AvX Stands Tall, "Batman Inc" Opens Big In May Sales Rankings

[CBR News]

Marvel Comics' mega AvX event grew in its performance while DC's "Batman Inc." debuted as a top ten finisher in the May, 2012 sales rankings from Diamond Comic Distributors.


Full article here.

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

I guess now we know why we're getting a Talon book. Court of Owls has proven incredibly popular, so much so that the tie-in Annual was DC's third bestselling book, and that was at $4.99.

[rauj13]

The fact that Avengers can gross $1 Billion at the Box Office, but can't crack the top ten shows that Marvel really fucked up.

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

The fact that Avengers can gross $1 Billion at the Box Office, but can't crack the top ten shows that Marvel really fucked up.

Not really. It's been shown for years that movies have minimal effect on comic book sales, and the issue isn't with the content. It's in the medium. Some people just don't want to read comic books because they're comic books. I know a few of those people myself. Then you have to look at the value proposition. For someone who may possibly be interested in comics, a $3-$4 book with only 20 pages of content probably won't satisfy them.

No amount of Marvel marketing was going to create a significant shift in the monthly sales.

[insidemyhead]

Not really. It's been shown for years that movies have minimal effect on comic book sales, and the issue isn't with the content. It's in the medium. Some people just don't want to read comic books because they're comic books. I know a few of those people myself. Then you have to look at the value proposition. For someone who may possibly be interested in comics, a $3-$4 book with only 20 pages of content probably won't satisfy them.

No amount of Marvel marketing was going to create a significant shift in the monthly sales.

It's depressing, but too many people don't want to read, period.

[rauj13]

Not true in the slightest. You honestly think that advertising the books with the movie would've done nothing? That's insane. DC proved trailers for comics boost sales back in September. And that was with very minimal exposure. 1.3 billion dollars. Marvel's failure to capitalize on that is ridiculous. The readers are out there. Neither company is doing much at all to reach them, but Marvel is the biggest offender. There is no good reason NOT to advertise the comics with the movies, especially when they make over a billion dollars.

[Iangould]

Based on my own experience, movies tend not to increase sales of comics.

Batman, for whatever reason, seems to be the exception. We sell tons of Batman trades when there's a successful Batman movie. (Batman Begins and the Schumacher movies didn't do much for sales.)

My own theory is that there's a relatively large number of Batman trades that are very good and that are larely stand-alone - DKR, Killing Joke, Mad Love; Long Halloween, Year One.

People who see a movie and want to see more of the characters typically want to buy A book - not six trades that sort-of tell a story with lots of references to past events thrown in and lots of unresolved soap opera subplots.

Maybe if Marvel had had an "Avengers: Season One" trade covering roughly the same ground as the movie that would have sold well.

[tomstewdevine]

It wouldn't be a top ten graphic novel list unless walking dead and watchmen were on it. It blows my mind that those two books can consistently sell month after month, year after year.

[0bsessions]

Not true in the slightest. You honestly think that advertising the books with the movie would've done nothing? That's insane. DC proved trailers for comics boost sales back in September. And that was with very minimal exposure. 1.3 billion dollars. Marvel's failure to capitalize on that is ridiculous. The readers are out there. Neither company is doing much at all to reach them, but Marvel is the biggest offender. There is no good reason NOT to advertise the comics with the movies, especially when they make over a billion dollars.

The Dark Knight was released in July of 2008:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12754.html

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/13107.html

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/13296.html

I skipped over June because Batman 676 and 677 both came out in May and 678 followed in July. The point, however, is that Batman's sales stayed steady, despite the release of TDK, to that point the single most successful comic book adaptation ever. It remained at a static !03K-105K figure pretty much straight through until November. In fact, one could even cite the fact that sales were only even as high as they were at that point because of Morrison's Batman RIP as sales dropped by a full 10K units in December once RIP ended (And stumbling another 20K the following month.

Amazing Spider-Man didn't face a jump in sales when Spider-Man (At the time, the highest grossing comic film) either. Likewise, X-Men.

In fact, every one of these saw sales go down a couple thousand.

There isn't a single piece of data that indicates a film boosts sales in any conceivable way. In fact, the data pretty conclusively indicates that a film has absolutely no bearing on sales.

[PreacherCain]

Image seem to be getting bigger monthly percentages every month yet there's never any mention of this growth on CBR or Newsarama when it comes to their sales news.

[thwhtGuardian]

I'm glad the new GN Batman Death by Design had a strong showing, it was a truly great book.

[thc-1138]

Marvel down 0.43% in unitShare and down 0.68% on $ share. This just proves the end is nigh for Marvel

[Hulk_Is]

Good job, Marvel. I'm AvX til the end!

[Will.S]

The fact that Avengers can gross $1 Billion at the Box Office, but can't crack the top ten shows that Marvel really fucked up.

Avengers Assemble is selling pretty well and usually the sales spikes are seen in the collections like Infinity Gauntlet.

[rauj13]

You're all missing the point. I'm not saying that they do, I'm saying that Marvel and DC just magically expect them to. There's zero attempt to advertise the books with the movies. That if they did advertise with the movies, they'd be reaching an incredibly wide audience. DC's minor TV spot back in September helped boost sales. Imagine that with the kind of exposure Avengers or The Dark Knight had.