Single Issue Bestsellers & Chart Notes
(by Walt)
Welcome to the September numbers for single issues! These sales are counted from September 11 to October 10. The 10th of every month is when the vast majority of pull-listers have paid their monthly invoice, which means reservations officially turn into sales and we get close to final numbers for new releases (unless they have Absolute in the title, or Batman, and just keep selling forever…).
So… this hasn’t happened in a long time: Marvel takes the top spot!
The secret sauce? Just have a millionaire-brat-turned-vigilante-with-a-bat-symbol-on-his-chest in your book! Because as of now, 5 out of the TOP 6 books are Bat-related. Will the Bat-craze ever end? Hard to imagine.
Batman #1 almost takes the top spot again, just a few percent behind the company crossover. And now it’s official: after the (blind bag–infused) Battle Beast #1, it’s our best-selling comic ever. At least if you count a single printing, because otherwise Absolute Batsy takes the crown. The low-priced Batman Day Edition of #1 charts at rank 6, the Work-In-Progress (Artist Edition–like) WIP at 50, and all the other regular-priced #1s combined at 37. That’s right: three spots go to a single book released a year ago. This is the world we live in. And I love it!
And don’t take the “drop” of the main Batman series to #2 too seriously: that issue only had one (!) short week of on-release sales, without any subscriptions or pullbox pulls. The new Batman is going super strong and is already our most subscribed series by a serious margin!
You might have read in Matheus’ newsletter yesterday that the Ultimate Universe is really ending. Even after being invited to a secret Marvel “Goodbye to the Ultimate Line” dinner in New York (they served canapés ... it was helluva fancy and I loved every second), and even after shaking Dan Buckley’s hand (and C.B. Cebulski’s and David Gabriel’s!! because they must have thought I was someone else), I still have doubts. Does Marvel have controllers?? Because those guys would’ve stopped any form of publisher integrity (“we promised Jonathan Hickman”) and just used the thickest red marker to point out the obvious: It’s... wait — not true anymore that Ultimate books are Marvel’s bestsellers?! WHAAAAAT???
In a surprising turn of events, Marvel has actually managed to quietly turn their line around: aside from Ultimate Spider-Man, their other six books in the TOP 20 are not Ultimate-related. Shocker, I know.
Punisher storms the charts like I knew he would (I am a genius!). So I ordered high... and we still sold out of the first print shortly after release. The hunger for classic Marvel heroes done right is still there. And it will never die.
With the announcements from NYCC (Williamson and Carnero on Iron Man and… I can’t tell you, but let’s just say: BIG FAVORITE WRITER on VERY POPULAR FRANCHISE), I think Marvel is on a good path again.
In the meantime, DC is cooking up a whole new Vertigo line and plenty of other exciting stuff. So, in short: the comic industry is very much alive and KICKING BUTT!
