Elsewhere: Various April numbers links

John Mayo and Sam discuss the April Comics numbers, but not before John Mayo and Chris discuss the Trades numbers.

Meanwhile, at The Beat, the new guys are much more prompt about getting the charts up than the grizzled old veterans were, so we already have the April Marvel month-to-month and DC month-to-month numbers up from Jason Enright and David Carter respectively.

Elsewhere: Beat Indy March Sales Analysis

Over at The Beat, Chris Rice, either for the first time or as usual, I'm not sure, has the Indy month-to-month sales analysis for the March 2014 comics chart.

Observations on April 2014 Comics Chart - Second Issue Drops

There were 37 second issues (not counting annuals) on Diamond's April 2014 Comics chart. Not surprisingly, all of them dropped in sales from the first issue. The average drop was 32.5%, a number that definitely seems to be creeping up. A few years ago about 20% was normal. Third issues these days tend to fall about 10% on average, which is up just slightly from a few years ago.

Here they are, in order of the drop percentage. Comments on just a few of them, most of them are pretty self explanatory.

MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER (DE)
-64% : 27.5k to 9.9k
That's pretty massive, one of the biggest second issue drops we've seen in the last decade when there wasn't a situation like a $1 first issue or some other over-the-top promotion. That doesn't bode well for the future of this Gold Key revival that Dynamite is in the middle of. Both non-#1 issues this month are under 10k in just the third month, and each launch comes in lower than the previous one. By comparison, it took Valiant almost a 1 1/2 years before they had books below 10k, and two years before all their non-#1 books were below 10k (which also happened this month).

TALES OF HONOR (IMA)
-56% : 13.8k to 6.1k
I thought those first issue sales felt high for a book based on a science fiction series which has seen better days, adapted by a comic studio which has seen better days. Still pretty good sales for a Top Cow book in 2014.

ROGUE TROOPER (IDW)
-45% : 6.3k to 3.4k
Yeah, I don't think the interest in Americanized versions of 2000 A.D. concepts extends beyond JUDGE DREDD. Hell, it barely extends to DREDD, which only sells about 7k, not sure if anything better could be expected for this.

HULK (MAR)
-45% : 73.6k to 40.6k
That first issue was also in April. This pretty much turned the clock back about six months, selling what the previous series was back in October. That series ended at about 30k, so we'll see if this can settle in ahead of that.

RUSH CLOCKWORK ANGELS (BOO)
-44% : 11.6k to 6.5k
It seems that the second issue drops for the mid-tier publishers are starting to crawl upwards into the range that Marvel has been in for a while. That's one of many Marvel behaviours they'd be wise not to emulate, if you have a choice. Anyway, this is more in line with what you'd expect from a serialized adaptation of a 2-year-old album by a geriatric Canadian progressive rock band.

DAREDEVIL (MAR)
-44% : 76k to 42.8k
I'm ignoring the weird "#1.50" issue between the first and second. Anyway, this is pretty much following the same trend as HULK, with the numbers just slightly higher. It'll also have to settle down quickly to remain ahead of the 32k the previous series ended with.

SOVEREIGN (IMA)
-44% : 13.2k to 7.5k

AUTEUR (Oni)
-43% : 7.5k to 4.3k

SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN SEASON 6 (DE)
-43% : 11.5k to 6.5k
For comparison, it took the previous BIONIC MAN series up to #15 to fall down to this level of sales.

RETURNING (BOO)
-42% : 5.1k to 3k

IRON PATRIOT (MAR)
-42% : 31.8k to 18.5k

ALL NEW GHOST RIDER (MAR)
-41% : 50.1k to 29.4k

BLACKOUT (DAR)
-41% : 5.5k to 3.3k

SILVER SURFER (MAR)
-40% : 64.9k to 39.1k

MAGNETO (MAR)
-39% : 59.1k to 35.8k

MOON KNIGHT (MAR)
-37% : 65.3k to 40.9k
Note that both MAGNETO and MOON KNIGHT had some re-order activity making the charts for their first issues, so the comparison to just first month sales isn't as bad (35% and 30%), but still not great.

CAPTAIN MARVEL (MAR)
-37% : 44.2k to 28k
Almost exactly what #2 of the previous series sold in 2012, so if it follows that trend it's down below 20k by #8.

STRAY BULLETS THE KILLERS (IMA)
-36% : 14.2k to 9.1k

STARLIGHT (IMA)
-35% : 34.1k to 22.3k

VEIL (DAR)
-33% : 14.4k to 9.6k
Bit of a dip, but still the best-selling Dark Horse creator-owned book.

