DC Bombshell sales increases

For June, DC had variant covers scheduled for 21 of their books (19 of which actually came out in June) with the theme "Bombshells", modern takes on classic pin-up art. They've been doing such themed variant months for a while, with themes like "Scribblenauts" or "Robot Chicken" or "Batman 66", but previously the orders for the books were limited by retailer orders for the regular covers, usually 1 for 25 (retailers could order 1 variant for every 25 regular covers they ordered). Starting with the "Bombshells" one, they changed that to give retailers the option to order as many of the variants as they wished. This led to a massive across the board increase in sales for those 19 comics, with one interesting exception.

Sorted by percentage increase:

SUPERMAN == +119.9%
BATWOMAN == +81.6%
CATWOMAN == +67.3%
WONDER WOMAN == +57.3%
RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS == +55.6%
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK == +50.8%
BATGIRL == +49.9%
HARLEY QUINN == +49.3%
GREEN LANTERN CORPS == +43.2%
AQUAMAN == +39.8%
FLASH == +37.8%
EARTH 2 == +36.9%
ACTION COMICS == +34.9%
DETECTIVE COMICS == +33.9%
BATMAN AND == +33.6%
SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN == +31.1%
GREEN LANTERN == +28.7%
BATMAN == +21%
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED == -2%

Of course, SUPERMAN also had a high-profile new creative team, so it would probably have had a big increase anyway, but probably not quite as high an increase.  The only one to drop in sales was JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, which was the second issue. In normal circumstances, that #2 would have seen at least a 20% drop, so holding at just a 2% drop is effectively a large increase in the range of the other books.

Sorted by units:

SUPERMAN == +48.6k copies

HARLEY QUINN == +30.8k copies

BATMAN == +22.6k copies

DETECTIVE COMICS == +18.5k copies

WONDER WOMAN == +17.6k copies

BATGIRL == +15.8k copies

BATWOMAN == +15.1k copies

SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN == +14.9k copies

ACTION COMICS == +14.3k copies

BATMAN AND == +14.2k copies

CATWOMAN == +13.6k copies

FLASH == +12.9k copies

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK == +12.9k copies

AQUAMAN == +12.8k copies

EARTH 2 == +12.7k copies

GREEN LANTERN == +12.5k copies

GREEN LANTERN CORPS == +12.3k copies

RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS == +11.8k copies

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED == -1.3k copies

Taking out the two special case extreme values, it looks like the gimmick was good for about an average of 15k copies, or a 45% increase.

The same open order variant covers continue with the themes for July ("Batman 75"), August ("Selfie") and October ("Monsters"), with September having the 3-D covers for their "Futures End" one-shots, so we'll see how the sales do with those themes. I suspect that they'll all decrease from the June numbers, but stay ahead of the May base numbers for a few months.

New Chart Day Link Roundup

June Diamond charts are up. For some reason it looks like Diamond went back to just releasing the Top 300 for the comics (plus some scattered lower entries from the Small Press / Indy charts), which is a shame. That extra information was potentially interesting, if you got a good long run of it together.

Comichron has John Jackson Miller's chart over here, and some analysis here. Miller also has some other interesting posts recently, like an overview of 54 years of Archie sales figures, and it looks like he'll have some overall market data for 2013 up soon.

ICV2 has their Comics chart here, and Graphic Novels here. Analysis here.

A few quick observations.  The Books chart is just over half backlist (144 new, 156 backlist), thanks partly to a lot of discount items from DC this time around (for example, ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN FOR TOMORROW shipped over 1800 copies at fire sale prices averaging over 80% last month, and it's a book which only shipped about 1200 copies in the first month of release back in 2009). SAGA is still king of the backlist, with the three volumes being the top three backlist items and in the Top 10 of all book items. And of course AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE was the biggest new release by a wide margin, a first for Archie in that format.

Over on the Comics side, a bit of an aberration thanks to DC's themed variant covers. Until now, the availability of those variants was limited by retailer orders of the main cover (1 for 25). Starting in June, with the "Bombshell variants", DC allowed retailers to order as many as they wished. This led to an average increase on books with the variant of about 45% (not counting SUPERMAN, which also had a high profile new creative team, and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED which was on its second issue, and only fell 2% from sales of #1, which is effectively a 30%+ increase from expected sales). It remains to be seen if this particular variant theme was especially enticing or if the upcoming ones ("Batman 75" in July, "Selfies" in August, "Monsters" in October) deliver comparable results. I don't expect them to, but they should keep sales higher than the May base level.

Other than that, business as usual, lots of big second issue drops, averaging over 30%, a few surprisingly high launches, we'll see if any of them hold on to most of those numbers, and a few modest increases which might be sustainable content based rather than one-off gimmick based.

Elsewhere: June 2014 Diamond overview

Diamond has their initial numbers release for June 2014 up now. Expect the full chart up on Monday.

No big launches this month, so no first issues in the entire Top 10 Comics list, and BATMAN tops the list again. Looks like HARLEY QUINN and DETECTIVE will post some pretty significant gains, probably due to the variant covers offered. SUPERMAN probably more than doubled sales from its recent track record thanks to a new creative team, but would have done a lot better with a new #1. On the other hand, SUPERMAN #33 probably won't have nearly the 30-40% plus drop that a #2 would have.

Here's the Top 50 in each category, ranked but not indexed. OUTCAST #1 is the top debut for the month, according to the publisher it sold about 86k, but that presumably includes sales outside NorthAm and there's some reduction for returnability, so it'll probably come in about 72k on the estimates. Also starting strongly from Image is THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE, probably in the 50k+ range. Also looks like a lot of DC books got a big boost from their "Bombshells variant" themed covers.