On the Marvel vs DC sales thing, I've been thinking on and off myself about how, when I was first buying comics as a regular thing, I definitely bought a lot more Marvel, and didn't really look at DC all that much. And honestly, all things being even, I still find myself wanting to favor Marvel over DC.

And yet, given the trends the Marvel has gone through (their crossover events after crossover events and their agenda-driven publishing mindset especially) and what DC at least seems to be trying to do right now, when it comes to actual purchases I find myself trending towards DC far more over Marvel these days.

The only Marvel title I see myself buying long-term for the foreseeable future (Not counting stuff that's outside of Marvel Proper like Darkwing Duck) is the 'Renew Your Vows' title (which I think could be more accurately titled "The Amazing Spider-Family"), while on the side of DC I've been regularly picking up the Batman 66 stuff, I've got Superman as a regular title I read which I would not have expected that long ago (Superdad really helps out on that front), there's the TMNT/Batman crossover miniseries; and I'm currently even giving Cave Carson and the Titans Rebirth stuff a try while looking forward to the upcoming Art Baltazar and Franco series; beyond that I'm overall far more open to trying new DC titles than I am open to looking at anything new Marvel puts out.

On the other hand, I think that on a monthly basis the titles I read that don't come from Marvel or DC is probably bigger than both of them combined. It may depend on how stuff like Darkwing Duck counts.

On the one hand, I'm probably just looking at this from a personal favorite standpoint where I'm bias on my hopes for the Batman 66 stuff, but on the other hand, I know that the Batman 66 titles are pushed as 'digital first' comics that are released in print later. Combined with the fact that they keep putting out Batman 66 miniseries (I know there's a Batman 66 meets Wonder Woman series on the way next year) makes me wonder what the actual, total overall numbers are for the Batman 66 titles.

I imagine customers putting together 'pull lists' probably helps with this a lot. I actually went ahead and did one myself a few weeks back for the first time ever, mostly in order to reduce the chances that I'd miss out on issues of my favorite series I have a good feeling I'll be getting issue to issue with little chance of dropping in the near future.

Update with November sales:

1 Batman #10 120,901
2 Batman #11 116,690
4 All Star Batman #4 $4.99 DC 99,064
7 Batman Annual #1 $4.99 DC 91,033

Batman comics continue to top the sales charts. Batman loses 6k then nearly 4k sales. At this rate, it will be dropping below 100k sales soon.

12 Justice League #8 80,696
13 Justice League #9 77,905
16 Detective Comics #944 71,923
17 Flash #10 70,681
19 Detective Comics #945 69,942
20 Flash #11 68,304

As usual, Batman is followed by Justice League and Batman (Detective). Rebirth has kept Flash up here along with them.

Justice League drops 5k then another nearly 3k. Detective drops nearly 2.5k then another 2k. Flash drops over 3.5k then another 1.5k.


21 Superman #10 $2.99 DC 66,956
22 Superman #11 $2.99 DC 63,686

24 Suicide Squad #6 $2.99 DC 61,973
25 Wonder Woman #10 $2.99 DC 60,815
27 Suicide Squad #7 $2.99 DC 59,452
30 Wonder Woman #11 $2.99 DC 58,692


Superman drops less than 500 sales, then drops by over 3k sales. Suicide Squad drops 1.5k sales then another 2.5k. Wonder Woman drops nearly 4k then drops another 2k.

So far, the overall story seems to be: Sales are dropping, sales are dropping, sales are dropping. There's no telling how low they'll drop as they just continue to drop and drop. But these are still pretty solid sales levels.

31 Trinity #3 58,253
34 Harley Quinn #7 56,878
35 Nightwing #8 56,091
37 Harley Quinn #8 54,111
39 Nightwing #9 $2.99 DC 52,984

Trinity drops by 7k. Harley drops 2k and then over 2.5k. Nightwing drops nearly 2.5k then another 3k.


40 Teen Titans #2 52,877
41 Titans #5 52,511
44 Action Comics #967 50,611
46 Superman Annual #1 49,748
48 Action Comics #968 48,931

Teen Titans drops by over 12k. Titans drops by nearly 6k. Action drops by about 3k then another 1.5k.


