Analysts: June 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 June 2009.

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

John Jackson Miller at The Comics Chronicles has begun his analysis up June 2009 right here.

The big news for June is a combination staunching of last month's hemorrhaging of comic book sales, and massive weakness in the graphic novel market as opposed to the same month in 2008. The DC-published Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely effort Batman and Robin #1 led sales with an estimated 168,000 copies sold when last month no comic book sold 100,000 copies. A Captain America special issue sold over 100K as well, although the success of that book as it's been tied into a resurrection storyline for the Captain America character has been questioned in terms of sell-through. Beyond that, it was the usual clustering effect around certain relatively strong properties at both companies: Batman and Green Lantern for DC; Avengers for Marvel.

There will be no lack of easy explanation offered for the drop-off in trade sales. I'm guessing it's a combination of Final Crisis simply not hitting with enough fans to drive the market, things like Green Lantern being very well read in serial comic form in a way that hasn't translated into serial trade sales, and maybe a lack of capital in a tough overall economy leading to conservative purchasing habits at both the shop and personal consumption levels. I personally thought it was interesting that Watchmen didn't make the top 300 list, at least as far as I can tell, which makes total sense because of the aggressive sell-into stores for a year or more there, but also indicates something of a Sterling effect (surge before movie release; drop after movie release). Or maybe I'm mis-analyzing that; I'm not sure. It feels like I'm missing something.

I also thought it interesting that the "Dark" titles from Marvel seemed to do okay but not spectacularly well, and in the case of an X-Men Vs. Dark Avengers storyline may have suffered from DC's weird naming impediment, where it's simply not clear from the title that you're getting Y installment of storyline X. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot there with the "dark" thing, because that's about as rudimentary and simple of a general plot device as one can imagine.

I'm also not seeing any analysis of cost issues, but when I asked some folks last month they told me that was because there was surprisingly little effect, despite how many fans howled the opposite on message boards and comments threads.

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posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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