CBR: The Mayo Report: January 2011

[CBR News]

Despite "Fantastic Four" #587 hitting six figures, January's sales slip across the board. John Mayo looks at the data, from price increases to non-shipping titles, in an effort to discern the origins of the drops.


Full article here.

[Justice~!]

I'm not buying anything right now because the stuff is *boring*, son! =) These trends deserve to go downwards considering the last couple of years of overhyped and infantile stuff. Call me when stuff is interesting again!

[armandoB]

Independent stuff is better.

[verslibre]

Despite "Fantastic Four" #587 hitting six figures

Hooray for them. [/sarcasm]

FF will, of course, never see those kinds of figures again.

[Omega Alpha]

Of course, this will lead to both Marvel and DC killing more characters rather than bringing effective solutions to increase sales in the long term.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Both the FF 587 and Spawn 200 were huge abberations for those series, and in turn made the entire Top 10 for the month an abberation.
I think the fact the second highest book on the list only sold 70K+ is more telling of the state of the current climate.

The Comic book industry is dying by inches every month.

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

At the end of the day, all of this Marvel vs DC thing doesn't matter. The bigger issue is comics vs everything else.

[TonyJazz]

I am buying fewer comics because of the $3.99 price. And I am only buying $2.99 comics anyway....

So, at least for me, I don't do it because I'm bankrupt. Instead, I don't think $4 is worth it for an ordinary comic.

Marvel has been losing a big portion of my business, and I spend over $100 a month (which, I know, is much lower than many)....

[chanciusmaximus]

I hate to bring up the elephant int the room, but this article didn't touch upon another looming threat to comic industry: torrents. Sean Parker of Napster was qoutes as saying that trillions, TRIOLLIONS of torrents had been downloaded last year alone! There is a certain percentage of those that are scanned comics. Price is a major factor in this though.

I dropped a lot of books when they went up to $4 an issue. I think a big key is that the industry (at least the big two) haven't jumped on selling new issues online the day they are released and at an affordable price. The more time they wait, the less money they will put into their pockets and readers will turn to torrents and never come back. I still get my comics through a cheap subscription service, but I'm also getting rid of my comic collection that consists of 6,000 issues. I no longer have the room for them, it's not easy to go back and re-read them, I don't have time to re-read them anymore, and comics aren't an investment anymore. In the process of getting rid of them I've decided to replace them with torrents so I can look at them whenever I want and and they won't take up any space. On that note, comics have SO much more to compete with for a consumer's attention with all the free content online even!

Free album download at http://www.facebook.com/chancius

[alexforever]

Marvel needs to get on the ball. DC is already stepping up in my opinion. They are putting out a Flash crossover that is along the lines of Age of Apocalypse, which might be considered a classic by now. I think DC has been doing great and will probably bring readers in for this one

As for Marvel, well they've run out of steam. Really they ran out of steam after the first issue of Civil War. I thought it was just burnt out at that time. It was hype and hype and hype and they needed story and good characterization and some sense of comic logic. They didn't have any of those things. I think the company has been a mess since then and I doubt their new EIC will change things. The prime example is their most popular character who is a mess and a pale version of what he used to be. I don't think he can be fixed. But there are other books out there, so I'd work on them.

[Lou7]

I still think that the $3.99 price point for 22 pages of story is too much.
I read mostly DC, but there's lots of Marvel stuff that I would get if it was priced lower.
I just don't understand, why it has to be $2.99 or $3.99 ?
Why not have books priced at $3.25 ?
And I do understand that these companies are in business to make money, as much as possible if they can.
Anyway, just my opinion...

[Maestro Hulk]

You can't deny that the comic book industry is dying. Even with all the events, deaths, and gimmicks, the sales are falling.

Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Brian Bendis, Robert Kirkman, and Mark Millar are all considered the top talent...but they all have no clue how to get new young readers and revive the comics industry. Millar at least has realized that with icon he can make money by selling the movie rights. That's going to be his security money when the comic industry crumbles.

Marvel Studios is doing great. Joe Quesada was worried, so he ran from printed comics and went into the film and television department of Marvel Comics. DC needs to worry because their comics fanbase is shrinking and their movies fail and look bad (Watchmen, Jonah Hex, Superman Returns, Superman Reboot, and Green Lantern).

I think that after the top Marvel and DC books drop below a certain point, they will reboot the universes to attract young viewers of the movies.

[RAGGEDT]

It's a real shame that "Generation Lost" isn't selling better. Perhaps folks thought it would have more of the "light" nature of the old "Justice League International." Regardless, it's a great story -- one that, frankly, holds together much better than the more-publicized "Brightest Day" maxi. Given the up-and-down nature of the various main JLA and JSA titles of late, it's arguably the best "Justice" story running right now. I hope DC figures out a way to keep the "Lost" League together.

[Dreighton]

Comics have been dieing a slow death for a long time. We all knew that. Some hoped there would be a floor that would be hit..and things would be a steady market.

But what happened was the $3.99 price point. Many people cut back..and cut back hard. They raised their price in the middle of a terrible recession that was going to hurt sales anyway.

Once people learned they could live with less, the fans became even more critical. They wanted to know "WHY should I buy this comic...or that one". and the publishers have had a hard time answering that and justifying their product.

Many of us started reading as kids...now few kids are going to go find a comic book store and buy a comic for $4. It's not like my dad, throwing down a quarter when he bought some gas, or a soda at the local corner store.

[Johnson!]

I think you're overlooking a very important factor... huge sections of the country had really horrible weather throughout January... the south, midwest, north and northeast all had an unusually bad month. Snow and ice absolutely WILL keep people out of stores... present company excepted, obviously.