ICv2 has released its August sales analysis and only two comics were over 100K, Batman and Amazing Spider-Man, as they should be. I’m quoting this graph but not sure there shouldn’t be a “not” after did:
But individually, comics did fare all that well. August had two titles over 100K, down from July, which had three, and from August of 2013, which had four. In the Top 25, only three comic series posted gains, while 21 showed declines, and there was one #1 issue. Rocket Raccoon, which blasted into the stratosphere of sales with a total just shy of 300K in July (aided by over 100K copies sold via Loot Crate), returned to Earth with a thump as issue #2 sold 56, 597 copies, good enough to rank at #17 in August, but a long way from 293K. However, most of the other drops in circulation were very small with most titles remaining just about steady. DC Comics’ weekly series Batman Eternal continuing to suffer steady declines with the bestselling August issue of the comic down over 8% from the top July volume of the weekly.
BUT, overall numbers are still okay:
After a strong July put 2014 sales figures in the black (see “Strong July Sales Turn Year Positive”) year-over-year dollar sales of comics and graphic novels were up again in August with comics up 7.3% and graphic novels growing by 8.31%, a performance that yielded a year-to-date growth of 2.41% for comics and a 3.81% gain for graphic novels according to figures released today by Diamond Comic Distributors.
Rocket Raccoon fell to 56,000+, down from 300,000, but it’s still at #17 overall and for a Rocket Raccoon comic that’s still an eye opening number.
The rest of the numbers.
Top 300 Graphic Novels Actual–August 2014
Top 300 Comics Actual–August 2014
Still not much of a ‘Vertigo’-type comics line from Marvel. Wouldn’t you increase market share / sell more comics if you appeal to more readers, by creating more titles in a ‘Vertigo’-type line of comics? I still think there should be Marvel re-prints in magazines like Rollingstone, and Spin -but there has been a huge push of digital access of comics w/in other sites like Starbucks, that is reaching people like never before. “Which is nice…” -to quote Carl Spakler, but wouldn’t you then promote other forms of sequential, like Vertigo, and Fatagraphics types genres/styles/forms of sequential art, so that those new consumers will spend their money -not every one digs superheroes, and considering the brain is an emulating machine, all you have to do is have a bunch of human brand franchises (celebrities) speak how they love reading different types of comics all the time (their assistants and publicists can tell them what to say like usual). Why wouldn’t Image, or Dark Horse do this as well, since could both team up and invest in some kind of promotion of different sequential genres -it is weird that all these titles of sequential are being sold, and most superhero comics are just based on three things: homo-erotic power fantasy fulfillment, conservative-extremist ‘Red Scare’ tactics that brought the CCA, and speculator bubbles based on character cameos, deaths, holo-foil and variant covers. None of these sales are really based on quality sequential story telling, yet more based on ‘consumer identity’ with a ficticious character that is really just a brand franchise.
The raging success of Harley Quinn continues to make absolutely no sense to me.
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