EVIL EMPIRE (BOO)
-28% : 9.3k to 6.7k

SECRET AVENGERS (MAR)
-27% : 34k to 24.7k
The progression of SECRET AVENGERS second issues:
SECRET AVENGERS 2010 #2 : 77933
SECRET AVENGERS 2013 #2 : 46419
SECRET AVENGERS 2014 #2 : 24724
The next time they launch it I think it'll be cancelled before it's even solicited...

GFT NEVERLAND AGE OF DARKNESS (ZEN)
-27% : 5.7k to 4.1k

STAR SLAMMERS REMASTERED (IDW)
-26% : 3.8k to 2.8k

AVENGERS UNDERCOVER (MAR)
-26% : 31.9k to 23.7k
Just because your movie made a billion dollars doesn't mean you can have a dozen books with "Avengers" in the title running at the same time.

ROCKY & BULLWINKLE (IDW)
-25% : 7k to 5.3k
"Hey Rocky, watch me pull a successful relaunch out of my hat!"
"Again? That trick never works!"

WITCHER (DAR)
-25% : 6.5k to 4.9k

BTVS SEASON 10 (DAR)
-22% : 27.9k to 21.8k
Still slightly ahead (about 7%) of the sales SEASON 9 finished at, but the drop for #3 should take care of that. Just two "seasons" ago (which is seven years, I guess these are Westeros seasons) the second issue sold almost 100k, and eventually over 130k in visible sales after re-orders came in.

BATMAN ETERNAL (DC)
-20% : 96.1k to 76.9k
The first of DC's new weekly books, which is a big part of their publishing plan over the next year. Not too serious a drop for these days, but note that DC makes the first few issues of their weekly books returnable to give retailers a better chance to gauge sales levels. That also means that Diamond reduces the sales somewhat to account for the returnability, the exact amount is unknown (but presumably #1 and #2 were reduced proportionally).

CROW PESTILENCE (IDW)
-20% : 5.1k to 4.1k

MONSTER & MADMAN (IDW)
-20% : 7.1k to 5.7k

GFT ROBYN HOOD LEGEND (ZEN)
-19% : 6.6k to 5.3k

AMERICAN VAMPIRE SECOND CYCLE (DC)
-18% : 19k to 15.5k
Still a bit up on the last issues of the first series before the hiatus, but not by much. Should be down below that level by #6. Everything with a smaller drop was a mini-series, so this is actually maintaining sales pretty well for an on-going series.

SHOTGUN WEDDING (IMA)
-16% : 5.2k to 4.3k

DEADPOOL VS CARNAGE (MAR)
-14% : 57.3k to 49.4k

FATHOM KIANI VOL 3 (ASP)
-14% : 4.3k to 3.7k
At this level there's just not that far to fall and remain on the charts.

WHAT IF AGE OF ULTRON (MAR)
-7% : 23.8k to 22.1k
A weekly mini-series of essentially interchangeable chapters, so a pretty tight spread in sales, with the lowest about 83% of the highest. Pretty normal for these weekly WHAT IF events Marvel has done a few times in the last decade.

Observations on April 2014 Comics Chart - The Rising

Only a handful of significant (greater than 3%) increases in April's Diamond Comics Chart.

SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #31 (MAR) : +58% : +49885 units
Final issue of the series, and closely tied to the big launch of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN last month. The increase is even more impressive if you compare it to only first month sales of #30, which had significant re-orders. Then it would be +80%. Anyway, despite everything this series did seem to be a story that got some good traction among the pool of readers still buying comics in direct market outlets for actual story content reasons.

DEADPOOL #27 (MAR) : +41% : +17896 units
A lot of factors in this rise for a significantly higher priced $10 issue , including new stories from past creators, a lot of covers and more.

SUPERMAN #30 (DC) : +11% : +3683 units
ACTION COMICS #30 (DC) : +10% : +3578 units
SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN #7 (DC) : +4% : +1849 units

The Superman family of books has a crossover featuring the villain Doomsday. The first time they did that had a lot more impact than increases of less than 4000 copies...

WARLORD OF MARS #100 (DE) : +58% : +3244 units

Adding a bunch of stuff together to artificially get to a landmark final issue before the upcoming reboot (while a #100 is gold, a #101 is poison apparently). Big percentage increase, which you get when sales are so low. There's a reason we're not seeing JOHN CARTER 2 opening in theatres this summer...

