Newsarama: The 2004 in DM Numbers


The comics news site Newsarama puts the 2004 numbers -- really just rankings and percentages -- up in chart form for handy perusal, and talks about them in a news story. My initital reactions:

1. The fact that so many manga sales are from Dark Horse's division, such as Samurai Executioner, indicates that direct retailers may simply feel better ordering from a company with which they're familiar and carrying titles that are clearly for boys.

2. Compared to 2003, Marvel seems to have a bigger margin than DC in both units moved and dollar share, despite DC's success with individual books and its much healthier re-order action. This indicates to me that DC's emphasis on the top of its line isn't very successful in terms of moving the line entire. Unless of course the numbers in the first two columns are distinct from the re-order numbers, in which case DC comes off looking a lot better. I'm so confused!

3. I'm surprised that Slave Labor seems to do better with reorders than Fantagraphics does, because I would think both have appealing titles that are largely underordered. Slave Labor seems to do really well with re-orders.

4. Selling individual comic books into today's market is really, really brutal. Even Conan looks all bloodied up.

5. None of the companies that seem to be healthy have initial sales to the direct market as their primary revenue stream. The need to sell a certain number of comics to make up for potentially restrictive set-ups (Crossgen) or the added cost of paying licensors (Dreamwave) may be the only thing that connects the two most recent big-name failed companies.
 
posted 6:22 am PST | Permalink
 

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