The Four Color Media Monitor

The Beat blog published their sales analyses for Marvel again, and while Amazing Spider-Man #545 may have sold 124,000 copies, the writer admits that it's far from being a big sales boost:

Obviously, 125K is a very good number by the standards of most titles. But after all the hype, and given the nature of the event, can you really judge this book by normal standards? Surely Marvel were expecting something really big. In reality, issue #545 sells in the same range as the CIVIL WAR tie-in issues from late 2006, and it’s noticeably down on the first-month sales of issue #539, the first part of “Back in Black.” Relative to what Marvel could legitimately have hoped for, I would consider the sales a little underwhelming.

Where do we go from here? There are basically two possibilities. One is that the readers accept “Brand New Day” on its own terms, enjoy the stories, are attracted by the big name artists, and make the thrice-monthly AMAZING a success, despite their disdain for OMD. The other possibility is that the anti-reboot hostility infects the audience’s attitude to BMD, and readers reject this Spider-Man as a continuation of the character they’ve been reading. After all, this was where the Clone Saga ran into trouble.

Well let's hope that the latter response is where we arrive regarding this debacle. The best way to describe Brand New Day, whatever the quality of the writing, is that it serves up "fun" in a dishonest way, and not how the pro-marriage fans wanted it.

Also, the newest volume of New Warriors isn't doing very well:

Another title with serious problems. The last five issues have seen an average drop of 8%, with the most recent issues being above that average. Once again, this simply isn’t sustainable beyond the very short term. If NEW WARRIORS carries on losing sales at 8% per issue, it’ll drop below 20K within six months.

I can guess why it's been dropping: they may have tossed out Firestar and Justice, among other members who were unjustly villified in the wake of Civil War. Why then should anyone have to support this book? Let it drop even faster then.

Labels: marvel comics, sales