Analysts: October 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 September 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, where I believe he was first out of the gate in noting DC clamped down on the top six positions for comic books. That would be the obvious big story, perhaps along with a continuing freeze-out of just about anything other than Marvel and DC in the top 50 of that same chart (a Buffy book and Haunted are the party crashers) and ICv2.com continuing to assert that retailers are ordering subsequent issues of $3.99 comics much more conservatively than issues of $2.99 comics (something that makes total sense, although I'm not sure there's enough evidence to divorce that choice from case-to-case content).

There are two different ways to look at the DC thing. Actually, there a probably a lot of ways many of which don't occur to me, but there are two ways that I look at the chart-topper story. One is to kind of note the pro-DC aspects of it, how they've put together a crossover the people want to see more of as the issues progress -- which I don't think you can say of recent DC efforts of this type at all -- and how this is a nice turn of events for DC given how methodically Marvel has kind of staked out a position for a wide variety its regular titles in the top 10 for the past couple of years. Another way of looking at this historical moment, however, is that the competitive nature of the DC vs. Marvel relationship -- and no one is sure yet whether this was intensified or dampened with recent changes up top at each company -- may force both companies to double-down on the event comic at a point when a different strategy, maybe any different strategy at all, might be more fruitful in the long term.
 
posted 7:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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