Analysts Weigh In On August 2012 Numbers

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 August 2012.

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

My personal favorite numbers cruncher John Jackson Miller at The Comics Chronicles has posted his analysis of the month here and here.

So the latest Marvel mini-series event thingamabob (Avengers Vs. X-Men) is finishing strong, which makes some sense given the nature of the buzz I've seen around the series generally ("hey, this is getting pretty good") as it's progressed and the praise that I've seen settle on a specific Spider-Man centric issue. That's a good sign for Marvel, because Marvel drawing on the strength of its talent pool and seeing rewards is better for the market than when they do market-manipulation in the form of things like doing 18 billion variant covers and are rewarded for it both specifically and, you know, in the general way of the market not immediately collapsing. At least I will maintain that it's a better thing. I'm not sure what else I see -- I'm still having a hard time figuring what the hell is going on because the market is really event and early-numbers driven right now, to the point that only seems to work 60 percent in that direction seems like some sort of crazy throwback to ancient times.

Walking Dead sees a priapism-related boost for issue #101 on the attention #100 received, and more generally for people turning to it as the TV show remains popular.

Overall the lesson for 2012 seems to be as straightforward as that this is turning out to be a pretty good year, and not just in comparison to the last year, which was abominably crappy in a lot of a ways. If this continues, Brian Hibbs' yearly look at Bookscan numbers is going to be intolerably confident. But, you know, hey: good on them. I still worry about the overall strength of the market because I think a strong middle class makes a strong market, but I don't blame anyone for not paying attention to me.
 
posted 1:45 am PST | Permalink
 

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