Marvel

Overall, direct market sales for August were substantially down, prompting a bit of handwringing online. And it's true that no title even came close to reaching the 100,000 mark (for only the third time since Diamond achieved their monopoly of the direct market). It's not so much that sales on individual titles suddenly lurched down in August. They've been dropping for a while, and the comparisons with one or two years ago make fairly grim reading at the moment (though bear in mind they don't show books being cancelled and replaced by higher-selling new launches). Rather, it's a month without any really big releases from either company. Marvel's major launch was a new NAMOR series, which lands just outside the top 40, while the biggest story events were the X-Men/vampires affair and the Daredevil-centred SHADOWLAND. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, leading DC by 45% to 32% in terms of units, and 41% to 28% in dollars.

Marvel's solicitations came out today* and indsuytry watcher were standing by with microscopes to scrutinize a proposed 1) drop in the number of $2.99 books and 2) decrease in the number of books altogether. On #2, there seems to be some corroboration with what was said at the NYCC retail breakfast, according to Bleeding Cool, which does a big count of all titles in all families. Compared to December there is a 17 percent drop in the number of titles, and a 20 percent decrease in total cover price.

Although Disney's acquisition of Marvel's character library was seen as a genius move to shore up their boy-skewing movie franchises, there was one wistful little fly in the ointment: Marvel had already assigned rights to most of their iconic super hero franchises to other studios. Undeterred, Disney has just regained a few of the crown jewels: Disney has just acquired marketing and distribution rights to THE AVENGERS and and IRON MAN 3, which will be released May 13, 2013. Disney paid Paramount $115 million for the distribution rights and this will serve as a minimum guarantee against distribution fees.

Via Comics Alliance and G4, a video of those eye-popping young X-Men cosplayers. Iceman, call me.

Via Twitter, Marvel Associate Editor Nathan Cosby, who works out of the Mark Paniccia office on such books as the Shanower/Young Oz adaptations, Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man is leaving to do other stuff. He tweeted:

§ Hank Kanalz has been promoted to Senior VP-Digital of DC Comics, it was announced at this morning's DC Nation panel. He was formerly...

ICv2 continues its sit down with Marvel publisher Dan Buckley, who says many things, but also points out one of the great dichotomies of comics -- everyone says they want done-in-one jumping on point comics -- but when publishers put them out, the sales don't pick up at all:

HeyUGuys scans in the new issue of Empire and gets some new images of Chris Hemsworth as Thor. He's no Alexander Skarsgard, but we guess he'll do. The film has an innovative plot, as well, as Thor and his evil brother Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) must team up to defeat the sinister menace of The Boom Mike.

From a comment at Techland:

By Torsten Adair The following is a selection of new comics titles due to be published in October 2010. This list is not comprehensive, as there are over 275 books scheduled. These are just the titles which caught my eye. If you would like to browse forthcoming comic strip books at your leisure, click here. Instead, I have selected titles which caught my interest. These are not necessarily titles I will purchase, but which I will definitely look at once they arrive at my local comics shop or bookstore.

ICv2 presents their annual chat with Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley and he just sort of lays it out:

This has not upset fanboys at all. CBR's Kiel Phegley and Marvel e-i-c Joe Quesada engage in a massive, week-long tell-all on the subject of One More Day, and it's current retcon in One Moment in Time -- O.M.I.T. OMD, you may recall if you have been near a comic book website in the last three years, retconned the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane out of existence because of a deal made with Mephisto. It was a hugely popular story element ridiculously controversial and fan complained loudly and continually for three years. AND NOW, O.M.I.T. has made that story never happen. So despite the memories people may have of the touching Shea Stadium Watson/Parker nuptials, that storyline is now as leveled and buried as Shea itself.