Last week, DC announced the first casualties of the New 52. Blackhawks, Hawk and Dove, Men of War, Mister Terrific, O.M.A.C. and Static Shock were among the worst-performing titles of the New 52. They will be replaced by some familiar titles in the next three months as DC seeks to inject some new blood into the rapidly decaying New 52.

Fortunately, JLI is still a top-50 seller, though it is interesting to note that even it is losing ground rapidly to a rather Boosterrific comparable:

At this rate, it should be expected that sales for the still-on-the-shelf Justice League International #5 will be worse than sales were for Booster Gold #5 in 2007. Granted, these numbers don't take into account the unknown digital sales of the JLI series, but it would still seem that Batman and Guy Gardner aren't helping promote sales significantly more than Booster Gold could do himself. Who would have expected that?

Booster Gold had two things that JLI doesn't. Since one of those things was Geoff Johns who is already busy doing what he does best reinvigorating Aquaman, the JLI will need to hang their hopes on the other one: Skeets, the JLI needs you!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: graph justice league international reboot sales

Yes, the New 52 is selling well by all metrics. But all new issues sell well. A better indication of its relative success is to compare its sales to the past.

Graphically, it looks like sales are falling off for Justice League International Volume 3 faster than they did for Booster Gold Volume 2. If all DC's hype has created a larger pool of buyers out there now, this is bad news for the JLI as the audience is turning its back on this series for greener pastures.

On the other hand, this should be expected if the readers of the New 52 are the same old readers who are adjusting their pull lists after buying a few extra books for the past few months. For a better view, take a look at the composite sales graphs for all of the New 52 against one another:

You can click on that graph to embiggen it, but all it really shows is that the sales trend seen for Justice League International Volume 3 is pretty much the same across the board for the entire New 52. That's a lot of volume with a very familiar sales trend towards entropy across the board. The more you see of the DCnU, the less new it looks.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: graph reboot sales

The numbers are in for September, and DC has been crowing about how well they've been doing with the New 52. Rumor has it that digital sales have been blockbuster, and reportedly, September saw the best sales for DC Comics since 1991. That's good news for everyone who loves comic books.

According to Comichron.com, Action Comics #1, Volume 2 sold about as well in 2011 as Action Comics #1, Volume 1 in 1938. An impressive feat, indeed. Justice League International #1 didn't do quite as well, but still sold approximately 61,079 issues. That's a good number for a 21st-century comic book! It's certainly better than the 53,685 issues that Booster Gold, Volume 2, #1 sold in 2007.

But how does that stand up against Booster Gold, Volume 1? DC never releases sales numbers directly, so I asked an expert: Dan Jurgens.

Boosterrific.com: I was wondering if you had any knowledge/memory of sales figures for BOOSTER GOLD v1 from the late 1980s that you could share with Boosterrific.com?

Dan Jurgens: Whew-- I really don't have those numbers. I do know that BG did relatively well in the direct market, less well on the newsstand, from what I recall. I also know the last couple of issues did around 125,000.

Thank you, Mr. Jurgens. That's certainly more than we knew before. The final issues of Booster Gold were crossover issues with the Millennium mini-series, which probably gave a significant sales boost. But that still means that Booster Gold, Volume 1, #25 in 1988 would have sold far more issues than anything Booster-related in recent years (including the 57,096 estimated sales of Blackest Night tie-in Booster Gold #26 in 2010).

Hopefully this "New 52" thing will catch on, and Booster can reach new heights in sales.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: chomichron.com dan jurgens reboot sales

Yesterday, I mentioned that DC was selling out of all of their new releases. I think that bears a little more investigation, especially in the context of whether DC is getting what they want out of this reboot.

Yes, the comics are selling well. Phenomenally well. If each of the new 52 has sold out at a print run averaging 50,000 (a very conservative estimate: Justice League reportedly sold over 170,000 copies alone, but some of the later, more esoteric titles no doubt received substantially smaller orders). All but Justice League are $2.99 each, so we'll run with the $2.99 price point and figure that's $2.99 * (50,000 x 52) = $7,774,000 gross profit for the month on DCnU North American first prints alone. (DC takes in somewhat less -- probably considerably less -- than half of that number in net profit.) That seems pretty good. But is it?

In July, DC's gross sales came to about $6,742,665. The conservative estimate therefore represents a 15% increase in sales. More importantly, back when this reboot was announced in the month of April, DC grossed only $5,814,418, making this sales bump a comparative 33% increase in sales! If this can be sustained, the reboot was totally worth it to DC Comics.

Sustainability is now the big question, though, isn't it? How many of these issues being sold are to new readers and how many are being sold to old readers who have decided to pick up a few extra comics this month to see what changes are in store for their favored characters? Will these "new" readers stick around for the long haul? How well is the new "day and date" initiative going with digital sales? Or does this all represent merely a brief bump in sales as always accompanies a new slate of number one issues?

Time will tell; all we can do at this point is speculate. Real sales figures will come out sometime in the next three weeks, and no doubt everyone will be relatively happy with what they reveal. In the meantime we have to be content knowing that whether or not this reboot is the answer that DC is seeking to combat a shrinking market, at least it is successful in the short term.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: reboot sales

Now that the final numbers are in, let's take a look at the roller coaster ride that was the monthly sales report for Booster Gold, Volume 2.

What can this graph tell us? Obviously those spikes are tie-ins to the crossover events Blackest Night and Flashpoint, respectively. That makes it pretty clear that whatever DC says about re-inventing the DC universe with this "New 52" reboot, mega-events sold books and will be returning sooner rather than later. Also, fears about fans abandoning books as the reboot loomed may have been appropriate: Booster Gold #47 did not sell as well as Booster Gold #46 did.

On the bright side, that chart represents sales of 1,345,643 individual comic books starring Booster Gold! If each of those issues averaged 2.0 ounces in weight, that's 168,205 pounds (76,296 kilograms) of comics. Since those comics are solid gold -- Booster Gold -- they should be worth $4,475,904,840 at current market price! But of course they are priceless to us Booster Gold fans, right?

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: graph sales