The Mayo Report: Analyzing August, Predicting Marvel NOW!

[CBR News]

John Mayo takes a look at August's numbers, predicts the sales bump for the Marvel NOW! relaunch and looks at "Before Watchmen" and the past year of DC's New 52.


Full article here.

[megavikingman]

There is a flaw to your estimate for "lost Walking Dead sales" due to missing/delayed issues. Most of those delays between issues occurred earlier in the series, when it was not selling as well as it does now, so the issues would have sold significantly fewer than 50,000 issues.

[serpico71]

I love the Mayo report. Its all about the fans in us, and whether our side is winning or loosing, and if your title or publisher is beating the other, and for store owners like myself, invaluable resources, to insure my orders with these onslaught of relaunches, and reboots are accurate for my customers. I handle all DC sales for my stores, so at times i feel like Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind looking at the number board for the military.

DC's relaunch has been tremendous and has not fallen off as deeply as the pundits say. I do applaud their quick action of changing creative teams when a title isn't working and replacing faltering ones with new ones, even when I loose my favorite teams or titles, like Edmonson on Grifter, or RES Man - they have allowed I, Vampire to continue. They are working on getting it right and making tough decisions to find the right balance. There is no shortage of talent out there, it's all about what the fans like and will buy.

I do believe the industry has so many great titles, the problem is a shortage of readers. DC helped people remember what a great medium this is. Unfortunately I wish Marvel Now was also a Major reboot. It's not even an event - just a reshuffling of creative teams.

[Alan 59]

For us, the DC annuals sold extremely well, and I think the reason is that they were a fifth-week event. No other "new 52" comics shipped that week. Your proposal of "annuals for everything, one per week" is interesting, but I think that DC's restraint was the better path. Too many of their 52 titles are not strong enough to support an extra-sized, higher-priced offering.