Analysts: July 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 July 2009.

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

John Jackson Miller at The Comics Chronicles has begun his analysis of July 2009 right here. He continues it here and here.

The big news to my eye would be the flood of summer-related extra product that entered the market from the comic book side -- the Green Lantern-related stuff for that Blackest Night superhero zombie multiple ring attack thingamaroo DC has going on, a double-up on one of the the Spider-Man titles going into an issue number-related anniversary, issues of something called Dark Reign Marvel is doing (I think this is Norman Osborn taking over the government apparatus part of the Marvel superhero universe; it sounds like a really depressing Homecoming Dance theme), and the "Captain America is coming back" stuff. There's even an issue of a Final Crisis-related mini-series in the top 30, the Legion of Super-Heroes one that didn't have near-enough arms being pulled off to suit me. In fact, reading that comic kind of underlined the whole swappable nature of those events, in that despite lurching into view from last year's non-Green Lantern, time-bending tomfoolery it didn't feel super-dated as much as generically-based, at least to my eye. Any crisis in a storm; Armageddon as background noise.

Anyhow, I think ICv2.com's view on this is that it was a good month for sell-in on comic books, both in terms of overall sales (the first two-month uptick since last Fall) and where the sales are coming from (they note the difference in sales at position #300). I can't help but wonder how much real health is there, though. That's a lot of extra product for a not very huge gain, some of the most important stuff was tricked out in sales incentives out the wazoo and if you look at the two issues of a Spider-Man comic on sale there's such a huge jump between the more regularly-titled issue and the one with a couple of zeroes in it you have to wonder after the audience. I remain impressed at the ability of these companies to find tens of thousands in extra sales on individual event titles and a few thousand here and there as things go, but I think I'd feel better for that market if I received more indication that the audience were growing over time in this New Golden Age of Comics instead of what seems like a mostly-existing audience being engaged differently month-to-month: a New Aging Of Comics.

Also, it seems that the price point is now $3.99 on a majority of top 25 titles -- that probably happened earlier and I'm just now noticing -- and I'm even dumber when it comes to figuring out anything to say about the graphic novels chart. I guess it's nice they moved a few thousand The Hunter books in that market (it's worth noting that many of the best shops for that book are the ones more likely to buy from other sources; ditto Asterios Polyp), and that there's still a market for Preacher collections.
 
posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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