With the coming of the New 52, DC released a glut of new books on the market. Readers bought far more books then they typically would in the initial excitement in order to sample the offerings of this brave new world.

Unfortunately, that buying pace cannot be sustained. Because so much capital was expended during the buying frenzy generated during the initial hype, fewer titles can be purchased going forward, so the hype ends up detrimental in the long run as it forces buyers to be more selective than they would otherwise have been. And thus this hype cycle ends up damaging sales, not increasing them.

At least that's my theory. I'm also blaming Vixen: so far she's just dead weight.

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This month's installment of Russell Burlingame's "International Exchange" column includes a small sampling of Dan Jurgens' breakdowns for the issue. It also includes a bit of social commentary.

IX: It's funny—Batman's comments about people feeling angry and pushed to the brink by governments they no longer trust is as true in a world without aliens and superheroes and madmen with atomic backpacks as it is in-continuity. Was that an intentional observation or just the way life and art play together?

DJ: Very intentional.

I've made it clear from the start that there are elements of this book that are supposed to reflect the world we live in. Consensus has become an impossibility. Any topic or situation seems divided with one party on one side, the other party on the other. MSNBC take an unreasonable stance to one extreme, FOX News the other.

And the minute one party actually does achieve supremacy and do something, like in Wisconsin, the opposite side goes so far as to try to throw a governor out of office. It's not a question of, "I want government to get moving again." It's more, "I want government to do what I want it to do." There's a big difference.

So, yeah, people are angry. If the DCU is to reflect our own world, there's no way everyone would embrace heroes because there's no way it could happen in our reality. With that in mind, Batman's commentary extends to both worlds.

After DC's last major continuity reboot in 1985, the first major crossover was Legends. At the time, America was embroiled in conflicts ranging from drug wars to class wars, cold wars to cola wars. Reflecting the social and political turmoil, Legends was primarily concerned with exploring both the role of super-heroes in the contemporary DC Universe as well as the public's reaction to them. After all, what good is Superman to a world that ignores or hates him?

It sounds like Jurgens is interested in re-investigating some of the same territory a quarter of a century later in the light of the terrible economic times and divisive political culture of the modern day. Hopefully, Jurgens and his fellow writers don't take reality too seriously. I'd hate to one day realize that the DCnU isn't a nice a place to live, and I wouldn't want to visit there.

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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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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.

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