Earlier this week DC and Marvel, the American serial comic book industry’s two largest players, released their solicitations for the comics they plan to publish in December of this year (DC’s are here and Marvel’s are here, if you missed ‘em).
These monthly solicitations, released about nine weeks in advance of the time the comics themselves actually show up in comic shops, always provide a pretty good snapshot of the companies, and thus the direct market built around them. A market you’ve probably heard sure seemed like it might be in trouble, if you’ve read any of the tons of commentary regarding sales data from this past August.
So I thought I’d pull out my fine-tooth comb and take it to the solicitations—since I went bald in my twenties, I haven’t had much use for my fine-tooth combs anyway—and see what data I could pull out.
As I did last month, I wanted to see which which franchises the Big Two were exploiting the most in terms of the numbers of books attached to each character/concept/IP. Additionally, this time I wanted to count up the number of books at the $3.99-for-22-story-pages price point, as it seems to be steadily increasing (most notably at DC, which eschewed that particular price point for so long) and, more out of curiosity than concern, what role other-media adaptations play in the two publishers’ lines.
As the big and still emerging news of the week—DC’s corporate rejiggering‚ indicates, these are two publishers that are still moving as they get comfortable with their new leadership structures, and a rather fluid market, so these numbers might change month to month, and not ultimately mean much of anything.
Still, as a purple puppet of a vampire taught me when I was a child, counting is fun! So let’s take a look, shall we?
First, let’s look at which franchises are being most-mined.
Batman: 14
Batman, Batman, Inc, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman Annual, Batman and Robin, Batman: Odyssey, Batman: Orphans, Batman: Streets of Gotham, Batman Confidential, Batman 80-Page Giant 2010, Detective Comics, Detective Comics Annual, All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Superman/Batman
Batman spin-offs: 6
Red Robin, Birds of Prey, Batgirl, Azrael, Gotham City Sirens, Knight & Squire
X-Men: 12
X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men Legacy, X-Men: To Serve and Protect, X-Men Forever 2, Chaos War: X-Men, Heroic Age: X-Men, Uncanny X-Force, X-Factor, New Mutants, New Mutants Forever, Generation Hope
Avengers: 9
Avengers, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Avengers Academy, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Vs. Pet Avengers, I Am An Avenger, Ultimate Comics Avengers 3, Chaos War: Dead Avengers
Thor: 8
Thor, Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Thor: First Thunder, Thor: For Asgard, Thor: Wolves of the North, Chaos War: Thor, Ultimate Comics Thor, Iron Man/Thor
Thor spin-offs: 3
Thunderstrike, Loki, The Warriors Three
Deadpool: 5
Deadpool, Deadpool Corps, Deadpool Team-Up, Deadpool Pulp, Deadpool Max
Titans: 5
Teen Titans, Teen Titans: Cold Case, Titans, Tiny Titans, Tiny Titans/Little Archie
Green Lantern: 5
Green Lantern, Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, Green Lantern/Plastic Man
Iron Man: 5
Invincible Iron Man, Iron Man Legacy, Iron Man: Rapture, Iron Man/Thor, What If? Iron Man: Demon In An Armor
Spider-Man: 4
Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, What If? Spider-Man
Spider-Man spin-offs: 3
Spider-Girl, Carnage, Osborn
As you can see, Batman is still the most fertile franchise, having two more books than he did in the last round of solicitations. Which may seem…unwise, given what seems like bad news regarding sales of serial comics in the direct market and what DC’s been doing to their prices lately. That is, not only are there going to be more Batman books on sale in December than there were on sale in, say, August or September of 2010, some of them are going to be more expensive than those on sale in August or September.
Surprisingly, the X-Men are the next with 12 titles, even more than the better-selling Avengers franchise (And those two facts could be related; if you added three more new Avengers titles, would their sales dip to X-men levels) and ridiculously far ahead of DC’s premiere super-team (in terms of numbers of titles, it’s the Titans franchise; there are only three Justice League books in DC’s line-up for December).
Of course if you count all the Deadpool books as X-Men books, and all the Wolverine books as X-Men books, and all the Wolverine spin-off books—X-23 and Daken—as X-Men books, then the X-Men are still Marvel’s driving force in terms of title expansion. The only reason I didn’t count those as X-Men books above is because both Deadpool and Wolverine are currently popular enough to be their own franchises, carrying multiple titles and generating spin-offs.
