Over at The Beat, Paul O’Brien and Marc-Oliver Frisch are looking over last month’s sales figures already. O’Brien looks at the Marvel’s supremacy:
Once again, Marvel dominated DC in terms of direct market share, but this month’s margin is outrageously wide. In units, Marvel won by 48% to 29% - in dollars, 44% to 27%. That margin reflects the fact that Marvel are having a good year in the direct market, and DC… well, DC aren’t.
Frisch, however, wants to qualify the above:
While we’re at it, much has been made of the fact that DC’s market share was dwarfed by Marvel’s in June, shrinking to a mere 27.02% in dollars and 28.57% in units. This looks dire at first glance, but there are a few factors that should be considered. One, a number of DC titles failed to come out in June, among them major performers like All Star Superman, Batman and Action Comics. Two, no DC titles failed to come out in May, meaning that the usual bunch of stragglers was missing in June. And three, as a logical result, DC only shipped 61 periodicals in June (not counting reprints, magazines and the Johnny DC cartoon adaptations), instead of the usual 70 to 80. Obviously, those factors won’t apply in July, so, while I agree DC aren’t having a banner year, the sky isn’t falling just yet. It’s just tottering menacingly.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I’m so tired of that song.
Wonder how DC’s doing outside of the DM in terms of trades, etc? It’s known that some Vertigo titles that underperform in the DM do just fine in ordinary bookstores, so maybe they’re on to something.
July 20th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
DC is doing great compared to what they were doing 5 years ago. The “problem” is Marvel is doing so much better.
Marvel vs DC, Marvel wins.
DC 2007 vs DC 2003, 2007 wins.
While I’m sure DC is seeing the numbers Marvel is taking in and wish they could be hitting those numbers again, I’m sure they’re happy that they’re doing much better than they have been. Every year, DC is doing better than the year prior.
The sky’s not falling in any way, shape, or form.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Yes, DC is selling more comics than they were… I don’t consider that “doing great”. For one thing they’re putting out tons more. The fact that they can’t sell titles like “Hawkman” and “Aquaman”, and the huge drops so many titles face - either from year to year or issue to issue for miniseries - that to me says they’re not doing very well. That and not publishing their flagship books that have been around for 65 years reliably … I think the Kuberts were sent by Marvel to try to ruin DC.
July 21st, 2007 at 7:18 am
“Every year, DC is doing better than the year prior.”
That was true until relatively recently, but I think they’ve turned a corner and started going down. For the last few years they’ve had a big presence at the top end of the DM chart, and that’s just evaporated. They only had two books in June that had gone up year on year - JUSTICE and LOONEY TUNES. One’s a miniseries, the other is a kids book, and neither of them was up by more than 2.1%. And now they’re running crossovers that actually cause books to *shed* readers.
There are real, fundamental problems with the state of their superhero books right now, and it doesn’t help that they’ve committed themselves to a grand plan that most people seem to have lost interest in.