Retailer Chris Butcher noted on Friday that Marvel has about twice as many books coming out on Wednesday as DC does:
Retailers reading over their invoices for comics and graphic novels shipping next week will be shocked to discover that Marvel Comics is shipping about 34 titles next week, to only about 17 titles from DC Comics. It’s a rare thing for Marvel to ship that many titles in a week (this week, for example, they only shipped about 17 or so), but to double the output of their closest competitor? That’s very rare indeed… Until you stop to consider that one of DC’s titles shipping next week is the next installment in their summer crossover Final Crisis.
So the question is, would Marvel release 34 superhero books on the same day just to try and bleed fans’ wallets dry on the week where DC tries to make a big push with their flagship book? Well, considering nearly every one of Marvel’s top sellers is dropping this week, I’m going to go ahead and guess here: Oh yeah, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Either that or it’s the sort of hideous oversight that betrays gross incompetence. But it was probably deliberate.
Some of the books Marvel has shipping this week include both Avengers books, Ultimates 3, 1985, both X-Men books, Fantastic Four and the last Joss Whedon Runaways, just to name a few. Retailers could end up feeling the squeeze this week, as they have a lot of money tied up paying for all this product and some customers may not come in for a few weeks to buy their books.
Addendum: Chris Williams at Pop Syndicate breaks down Marvel’s June output with an eye-catching pie chart
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
So were Runaways and Ultimates, which were late already, held back even later for this particular day?
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
And does releasing that many Loeb books on one day constitute a violation of the Geneva accords?
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Richard at Zeus commented on my article that this holds up to the “end of quarter” theory based on his numbers from last year.
“Interesting…I added up the late titles vs the on time titles on my invoice and the late titles equal 49% of my current Marvel invoice.
“If this is to increase their quarter end bump, it certainly did.”
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I know about 5 or 6 books were scheduled for last week and got pushed back for whatever reason. Cap, Runaways, etc. So, they were technically going ot have 24 or so books last week and similar this week. I doubt it’s any big conspiracy and it’s probably Diamond’s fault, if anyones.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Marvel is putting out almost 100 comics this June, plus several 2nd and 3rd printings, in addition to all their collected editions. It certainly looks like flooding the market to me.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Ironically, between the two of them I’ve only got about 4 books I need to buy this week.