The number of Thor books is still kind of mind-boggling. December will have two more Thor books than were offered in November. Even if Marvel’s strategy with all this Thor material seems kind of obvious—guarantee enough plunderable Thor comics to fill plenty of trade paperbacks to meet expected movie-driven demand—the rate of expansion is awful fast. It was only about five years ago that Thro couldn’t support a single title, and now he’s supporting 8-to-11?
Even once the movie passes, it seems likely Marvel will keep publishing more than one Thor book. If you look at where Iron Man stands right now, a few months after the second movie has come and gone, there will still be five Iron Man-branded comic books shipping in December, two of which are ongoing monthly series.
Where these numbers start to get worrisome is when you consider the price of the comics—they’re going up, not down, and quickly. So if you read 11 Thor books, it’s not like your going to be spending $11. Or $33. No, you’re looking at about $43. Just on Thor comics. In a single month. Oh, and that’s just ones with the name “Thor” in the title, or starring his supporting characters…if you want to follow the Awesome Asgardian’s Avengers appearances, too well…well, let’s just hope that’s the only superhero you want to follow every appearance of.
As for those prices, Marvel will have 45 books at the $3.99-for-32-pages price point (and keep in mind, the 32-pages typically means 22 pages of story, with ten pages of ads…mostly house ads these days, oddly enough). The will have 5 books at the $3.99-for-40-pages price point, and 25 books at the $2.99-for-32-pages price point.
DC will have eight books at the $3.99-for-32-pages point, 12 books at the $3.99-for-40-to-56 page price point, and 30 books at the $2.99-for-32-pages price point (Note that I’m not counting WildStorm and Vertigo in this particular category, only the DC-branded books).
If there are any patterns to be discerned in terms of how the companies decide whether to charge $2.99 or $3.99 for a 22-page long comic book, it seems that they favor the $2.99 price point for most books clearly aimed at younger audiences (Marvel’s Ozma of Oz and Avengers Vs. Pet Avengers being too exceptions to the rule).
At least for December, Marvel seems to charge $3.99 for Max-branded books, one-shots, most miniseries and their most popular books. DC seems to be planning to charge $3.99 for new books as they are introduced (Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman, Inc, etc), as well as one-shots and most miniseries (Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special, JLA/THe 99…Batman spin-off Knight & Squire looks like the only $2.99 miniseries they have listed for December). The majority of their ongoing monthlies remain $2.99, or $3.99-with-back-ups, but if the new Batman ongoings are any indication, perhaps all new ongoings will start at $3.99.
And in our final category for today, let’s look at what the two publishers publish when they’re not publishing their superheroes. For this, I am counting DC’s WildStorm and Vertigo imprints, as they generally don’t published licensed comics under the DC bullet branding.
Marvel will have a single comic book based on a video game, Halo: Fall of Reach—Boot Camp. DC/WildStorm will have eight (Assassin’s Creed, Kane and Lynch, Ratchet and Clank, End of Nations, Resident Evil, Gears of War, Telara Chronicles,World of Warcraft: Curse of the Worgen
Marvel will have two books based on prose works, Dark Tower: The Gunslinger—The Little Sisters of Eluria and Ozma of Oz. DC won’t have any.
Marvel will have a single comic based on a movie, Tron: Original Movie Adaptation. DC won’t have any.
Marvel will have two books based on TV shows, Super Hero Squad and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. DC will have five (Cartoon Network Action Pack, All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Where are You?, X-Files/30 Days of Night).
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:44 am
I am no expert. But I really think they need to find a way to lower the price of comic books. That, to my mind, is what is hurting the industry. I mean, for just a bit more $ you can rent a video game for a whole week as opposed to a quick (and seemingly quicker) read these days. Selling a comic for $2 may get a casual or curious person to try it out, but at $4 or $5…Not so much…
New characters/books and diversity…Try a cheaper approach for say, the first story arc…Get em hooked and then raise the price but let consumers know that ahead of time…The whole new character thing is not just about price though…Missed deadlines hurt big time too…I dropped Godland due to the long wait. Plus, from certain companies, they start something and never finish it…Also, the story and art have to be good!
Finally, comics have to be waaaay more accessible. You just don’t see comic books in other stores anymore.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Cap, I think that the song you’re singing sounds a lot like “Eventual Transition to Digital”.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 pm
With the last issue of Stark:Resilient in December i will likely have bought my last monthly comic book. Too expensive, too many events, to much ‘mature content’ and too little interest.
