Tag: Marvel

By Jason Enright

Hi everyone! My name is Jason Enright and I am going to be analyzing the Marvel sales charts for you. I have a background as a comic book retailer and now a comic book marketing specialist. As we go along I’ll be adding in my thoughts as to why we may be seeing these numbers and what they tell me as a fan, retailer, and marketing guy. A few things to keep in mind about these charts: 1. The direct market (comic book shops that order through Diamond) does not track sell-through. So these numbers don’t represent what actually sold, but instead represent what retailers ordered. A book can get high orders and sit on the shelf (which often leads to lower orders in later months) and a book can be under-ordered and sell out (see Black Widow further down this chart). These numbers are what retailers estimated would sell in their shops. 2. We currently don’t have any digital sales data so this is only a look at what is selling in stores. Until we somehow convince Marvel and all the other publishers to release their digital sales numbers, we have no clue how well most of these books are really doing, as digital is a very quickly growing marketplace which sees a lot of new first-time comic readers.

As announced yesterday, Skottie Young, Eisner winning artist, will be writing and drawing a ROCKET RACCOON ongoing series in July. And here's some interior...

That Rocket Raccoon exploitation we told you about is well underway, but when the exploitation takes the form of a series written and drawn by Skottie Young, it's really really hard to complain. And note well: this is an ONGOING series, not a one-shot or mini. It's Young's first gig writing AND drawing for Marvel.

When the trailer for August's Guardians of the Galaxy movie hit a week ago—and when the GotG toys were unveiled at Toy Fair last weekend—something that has been pretty clear to diehard comics fans was obvious from the gitgo: Rocket Raccoon is going to be huge.

Marvel continues its sneaky move towards more interesting, quirky takes on its heroes with ALL-NEW GHOST RIDER #1 by Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore,...

Ike Perlmutter, billionaire, CEO of Marvel and one of Disney's largest stockholders, is probably the most feared man in comics. A mysterious and powerful...

The Great Sundering, aka Fox's Marvel movie line, has announced the cast for their Fantastic Four reboot, to be directed by Josh Trank and...

A new mini series by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato will be the "ultimate NSA leak" of Marvel, says Tom Brevoort. The body of the Watcher is found on the moon with his eye missing. I'm pretty much sold right there, but more information is being given out RIGHT NOW at a Marvel press conference.

I admit I watched this trailer twice in a row, even though the best parts were in the footage floating around. Finally, a character...

By Paul O'Brien

[Editor's Note: As noted this is Paul's last column for now. He's been an incredible collaborator and commentator, and I think we all owe him a big round of applause! And yes I know these are late -- we'll have the new guys in place VERY shortly! Thanks again, Paul.] And so the end of an era is upon us. No, I do not speak of the latest cancellation of DEFENDERS, nor even of the final OZ miniseries. As Heidi explained a little while back, this will be my final sales column, after over a decade of writing these things. Good luck to whoever takes over for this; I'll be reading with interest, and with a sense of relief that I didn't have to do the number crunching. So. One last time! December sees a barrage of Inhumanity tie-ins, all building to the launch of the new series that's since been delayed. We also have the start of ORIGIN II, and the first of the Marvel Now Wave 2 titles. As per usual, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 37% to 31% in unit terms, and 35% to 28% in dollars. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

1.  ORIGIN II
12/13  Origin II #1 of 5 - 131,724

Books set in the past and with no direct impact on present day continuity generally seem to be a tough sell. But ORIGIN II is the top seller of the month, presumably because Marvel have successfully portrayed it as an event - in the sense of a book fans will be talking about.

Elizabeth Olsen is a lovely, normal young woman, but she isn't a superhero or a fitness model, and she's nixed the idea of wearing...

Now that Miracleman is finally being reprinted, the holy grail of comics reprints would be the 70/80s run of Marvel's MASTER OF KUNG FU,...