Analysts: March 2011 Direct Market Estimates

The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has offered up their usual array of lists, estimates and analysis regarding the performance of comic books and graphic novels in the Direct Market of comic and hobby shops, this time for March 2011.

* Overview
* Analysis
* Top 300 Comic Books
* Top 300 Graphic Novels

My favorite numbers cruncher John Jackson Miller at The Comics Chronicles has begun his analysis of the month here.

The good news is that the number one selling comic book in the Direct Market is FF #1, a spin-off/continuation of the long-running Fantastic Four monthly that had been garnering decent-to-great reviews for the work of writer Jonathan Hickman, recently joined by solid-as-a-rock pencil artist Steve Epting. The move into a separate title has clear stunt aspects -- a publicized death of a major character was involved, as well as bringing into the fold another popular character, and there were multiple covers involved -- but as was the case with the attention paid the Captain America title when Steve Rogers ate a magic time-loop inducing bullet a few years back, those engaging the work now that weren't before are encountering a quality comic book in addition to one with a lot of meta-activity. It's also important to point out that a good thing about the sales success of that first issue is that Marvel intended for this comic to sell well, and made it come to pass. This honestly doesn't happen as much as it used to.

The bad news is everything else.

Sales continue to be down on a year-to-year basis, the month looks good only after a pretty horrid (and realized that it would be so pretty early on) January and February, graphic novels and comic books are both acting a bit rattled, and despite the surge of FF #1 over 100,000, it looks like a new successful-book baseline is under 80K, which isn't a line that seems like it can hold without potential major structural changes in the industry coming into play. Moreover, as suggested above, the ability Marvel displayed in getting a book to pop over 100K underlines the fact that other kinds of sales success even recently displayed -- like Marvel's success just two to five years ago in getting a variety of its titles into a then stronger-performing top 20, or DC's capitalizing on a surge of interest in Green Lantern -- are at the very least misfiring right now.

My suspicion is that the Direct Market faces some major structural issues -- both self-inflicted and pressed upon them by changes in entertainment media generally -- that kind of defy the editorial pasting-over and sales finagling by which these things are usually approached. It's just that now instead of losing out on the opportunity to double the audience, now they're in danger of seeing that audience shrink to a size where it will be harder and harder to maintain businesses of a certain size and influence.
 
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