I’ll probably still follow Hickman’s SHEILD stuff in trades, but that’s about it…
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Has anyone noticed that there’s not a single Soleil comic-book or collection in the new Marvel solicitations, for the first time since the whole deal started?
Of course there’s still some amazon solicitations for upcoming books up until March 2001:
http://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Dragon-Guard-Into-Veil/dp/0785147357/
http://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Dragon-Guard-Ange/dp/0785147349
http://www.amazon.ca/Prometheus-Christophe-Bec/dp/0785143637
http://www.amazon.ca/Daffodil-Frederic-Brremaud/dp/0785143904
But will they even materialize?
Is the end of Soleil at Marvel?
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Troy, the problem with digital is even there the prices are too high.
September 24th, 2010 at 7:44 am
CapCanuck Says:
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:44 am
I am no expert. But I really think they need to find a way to lower the price of comic books. That, to my mind, is what is hurting the industry. I mean, for just a bit more $ you can rent a video game for a whole week as opposed to a quick (and seemingly quicker) read these days. Selling a comic for $2 may get a casual or curious person to try it out, but at $4 or $5…Not so much…
Sorry to be the voice of reality, but comics are the cheapest they can possibly be without increased readership. One of the reasons comics are only 3 and 4 dollars a pop is that the books are printed in bulk. This means that every comic book in the US market is printed at the same time each week at Quebecor. Otherwise no single monthly comic would cost less than 7 dollars US. It’s too expensive to print a run of 25, 000 copies of the average DC or Marvel book, let alone an indy book.
Comics use to be cheep because comics sold in the millions every month. Books used to get cancelled if they only sold 100,000 copies a month and now we applaud those numbers. There will never be those kinds of numbers again for alot of reasons including the fact that the amount of distractions ate much higher (DVD, Video games, music,), comics have alway been a fringe medium , lack of viable outlets, etc.
There have always been missed deadlines, though they no longer have inventory issues just lying around to fill that spot because of the collector mentality which has really caused the shrinking of this industry. So blaming any single company for what you consider “high prices”.
September 24th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Like I said, I’m no expert. But when I was a kid, comics were ‘affordable’ and accessbile…They were everywhere. Now, not so much. I am well aware of the decline of sales and the other distractions…I don’t want to see comics go all digital. I sill think that there are things the industry as a whole could try to ‘revive’ monthly comic sales as opposed to people saying they are dead already. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
September 27th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I am a DC fan at heart–but MARVEL has just better product PERIOD.
The Batman line just isnt that good. and they have been over producing BATMAN since 1989.
IRON MAN, THOR, the AVENGERS, and even that stupid DEADPOOL all get a pass from me because these are characters that never in their history have been given this much exposure. In a few yrs it might be stale but for now its still FRESH enough to warrant such exposure.
BATMAN on the other hand is a character that has been handled in every imaginable way – drawn in every style there is- its been beaten to death for DECADES.
fer crying out loud BATMAN has had a minimum of 3 titles for 40yrs. NOT counting ZILLIONS of one shots and minis–and thats before the 1990s!!!
IRON MAN and thor have just had their own singular titles and rotations in the AVENGERS. they deserve the massive exposure they are getting.
DC is an incoherent MESS.
their events are forgotton as they end.
MARVEL is event driven but at least in their continuity ALL the events from this decade resonate in continuity in every title.
PRICE wise DC wins
MARVEL is just better though all around.
And this is from a DC fan here.
October 21st, 2010 at 11:22 pm
# Radomski Says:
September 24th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Comics use to be cheep because comics sold in the millions every month.
When you dilute your brand with product extensions (11 thor titles? 15 avengers? 100 x-men? PER MONTH), you pay the price of reduced audience per individual title.
The powers that be need a quick lesson in marketing and econ 101.
January 17th, 2011 at 11:43 am
Just wanted to say thnx for a great site and have a super cool 2011.
March 17th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
In a knockdown, drag out fight to the death between Marvel universe and Dc universe, who would win? This is one of the oldest unanswered questions around. Most people pick their favorite characters and side with them; others actually use statistics when coming to their own personal conclusions. The fact is because of a number of reasons this fight of a life time could go either way. For example, Marvel’s numbers could easily be enough to win. On the other hand the fact that ninety nine percent of marvel characters are human is enough to lose.http://marvelvsdcsenarios.blogspot.com/