Siege sales show that crossovers are losing their touch
4 Comments Published by Avi Green on Monday, February 15, 2010 at 11:48 AM.
ICV2's latest sales charts have debuted, and though Siege's first issue is at the top, it sold only 108,484 copies. For a crossover, that's pretty low, and it shows that crossovers have lost their impact, even if the miniseries is only 4 issues.
Among other parts of note here:
It's almost funny how ICV2 says sales inched up by one percent, when it's really nothing to be happy about. This, sadly, is the result of many years of disrespecting the audience ever since the 1990s, and eventually, it's going to have it's toll, even if they finally turn around and fix things.
Among other parts of note here:
- Captain America #602, the one where Ed Brubaker insulted/villified the Tea Party Movement, sold only 63,948. After this monstrosity, it'll probably sell even less.
- Teen Titans sold only 27,790, and Titans only 24,924 copies, which tells that, as the real team in the latter is replaced by a bunch of villains, the audience bails, while the former has been written badly enough to alienate more than enough people, regardless of Superboy's return.
- Amazing Spider-Man has begun to plummet as low as 56,837 copies, which shows the publicity stunts are wearing thin too.
- The Blackest Night specials DC released are nothing to write home about either in sales - they almost all sold less than 40,000.
- The Hulk is also falling to 54,000.
- Detective Comics has gone down to 45,000 copies, suggesting that even the Batwoman-as-lesbian publicity stunt has failed.
- And Action Comics is startlingly low, at 30,000!
It's almost funny how ICV2 says sales inched up by one percent, when it's really nothing to be happy about. This, sadly, is the result of many years of disrespecting the audience ever since the 1990s, and eventually, it's going to have it's toll, even if they finally turn around and fix things.
Labels: bad editors, Batman, Captain America, crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, sales, Spider-Man, Superman, Titans
Well even if both Warner Comics and Disney Comics folded and vanished, which is not going to happen - trade paperbacks will keep their copyrights intact (it isn't about storytelling it's about IP refreshment), there would still be a welter of comics of all kinds and quality from the indies. And the indies are part of an intense new Golden Age. :)
So for me, it's a cause for celebration that the undead parody of what used to be DC and Marvel will perish out of the world in any relevant form, to be replaced by such an incredible array of new stuff that it's like they never made it out of the 90s... Which for all intents and purposes they haven't. :)
I hear that the writer are least trying to make Batwoman an interesting character on her own, so at least someone at DC knows how to run with a ball. (Unlike say, Geoff "resurrecting my favorite characters" Johns and Dan "likewise" Didio.)
I dunno... introducing Batwoman officially and constantly as a LESBIAN! (tm) is pretty irritating. Affirmative Action is the most common superpower these days and it is so trite as to be unimaginably boring. Why not let her sexuality either be irrelevant to the character, or let it emerge appropriately and gradually? In these days of endless decompressed ie bad storytelling they have more than enough time after all... :)
Too bad the writers and the powers-that-be at both companies cannot realize what an overall failure Affirmative Action turned out to be.