Fresh from the July 4th holiday, the internet explodes with market analyses. Marc-Oliver Frisch leads the charge with a look at DC’s sales for May:
“May was a big month for DC Comics, seeing both the conclusion of the publisher’s wildly successful INFINITE CRISIS series and the first four issues of its successor in terms of marketing attention, the year-long weekly title 52. Â Other new launches from DC in May were the limited series CRISIS AFTERMATH: SPECTRE and SECRET SIX, as well as the ongoing SHADOWPACT book. Â Via its Vertigo and WildStorm imprints, DC launched… nothing at all, actually, which hasn’t happened in a while.”
Paul O’Brien does similar number-crunching for Marvel:
“Between the Other, the new costume, the Civil War prologue, and Civil War itself, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #525 to #538 will all be boosted to some extent by crossovers and stunts. Â Arguably, when it goes on for that long, it’s no longer an artificial boost but simply a sign that the book is running a string of particularly popular stories. Can you really talk about a fourteen-month artificial boost?”
Wizard, meanwhile, is looking for the next big thing:
“Darwyn Cooke’s love letter to Silver Age comics in DC: The New Frontier gave fans a new reason to love older comics with its epic look at the way superheroes operated back in the day. Now that DC has plans to drop a deluxe Absolute Edition of the six-issue miniseries, expect hordes of fans to drop their old copies on eBay. If you don’t mind not having the oversized hardcover, start looking online now to build your collection for cheap!”
Comics: A hobby where everyone can pay close attention to the numbers.
July 5th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
I was shocked that Wizard’s site had a feature on investmenting in new comics–they recommended the new OMAC series! Is this sort of thing actually in the magazine itself? I was under the impression that, bereft of the speculator audience, Wizard mostly was all about “which character is strongest,” or “which costume is sexiest?”
July 5th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
The back of each issue of Wizard has a price guide and features like a top ten list of “hot” books that are going up in value. Or at least it did back before I stopped reading it a year or two ago.