Paul O’Brien crunches the Marvel sales numbers for March, including a 31% sales drop for the second issue of Millar and Hitch’s Fantastic Four:
Well, I don’t understand this at all. I had Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s FANTASTIC FOUR pegged as a much bigger deal, but here we are down at 67K. For comparison, that’s slightly down from last June, which was an Initiative issue by Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier.
Issue #554 picks up re-orders of 5,457, but overall, this seems a very disappointing performance for such a high-profile creative team.
We did about 100K of the first issue (with variants) and about 80K of our second (with no variants) so things are pretty much as they were. Sales prior were about 50K so this is a nice jump up and we’re very solidly on these same numbers for the third and fourth issues. But like we always said the real jump comes with the fifth issue and the Death of Sue story… which also ties in with Old Man Logan. I reckon this should take us over the 100K and somewhere around 110K by the final Doom’s Masters storyline.
Also in that Millarworld thread, Bryan Hitch announces that there will be no FF trade until the entire Millar/Hitch run is over… which somehow, I can’t see being the case with Marvel’s usual schedule. Isn’t the Millar/Hitch run supposed to be sixteen issues? There’s really going to be almost a year and a half with no current FF trades?
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:33 am
I thought they would have been better off making Millar/Hitch’s run it’s own series/mini-series.
Same goes for Millar/McNiven’s Wolverine. But I guess as long Marvel is happy, all’s good.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Love Millar, but where the hell does he get his numbers from? Newsstand added in there too?
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:03 am
Surprised they think a “Death of Sue” story is going to boost sales by 25 percent. Maybe I underestimate her popularity.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
“Love Millar, but where the hell does he get his numbers from?”
They’re total sales, presumably, including sales to the UK, newsstand sales and the like. The Diamond data Paul is working with measures North American comics stores only.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Taking Mark’s comments in turn:
* ICV2 have their first issue doing a shade over 98K, which fits with Mark’s “about 100K.”
* ICV2 has the second issue doing 67K, which is some way off from “about 80K.” But he might be counting re-orders that shipped in April.
* “Sales prior were about 50K so this is a nice jump up”: technically true but hugely misleading. He’s thinking of issues #552-553, which did indeed sell about 50K. But that was the tail end of a fill-in run, which was losing readers hand over fist. They’re freak issues, and they don’t provide a meaningful comparison.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
I’m betting the trade sales are going to be pretty big.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
* “Sales prior were about 50K so this is a nice jump up”: technically true but hugely misleading. He’s thinking of issues #552-553, which did indeed sell about 50K. But that was the tail end of a fill-in run, which was losing readers hand over fist. They’re freak issues, and they don’t provide a meaningful comparison.
Paul,
You have your past estimates of this title. When did the FF consistently sell above 50K according to the estimates this decade?
03/03 Fantastic Four #67 - 53,218
03/04 Fantastic Four #511 - 50,089
03/05 Fantastic Four #524 - 46,660
03/06 Fantastic Four #536 - 57,945
=====
03/07 Fantastic Four #543 - 78,823
03/07 Fantastic Four #544 - 85,677
vs.
03/08 Fantastic Four #555 - 67,416
I remember spikes for JMS first issue, Civil War, and the New FF. Maybe Unthinkable. Any others.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I HATE to call out one contributor like this, but it’s the coloring. It’s so washed out you can’t tell what’s going on half the time. That and the lack of panel borders make it so hard to follow. I talked about it here:
http://dryponder.livejournal.com/147521.html
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I’d have to say their formula is simply ill-suited for this title, just like Hitch was blah on JLA. I think people blamed that on the colorist too. Ultimates was just a right place/right time book.
But wait! Let’s kill Sue! That’ll get some sales. That’s some great storytelling there guys. *rolls eyes*
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
….maybe people are just getting tired of Millar’s writing and constantly being “on” all the time?
Also the belief that the book will be delayed, despite Brevoort saying everything is on schedule (the guy also said Civil War was on schedule, for reference).
But why stop at killing Sue, Millar? Maybe you could have Val get killed too. Cripple Franklin while you’re at it.
May 4th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I thought the run so far would be much better in sales considering the names on the book. Personally I haven’t cared for it so far, both just seem off their game here, but that’s just me.
And didn’t Sue die already during JMS’ run? Though I still don’t know why it would be a big jump in sales for that, unless she was a Skrull or something like that.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
“Also in that Millarworld thread, Bryan Hitch announces that there will be no FF trade until the entire Millar/Hitch run is over”
Trades, maybe, but there’s a hard cover coming in August.
http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Four-Worlds-Greatest-Vol/dp/0785132252/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209944450&sr=8-3