Analysts: December 2009 DM Estimates

The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers 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 December 2009.

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

John Jackson Miller at The Comics Chronicles has begun his analysis of the month right here.

Although the articles at ICv2.com focus on the overall 14 percent drop in comics' and graphic novels' combined sales over December 2008, it seems to me there are plenty of reasons for this. The two big ones would seem to be 1) conservative ordering around the late-December skip week even if there were slightly more comics available the week before, and 2) the fact that December 2008 was a kind of a big month and November 2008 a kind of not-great month due to how certain high-profile comics were shipped right around then. Looking at the lists, retailers are still supporting the "Blackest Night" event series and graphic novel sales are still more diverse than serial comic book sales.

I personally think it worrisome that there's a drift downwards in books that sell over 50,000 copies, which would seem to support a theory -- or late-night, drunken blurting-out, as you will -- that a lot of effort is necessary to push certain comics into respectable sales territory and that maybe nothing is being done or can be done for the bulk of them. The comic book middle class is rotting away, in other words. One might suggest that the more poignant outcome of "event fatigue" isn't that people are going to get tired of events eventually (even though they likely will), but that people are only excited by events now and fatigued by everything else as a result.

Given how much of the audience is an audience that's been there for decades, this would make some logical sense, too. If you've been reading Green Lantern comics since 1978, you've likely never seen a major comics events with lots of dead bodies and different color rings flying around. But if your other comic over that same time period was, I don't know, X-Men, you've probably seen the Beast leave the team a few times even if this current time it was done really well. Will you be less interested in Green Lantern if Green Lantern were to go back to scooping up bank robbers with a giant green glove and more interested in X-Men if the Beast and his teammates become key players in stopping Thanos ending humanity through the employment of Kree-influenced Nazi Sleeper technology? I don't know, but it doesn't seem crazy to suggest you might. Telling someone that something's really, really important implies that some group of other things may be less important, and the typical mitigating factors -- new audiences being brought in, the ability of fans to stretch their wallet for a few months and do both their regular comics and these special ones -- are under assault as well. There are smarter people on this subject with different outlooks, though.
 
posted 6:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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