WALKING DEAD #125 (IMA) : +3% : +2102 units
TMNT ONGOING #33 (IDW) : +11% : +1696 units
BATMAN AND #30 WONDER WOMAN (DC) : +4% : +1537 units
STAR TREK ONGOING #32 (IDW) : +10% : +1020 units
Doesn't seem to be any particular reason for these small increases, other than WALKING DEAD is coming off some good numbers for the TV show season finale, there's a new TMNT movie coming out soon and Wonder Woman is probably more popular than Aquaman, the previous guest star in BATMAN AND...". Got nothing for TREK.

X-FILES SEASON 10 #11 (IDW) : +8% : +958 units
This starts a storyline that sees some callbacks to the TV show (Krycek, Lone Gunmen), so that might account for the modest increase in orders.

MAXX MAXXIMIZED #6 (IDW) : +16% : +738 units
This looks like a phantom increase, with #5 having had an especially large 22% drop, possibly due to some part of the print run shipping late, but not enough to make the charts this month. If you look at the sales of #4, it's more like a 5% drop per issue, which is more realistic. And all-in-all, not doing too bad for a serialized reprint of a book which was pretty readily available for a long time.

MANIFEST DESTINY #6 (IMA) : +5% : +699 units
This seems to be genuinely doing well, with increases for the last few issues and some re-orders making the charts for earlier issues recently, plus a $1 reprint of #1.  The first collection is out this month at $10, and #7 in June continues after that, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a big jump for that.

GODZILLA RULERS OF THE EARTH #11 (IDW) : +4% : +240 units

Pretty small increase, maybe just noise, or maybe indicative of the level of interest in the movie (although another company has the actual movie license).

New Chart Day Link Roundup

It's Diamond Charts Day, the monthly holiday for numbers fans.

John Jackson Miller has your fix here, with the Top 400 Comics, plus some small press books lower in the charts, and the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks, with one small presser from down the charts. Some commentary as well, over here.

John Mayo has his version at CBR, with the added information he puts on issue-to-issue comparisons for the comics and cumulative sales on the Trades chart. His commentary here.

ICV2 has their version here (Comics) and here (Graphic Novels). Commentary article here.

I really need to settle on a consistent way to refer to that second chart...

The most immediately notable thing is AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2014 SERIES) #1, at 532k, definitely the highest single month sales of any comic charting in the Diamond exclusive era, maybe on track to be the best selling period when all is said and done. That should have a spectacular second issue drop, maybe also a record.  Speaking of which, some very impressive second issue falls this time, like 64% for MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, already under 10k.  Pool on how long this Gold Key revival lasts? Valiant is also all below 10k except their one first issue this month, but it took them almost two years to get there.

Looks like a more typical month on the Graphic Books chart, without any evidence of a massive sale like the last few months.  150 items are new, 150 are backlist. SAGA is doing stunningly well, with the top three backlist entries, the first book has passed 100k just in sales visible on the Diamond charts, and the third book, which placed behind the newest WALKING DEAD last month, has now outsold that WD book in cumulative sales.

More in the week to come.

Elsewhere: April 2014 Diamond overview

Diamond has their market overview numbers for April up now and Comichron has the usual quick analysis from John Jackson Miller, plus a recent article about "million sellers". Nothing much to add to the numbers released so far, more when the full charts come out next week.

Elsewhere: April 2014 BookScan chart

ICV2 has the April 2014 BookScan Top 20.  They still seem to think DC and Marvel not being on the charts for two months in a row is something new, which as I pointed out last month isn't the case. Anyway, Marvel is back on with a movie tie-in release, as well as some reference books from DK Publishing.  Other than that, nothing too surprising, multiple volumes of SAGA, WALKING DEAD and ATTACK ON TITAN, the latest issues of long-running manga successes NARUTO and BLEACH, the first volume of another manga with anime/video-game connections and the latest ADVENTURE TIME book making the chart for the third month in a row.

Elsewhere: Mayo on Marvel Relaunches

Between the monthly Diamond charts, John Mayo looks at some of the recent Marvel relaunches and diminishing returns, with charts.

Elsewhere: Archie sales figures

Once upon a time the annual Statement of Ownership required by some postal regulation was the most reliable look into sales figures that readers got. Most publishers don't run them these days, but Archie does, and  Johanna Draper Carlson reports on them at Comics Worth Reading.  Here are the figures for 2013 she could get (not including their videogame books) with links to the previous six years. Those sales do look pretty bad, with sell-through on the digests only at about 30%, and total sales way down from just a few years ago. I also didn't realize that Archie's standard non-digest comic line (not including videogame books and high-concept titles like Archie Zombies or Archie Married) was down to so few on-going books.