572	46
12	Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (2016-) Issue #18	30,398	60
13	X-Men Blue (2017-) Issue #24	35,062	49
14	Teen Titans (2016-) Issue #18	27,828	71
15	Jessica Jones (2016-) Issue #18	17,306	123
16	Black Panther (2016-) Issue #171	28,143	70
17	Daredevil (2015-) Issue #600	24,771	90
18	Trinity (2016-) Issue #20	23,503	95
19	Champions (2016-) Issue #18	18,570	117
20	Old Man Logan (2016-) Issue #37	37,227	41

Doomsday Clock, Saga and Metal are the top 3 books.  This isn’t a complete surprise, although Saga is really performing well to be sitting in between books that are probably selling around 150K print copies each.  Just how well, we need to wait and see the actual March estimates.  That’s the fiftieth issue of Saga, and anniversary numbers like that sometimes sell higher.  Still Saga‘s got a strong digital following, period.

The Terrifics brought back most of their digital audience for the second issue.  The first, you may recall, was ahead of that week’s issue of Detective.  This one is in between Detective and Flash.  You probably want to wait for the third issue to be sure, but this is smelling like a sustainable hit, relative to what kind of sales constitute a hit these days.  Possibly performing a little more strongly in digital, but it’s early enough that isn’t 100% clear.

Avengers continues to look like it’s probably performing like a ~40K seller.  It’s a little hard to peg weeklies a month later, but it doesn’t seem to be wavering on the digital chart.

From here on down, there are questions.  They start with the question of whether the #20 book on Comixology (Old Man Logan) is really under-performing in digital or everything above it is drastically over-performing.

Hal Jordan continues to be up, possibly due to the Zod storyline.  Invincible Iron Man looks to be performing a bit stronger, but that may well be the Bendis farewell tour in effect.  He certainly seems to have gotten a digital bump on his way out the door.  Doctor Aphra appears to be up.  Wonder Woman and X-Men Blue would seem to be about where you’d expect in relation to each other.  Teen Titans might or might not be up a little, depending on what’s going on with Old Man Logan.  That Bendis bounce is more pronounced with Jessica Jones.  Black Panther could be up or it could be right about where you’d expect it.  Ditto, Daredevil and Trinity, but Champions is likely over-performing a little in digital.

Outside of Saga, the things that look drastically higher in digital are the Bendis titles and Hal Jordan.

And then there’s the actual top 20 including the 99-cent sale.

1	Doomsday Clock (2017-) Issue #4
2	Saga Issue #50
3	Dark Nights: Metal (2017-) Issue #6
4	Captain Marvel: Carol Danvers – The Ms. Marvel Years Vol. 1
5	Detective Comics (2016-) Issue #977
6	Wolverine Epic Collection: Blood Debt
7	X-Men Gold Vol. 0 : Homecoming
8	New Mutants: Demon Bear
9	X-Men Gold Vol. 4: The Negative Zone War
10	The Terrifics (2018-) Issue #2
11	Injustice 2 (2017-) Issue #51
12	The Flash (2016-) Issue #43
13	Avengers (2016-) Issue #686
14	Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps (2016-) Issue #41
15	Invincible Iron Man (2016-) Issue #598
16	Wonder Woman (2016-) Issue #43
17	Thor vs. Hulk: Champions of the Universe
18	Hulk: Visionaries – Peter David Vol. 5
19	Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (2016-) Issue #18
20	X-Men Blue (2017-) Issue #24

So, that Captain/Ms. Marvel reprint collection?  It’s the 2006 Ms. Marvel comic.  Based on what it’s sandwiched between, it’s probably selling somewhere between 5K-15K digital copies.  Yes, there’s likely that much of a sales gap between Detective and Metal.  But do you really think that book was ordered anywhere near those levels in print by DM retailers?  I’m real curious to see what the March estimates say.

The next block of books, in between Detective and The Terrifics, are likely selling somewhere between 4500 – 5000 digital copies.  Interesting that the current X-Men Gold volume is the lowest seller of that initial group.  And that’s not really taking any Amazon/Kindle sales into account.

There’s a question of what’s found money and what’s cannibalization, but there’s no denying that 99 cent fire sale is moving a lot of digital tpb collections.

Want to learn more about how comics publishing and digital comics work?  Try Todd’s book, Economics of Digital Comics