50 Green Lanterns #10 46,306
51 Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #8 45,194
53 Green Lanterns #11 44,703
55 Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #9 43,485
57 Green Arrow #10 43,355
60 Green Arrow #11 41,576

All the "Green" books are clustered together. Green Lanterns drop o ver 3k then another over 1.5k. Hal Jordan drops nearly 3k then nearly another 2k. Green Arrow drops over 3k then nearly 2k.

62 Batman Beyond #2 41,313
64 Mother Panic #1* 40,990
66 Aquaman #10 39,816
67 Justice League of America #10 39,766
74 Aquaman #11 $2.99 DC 38,109

I have no idea what Mother Panic is and I'm too lazy to Google it.

Aquaman drops nearly 3k then over 1.5k.


75 Supergirl #3 37,316
76 Deathstroke #6 37,177
79 Red Hood and the Outlaws #4 36,740
80 Deathstroke #7 35,782
83 Batgirl #5 35,210

Supergirl drops over 8k. Batgirl drops 5.5k. Deathstroke drops 2k then another 2k.

90 Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #4 33,138
96 Doom Patrol #3* 30,140
97 Superwoman #4 30,070

Batgirl and the BoP drops nearly 7k. Doom Patrol drops over 7.5k. Superwoman about 6.8k.

102 Hellblazer #4 28,882
104 Cyborg #4 28,303
108 Cyborg #5 25,772
109 New Super Man #5 25,378
110 Blue Beetle #3 25,300

Hellblazer drops nearly 5k. Cyborg drops over 4k then another 2.5k. New Superman drops about 6k. Blue Beetle drops over 8k. These size drops at these sales levels are probably not a good sign for these books.

116 Catwoman Election Night #1 23,561
121 Super Powers #1 22,282
123 He Man Thundercats #2 21,991
124 Scooby Apocalypse #7 21,983
129 Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2* 20,096

Cave Carson drops 15k, nearly half its sales!

----------20k cancellation line--------------------------

131 Future Quest #7 19,910
135 Shade The Changing Girl #2* 19,526
137 Raven #3 19,154

Shade drops nearly 12k sales (ouch!). Raven drops over 1.5k.

146 Death of Hawkman #2 17,061
153 Dc Comics Bombshells #19 15,452
157 Earth 2 Society #18 15,181

Hawkman drops over 14k (ouch!). Earth 2 only drops about 1.5k.

168 Midnighter and Apollo #2 13,029
174 New Talent Showcase #1 12,451
175 Gotham Academy Second Semester #3 12,304
176 Injustice Gods Among Us Year Five Annual #1 12,227

M&A drop over 7k.

184 Flintstones #5 11,552
190 Lost Boys #2 11,037
193 Suicide Squad Most Wanted #4 10,236

-----------10k "What are they thinking?" line-----------------

204 Batman 66 Meets Steed and Mrs Peel #5 9,223
215 Wacky Raceland #6 8,641
221 Lucifer #12 8,133
225 Frostbite #3 7,914
226 Vigilante Southland #2 7,787
227 Doctor Fate #18 7,730
228 Scooby Doo Team Up #20 7,708

Doctor Fate at least manages to outsell Scooby Doo Team Up! Doctor Fate only loses 124 sales.

234 Everafter From The Pages of Fables #3 7,182
268 Sixpack & Dogwelder Hard-Travelin Heroz #4 5,708
270 Clean Room #13 5,658
283 Sheriff of Babylon #12 5,241
295 Scooby Doo Where Are You #75 4,920

And that's it for this month.

Mother Panic is the 4th and final title in Gerard Way's Young Animal line of comics.

I'm sad to hear about some of the other Young Animal titles dropping so much. I'm enjoying all four of them.

Doctor Fate should team-up with Scooby Doo, just to see what happens...

I started following this thread about three months ago, and now I check in with a sort of morbid fascination. Being in my mid-40s, I have a gut-level 1970s Marvel feel that comics are sort of everywhere and doing fine. (I don't even know if that was true for 1970s Marvel as a whole, but it was true in my household.)

Your sales rundown has made me realize . . .

