The Four Color Media Monitor

The Hollywood Reporter announced a new Batman volume by writer Matt Fraction supposedly sold big upon debut, with the funny part here being that this time, they actually do offer ostensible sales figures:

The publisher announced Thursday that its Batman No. 1, a relaunch of the Caped Crusader by writer Matt Fraction and artist Jorge Jiménez, has sold over 500,000 copies.

That number puts the title as the top-selling comic of the year so far, a number that is unlikely to be topped, despite one more big publishing event on the calendar — the two-part company crossover comics involving Deadpool and, you guessed it, Batman.

DC was leading the year with another top-seller, Batman No. 158, which featured the return of DC chief Jim Lee to drawing duties in a sequel to his and writer Jeph Loeb’s now-classic Hush storyline. That comic, published in the spring, has sold over 400,000 copies.

None of this proves indefinitely that the masses actually came to buy the supplies of copies at stores, and all the titles highlighted as big sellers didn't sell a million. Why is the Hollywood Reporter keeping on with this futile charade? Fraction's also one of quite a few leftist ideologues whose works are nothing to write home about, and I'm not interested in wasting dough on his stories. Even veteran artist Lee's work hasn't been worth buying in years now, and he too is a left-leaning ideologue, regrettably enough.

Another comic at that 400,000-plus sales level was Invincible Universe: Battle Beast No. 1 from Robert Kirkman’s Skybound and Image Comics.

That's no different a sum from the rest, and chances are even that didn't actually sell beyond the store's ordering levels.

The sales success of the new Batman title continues a strong year for not just Batman but DC, which has found massive and surprise victory with its Absolute imprint, a line of comics that reinvented key heroes and their villains and that is now nearing its one-year anniversary. The line was led with, what else, Absolute Batman, written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Nick Dragotta, with the first issue selling over 200,000 in its first printing. The issue is now in its ninth (!) printing.

Almost all the Absolute titles have gone to multiple printings, with even the comics featuring lesser known heroes such as Martian Manhunter selling in the six figures with their debut issue. Sales have remained buoyant, and the entire lot has sold well into the millions copies, according to insiders.

Despite what they say, that would have to be for many individual titles combined together, and the puff piece certainly doesn't make clear if customers actually buy this stuff en masse. Also, chances are many of these titles allegedly seeing multiple print runs in pamphlets don't have as many additional copies printed up in the extra go-arounds. For all we know, that could be a just a handful, and unless it's made clear in the article, what they're lecturing here is meaningless. I think what's really sad is the continuing refusal of the press to ask whether it's time for comicdom to make the shift to paperbacks/hardcovers, yet they continue with this unintentional comedy where we're told the industry is literally doing fabulous, when it's not.

Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, sales