Yesterday, DC announced solicitations for the month of September, making it official that September 2012 will be the first month since November 2006 in which DC publishes no book including Booster Gold as a featured character. Even the best heroes need some time off every 69 months or so.

[Be aware that sales data in the graph above is not entirely accurate. In addition to unreported digital sales, sales priort to issue #9 were likely under-reported by up to 10% to account for estimated retailer returns. Therefore, it is unlikely that there was any significant sales upturn for issue #9. Unadjusted numbers for months prior to May can be seen at Comicbeat.com.]

It is important to remember that Justice League International wasn't canceled for poor sales alone. Many New 52 series are selling far, far worse. (For example, even with a guest appearance from the Booster Gold, Firestorm #9 sold almost half as many issues as JLI #9 did, and it still isn't canceled.) While expectations are certainly higher for Justice League titles, Justice League Dark has been selling only slightly better (+/-2,000 issues) than JLI, and it still isn't canceled. The evidence seems to indicate that DC has something else in mind for either the JLI or its star, Booster Gold.

Whatever the reason, I'll be saving an extra $4 come September.

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First Batwing, then OMAC, and soon Firehawk... Justice League International is starting to look like Canceled Comics Cavalcade. Once upon a time, characters that couldn't even beat Firestorm in a fight were relegated to be pulped in the Suicide Squad. Now, they are sent off to join the Justice League? Surely these leftover characters aren't the reason that Justice League International sales aren't topping the charts?

Note that Booster Gold, Volume 2, #5 had sold well with a guest appearance by a founding Justice Leaguer. Maybe JLI could use a little more help than Firestorm's cast-offs?

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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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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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