Over at Your Mom’s Basement, Ash Aiwase - a man who really should be doing more of this kind of thing - is looking at sales figures for the year and comparing Marvel’s and DC’s performances:
Marvel is obviously playing for short term boosts (Dark Tower, Cap 25) these days; they do a great job of getting people to walk into a comic store, but it doesn’t look like they’re doing a great job of retaining a lot of that walk-in business… What’s worse is that DC isn’t budging one inch with all of this increased traffic. Where was some last minute advertising when the media blitz of Captain America started? Does DC even want new customers right now?
…Countdown has been panned pretty vocally by most of the major comics pundits, and at this point, the Countdown equivalent of 52 Pickup has actively stopped blogging about the book that is it’s raison d’etre. At this point, Marvel has almost a 50% market share, and DC can’t even break 30%. Two major events add to the boost this month (Both WWH and New Avengers 31), but DC weathered events like these in previous months and managed to hold onto their market share.
Not so much, now.
Like I mentioned earlier, I think lopsidedness like this is bad for the industry, and it’s perfectly acceptable to critique the way that Marvel has achieved some of these numbers, but the real worry is the DC nosedive - it appears that the complete Charlie Foxtrot of Countdown and its myriad tie-ins are actively pushing people away from DC books.
The following thread is worth a look as well.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Ash is the man, truly.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I’ve dropped all Marvel books and upped my DC since I saw the May numbers. I like DC’s current direction, and I hope this doesn’t sway them to change it.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
DC’s eternal Crisis is what’s keeping me out of most of their books. I’m into the Green Lantern books and I’ll be picking up Flash when Waid returns but other than that, and I hate to say it, I’m making mine Marvel for the most part.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
You know, there’s a lot of good points in there. I worry about the industry with the endless sea of crappy crossovers from Marvel and DC…. Quesada and DiDio need to either get some sense knocked into them or find a job more appropriate to their talents….
July 16th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
What? Graeme McMillan ripping DC? I can’t imagine such a thing, especially considering EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS BLOG ENTRIES DELIVERS THE SAME NOTE…
Get a new tune, dude - this one’s getting old. We get it. You like Joe Quesada. Dislike Dan Didio. Move on.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:05 am
That’s funny, it allways seems like Graeme is ripping on Marvel
July 17th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Haven’t some commentators noted that since DC is owned by Time Warner, the amount of the market share that they have doesn’t really matter at all? My understanding was that since Time Warner is a billion dollar corporation, unlike Marvel, DC’s publishing arm doesn’t necessarily need to make alot of money, they just need to produce and maintain intellectual properties.
Everytime I see one of these market things about how Marvel is destroying DC or whatever, I think about that whole angle. Am I wrong?
July 17th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
The thing is DC does not act as R&D for Time Warner and that is shocking to me.
Let’s face it…there’s not going to be an Infinite Crisis big-budget movie or TV series. DC pandering to long-term fans or their newfound fascination with a cohesive universe does not help Time Warner at all, as they cannot market these properties to people not involved in comics.
It’s ridiculous. They’ve got Superman and Batman and that alone should have them compete for market share, but instead they choose to comingle everything and drag their icons down in the muck with everything else.
I firmly expect these two reasons to eventually be the reason Dan Didio or Paul Levitz is eventually relieved of their duties.