Paul O’Brien looks at Marvel’s wonderful May sales figures and has an interesting explanation for them:
It was a quiet month for new titles, though, with one new ongoing series in the shape of MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN. There were also three new miniseries – SILVER SURFER: REQUIEM, SPIDER-MAN: FAIRY TALES and the first Marvel Illustrated series, LAST OF THE MOHICANS.
But a shortage of big new titles doesn’t prevent Marvel from dominating the direct market once again – perhaps because, for once, almost all Marvel’s books shipped. The biggest title to miss shipping was SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN, which nobody will lose any sleep over.
As usual, lots of interesting commentary at the link.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Yeah…I personally think the reason for the increase in disparity between DC and Marvel in the most recently reported month has to do with how many titles Marvel actually shipped versus DC. Not so much about how many individual copies of each title shipped, but that Marvel had more unique offerings to supply. They’re still doing great and DC could probably learn a lot from them right now, but I don’t think there was an overnight change in the market like so many people think the shift suggested.