--That even though I don't like it, the companies may feel they have to reboot universes every 3-4 years to get that temporary Issue #1/"new hotness" bump in sales.

--A pretty darn small percentage of the population is actually buying comics.

--There are many books on your list I have never heard of, and sometimes they sound quite interesting upon further investigation. The Big 2 are trying some inventive titles, but it is very hard to gain traction in the marketplace even with serious marketing back-up.

Would these sales figures look a lot better if we bundle the eventual TPB sales with the single-issue sales that you chronicle?

I often like to think about it this way: divide the sales by 50 to see how many copies per state are being sold, since I believe these sales represent only U.S sales. (Yeah, each state is different, but this is an average.) So a book selling about 5000 copies (such as Scooby Doo) is only selling about 100 copies per state.

And then if you have, say, four or five cities per state that can support maybe three comic book shops, and then with a few other shops scattered around in smaller towns... how many comic shops are there per state? And how many copies then do we have per comic shop?

Like, for Scooby Doo, if we had 10 comic shops per state, that would mean each shop might have 10 copies. But if we have 20 comic shops per state, that means each shop has 5 copies. Or if we have 100 comic shops per state (that's probably too many? I have no idea!), then we would only have 1 copy of Scooby Doo per comic shop... and then no wonder kids aren't reading comics if each shop only has 1 copy of a comic they want to buy.


Well, TPBs tend to only get produced for comics that are already selling well (or which are expected to sell well). Some exceptions are Vertigo-style books, like "I, Vampire" which reportedly did extremely well in TPB sales... but the comic itself had miserable sales and was quickly cancelled. Often a collection will be solicited and then cancelled because the comic itself wasn't doing well. (I personally would like a TPB of Scooby Doo Team Up... but not having the research to back this up, I assume that there are no such TPBs because of the lackluster sales.)

The thing that's most likely to be misleading might be the number of online sales... but as an old fogey, I can't imagine why anyone would want an electronic version instead of a real version, so I assume these sales are minimal.

Dan Slott recently complained that these sales levels are all meaningless because they don't take into account other sales (such as sales to the UK, etc) but I think it's a reasonable indicator even if it's not flawless.

Would there be a place for a Hanna-Barbera set in heroclix? It may just be a fun set to play, with some decent heavy hitters like Grape Ape, and Bam-bam. You could also have cross-over figs, like the Scooby with the Helm of Nabu! I mean who wouldn't want to make a team with Hong Kong Fooey on it ?!

I'm guessing that before any HB set were worked on, they'd consider the cost of license and whether or not a majority fit into a "fighting game". On the fan side couldn't we expect some complaints regarding the "purity" of the game?

Well they have had comics for most of them at one point or another. If Iron Maiden can have clix why stop there? The licensing may be the costly thing, although it would bring some notoriety back to these characters for both older & newer generations.

Well, if they stuck with the adventure characters, rather than the purely humorous ones, they would be a perfect fit, with no purity impinged upon.

Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, Bird-Man, Mightor, and pretty much all of the characters appearing in the currently running Future Quest comic are ALL adventure characters modeled precisely like the characters who appeared in DC and Marvel comics at the times those cartoons came out. Every episode of their respective cartoons had them doing the things that are done in a "fighting game" - fighting supervillains, monsters, and evil organizations. In terms of purity, they're a heckuva lot closer to the superhero ideal this game is based on than Lord of the Rings, Pacific Rim, DOTA, or Mortal Kombat. In terms of the silly nature a few of them have (The Impossibles), I'd argue they are certainly no sillier than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Hell, even a "comics only" curmudgeon like me could get behind it. The Future Quest iterations would be a straight crossover to Clix.

You mean Street Fighter?

I did mean that. I knew it sounded funny when I was typing it.

DC has announced that the once-a-month Rebirth books will be going to $3.99, though they will include a digital code.

I'm currently buying two (Titans and Birds of Prey) and was planning to add Batwoman, but I'll be dropping them.

I'm sufficiently spooked to consider dropping my twice-monthly books (Detective, Nightwing, Wonder Woman) because I lack faith they'll hold down those prices much longers.

-J