The DC Numbers/Estimates Mega Thread

[glennsim]

I wasn't aware a total reboot ever happened? Outside of Earth 2

I meant another reboot of any sort.

[RKitch]

People forget that Marvel NOW! has been ineffective compared to the New 52. Remember when Aquaman outsold every Marvel book and they didn't have a book in the top 20?

Marvel has a large unit share because of double shipping (or triple shipping in Age of Ultron's case) and event after event. It's saddening that cheap tactics like this work but unfortunately they do. Comic book readers are sheep. If it has a Bat, A or X in the title it'll sell. Maybe next month we can add \S/ to that list.

The problem is that Marvel knows that its biggest selling books, Spider-Man, Avengers and X-Men, have at least one book that double ships, but the problem is that it drops fast. Things are going to look different with Villains' Month, Trinity War and DC's new series launching next month.

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

People forget that Marvel NOW! has been ineffective compared to the New 52. Remember when Aquaman outsold every Marvel book and they didn't have a book in the top 20?

I don't think there's anyway one could reasonably compare Marvel NOW and New 52 because of the vast differences in promotion.

It's kind of like comparing apples to grapes because they're both fruits. DC did substantially more to reach out to lapsed and new readers compared to Marvel. That's ads on TV, interviews, placement on many non-comic websites and so forth. Marvel for all intents and purposes, even when they produce something for non-comic readers tends to market primarily to the current market. Barring a few exceptions (events, deaths and such), they maintain a focus on the current readers.

For example, did anyone know that the Iron Man: Season One relaunch was already released? I don't even recall seeing one preview for that book beyond the initial announcement and those were unlettered pages.

How about the fact that Thor is also getting a Season One book this year, as is Wolverine? If only a subset of internet-dwelling comic book fans know about this stuff, what are the odds of non-regulars knowing? Realize, those are the publishing initiatives geared to non-regular readers.

There's absolutely zero surprise in the 52's top books maintaining stellar sales because the initial launch reached out to a much larger pool than usual. Of course the bottom has fallen out multiple times (cancellation/launch Waves) on lower-tier properties, which is the big problem. Throughout the New 52 initiative DC has generally had more sub-20K books being published than Marvel.

[nightw1ng]

Marvel employs a different business strategy than DC. They've chosen to double-ship many of their books, causing them to drop to mid-tier, but still be consistent sellers. As a business, they'd rather have the majority of their books selling moderately well with a few top-tier books, rather than DC who focuses on getting slightly more top-tier selling books at the expense of their mid- and lower- tier books.

They're applying the same model that they pioneered with Amazing Spider-Man a few years back. They cancelled the other Spidey books and shipped Amazing Spider-Man almost weekly. Instead of having 4 books where 1 sold well and 3 did not, they had 1 that shipped 4x a month at a moderate level. In the end, they had more units shipped and more money in their pocket.

This strategy is obviously working for Marvel, and DC may follow suit eventually. I know Rich had a rumor on Bleeding Cool awhile back that DC is considering cancelling several of their titles this fall/winter and replacing them with 4 weekly titles. It may not happen, but they're obviously considering it based on Marvel's success.

[beetle_booster]

Wow. Age of Ultron isn't even finished and Marvel already has Infinity lined up. I think it will reach a point where both Age of Ultron and Infinity are going on at the same time.

DC should come up with more line wide events of their own if they want to make the marketshare race more competitive.

EDIT: Yeah I forgot. Thanos Rising already is happening simultaneously with Age of Ultron.

[fedup23]

Wow. Age of Ultron isn't even finished and Marvel already has Infinity lined up. I think it will reach a point where both Age of Ultron and Infinity are going on at the same time.

DC should come up with more line wide events of their own if they want to make the marketshare race more competitive.

EDIT: Yeah I forgot. Thanos Rising already is happening simultaneously with Age of Ultron.

Thanos Rising is just an origin mini series.. it has no crossovers.

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

Wow. Age of Ultron isn't even finished and Marvel already has Infinity lined up. I think it will reach a point where both Age of Ultron and Infinity are going on at the same time.

DC should come up with more line wide events of their own if they want to make the marketshare race more competitive.

EDIT: Yeah I forgot. Thanos Rising already is happening simultaneously with Age of Ultron.

One thing to remember, Age of Ultron was merely supposed to be Bendis's final Avengers storyline, but it got delayed. I'm still not sure why they opted to make it an event instead of just treating it as an out of continuity tale at that point beyond the fact that OOC stories don't sell as well.

Hmmm...guess I answered my own question. As for actual events, aside from the aforementioned Infinity, there's also Battle of the Atom for the X-books. Seriously, as separate as the X-Men tend to be whenever something important is happening, Marvel should just put them in their own universe where their issue of being different would actually make sense.

[Wolf_Leader]

Thanos Rising is just an origin mini series.. it has no crossovers.

It seems to be the prelude to Infinity, but yeah it doesn't really affect anything else in the MU.

[CagedLeo730]

Wow. Age of Ultron isn't even finished and Marvel already has Infinity lined up. I think it will reach a point where both Age of Ultron and Infinity are going on at the same time.

DC should come up with more line wide events of their own if they want to make the marketshare race more competitive.

EDIT: Yeah I forgot. Thanos Rising already is happening simultaneously with Age of Ultron.

Infinity starts in August. Age of Ultron ends in June. No overlap