I certainly hope that Booster Gold never gets canceled (again). But curiosity got the better of me, and I compared the sales numbers for Booster Gold against some recent DC titles that got the axe for poor sales. It's pretty easy to spot a recurring trend in Comicchron.com's statistics. Here's hoping Booster Gold's recent sales spike is more than just outlier data.

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A better indicator of Booster Gold's relative sales than yesterday's graph is probably today's comparison of Booster Gold's sales against its position in Comicchron.com's Top 300 sellers each month. Note that in general, Booster Gold's sales position has fallen at a steeper rate than its actual sales rate. Yesterday's graph indicated a gradual decline in the overall numbers of the highest selling book each month, so clearly there must be more books selling higher numbers than Booster Gold now than before. That's probably good for the industry but bad news for Booster Gold.

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Comparing monthly sales of Booster Gold Volume 2 to the top monthly seller, it would seem that the series isn't really doing too badly, all things considered. While monthly sales of the "flavor-of-the-month" book vary wildly from month to month, Booster Gold's audience looks comparatively stable despite its naturally shrinking audience. Comicchron.com statistics indicate that industry per unit sales have been declining steadily in recent years (down about 14% since 2006 even as industry revenue is increasing from increased per unit pricing), so some decline in unit sales must be expected beyond those associated with a diminishing audience over time.

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According to Comichron.com, Booster Gold Volume 2 debuted with sales of 53,685. That's a pretty respectable number, and it's pretty much in line with the expected sales for a first issue from DC. It's pretty much been the usual slow but steady decline since.

However, that benchmark was topped recently by interest in the "Blackest Night" crossover. As previously mentioned, Booster Gold #26 was part of the "Blackest Night" ring promotion, and retailers were encouraged to increase their orders dramatically to "earn" the option to buy plastic rings for their customers. (I don't mean to sound too disrespectful here. This is a pretty clear indication, if we needed one, that crossover tie-ins to mega events can drive sales. And while I personally don't care for Blackest Night, I certainly do want a Legion of Super-Heroes ring. ) This promotion created a sales aberration in Booster Gold's favor.

The question now is whether that increased exposure will provide any long-term sales boost to the series. We'll take a look at that with a few more graphs later this week.

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It's no secret that the recent DC ring promotion was a marketing ploy to increase sales. (It apparently worked so well that Marvel took action to encourage shops to rip the covers off of remaining stock.) Booster Gold #26 was tied into the ring promotion, and as a result, it was in the top 300 selling books of 2009. In fact, it was the highest selling Booster Gold issue of the series! Not bad for a book barely making the top 100 in any given month, a rate that shouldn't have any issue ranking in much higher than 1000. Sure the numbers fell afterwords, but here's hoping that fighting zombies can inject some new life into a book with some sales numbers that have been slipping pretty consistently, since even before the price hike.

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