Analysts: December 2010 DM Estimates

I know that most of the commentary on available sales numbers are focusing on end-of-year figures for 2010, and I'm going to get there, I swear. At the same time, I don't want to lose sight of the month-in, month-out numbers that include the December 2010 results recently posted on-line. So I hope you'll bear with me.

In that spirit, 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 December 2010.

* 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.

I think Miller has it just right with his monthly analysis summary and how he expresses it: sales were up overall but were really depressed at the top. The top-selling serial comic, Batman: The Dark Knight #1, sold right around 90,000 copies. At the same time, there are still pretty strong sales for comics way down the chart relative to what we've seen in past years, and across the board the market's acceptance of multiple price points makes the charts that depend on dollars made less scary than those that depend on units sold.

So while all the news isn't bad, particularly if you look at five- and ten-year trend, I would suggest the figures may be uniquely troubling going into a winter where there could be successive months of strange, slightly depressed business for stores. It's a well-worn but I think still-true statement to point out that the market is oriented towards making a few hits that drive the rest of the market. That mechanism seems hobbled. In fact, my hunch is that gains in lower-selling titles won't continue if there aren't higher-selling serial comics at the top of the chart to ameliorate what might be comics that outright lose money according to the way these comics are produced.

What else? It seems like Marvel's serial comics are down, with yet another Wolverine book launching with fewer than 60,000 copies in the market place and only being able to snag two of the top ten positions. That may put a lot of pressure on their next line-wide event to not just boost sales across the board to boost them past a certain point where the titles themselves are reinvigorated. It would be nice if the biggest companies were able to muster correctives in terms of structural issues and not just hope various titles catch fire, but the direct market in many ways is defined by that disconnect.

Heck of a DM sales performance by the latest Fables trade, by the way. I'm still not certain why that line is treated in such an odd way by its parent company, but I know I'm not alone in wondering after that. Then again, I'm not sure I understand decisions made within that line, either. As I've said before, Bill Willingham strikes me as the kind of writer that has three or four ideas simmering at any one time, and I'm surprised that one of them isn't another big-ass series of the Fables type being attempted by Vertigo.
 
posted 12:50 am PST | Permalink
 

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