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!

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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.

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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?

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What a long, strange trip it's been.

Above is the sales graph for the entire Booster Gold Volume 2 series to date, including the recently sold-out first printing of Booster Gold #44. Even without figuring in the second printing or the digital sales, that's a pretty good bump from Flashpoint tie-in sales.

I'm not going to pretend that I understand how sales bumps from Flashpoint tie-ins are supposed to transfer to entirely new series, but if even a few new readers discover the golden goodness of Booster Gold during this transition, at least some good will come of it.

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A few days ago, Booster booster Harry reported in the Boosterrific Forum that final sales estimates were in for the entire Booster Gold run of Giffen and DeMatteis. All things being equal, the news isn't that bad.

The sales fall seems to hit rock bottom with issue 41 and bounce back a little following the introduction of the Perforated Man. It's probably anyone's guess whether this is because the title finally found its sales floor, fans were excited about the storyline, or speculators were gathering for the pending Jurgens return/Flashpoint tie-in. If this is any indication, Booster Gold may still have a bit of life left. (Hopefully, this isn't simply a dead cat bounce.)

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