Thinking about the fact that, so far, all of DC’s New 52 titles have sold out at the distributor level and gone back for second (and, in Justice League‘s case, third) printings, and about the fact that 10 of the titles have orders above 100,000 – Is it possible that DC will manage to take the entire top 10 of the Diamond chart for September?
Looking at the numbers for July, only one Marvel comic sold above 100,000: Amazing Spider-Man #666, the launch issue of “Spider-Island”. Normally, that book sells far fewer copies, though – #662-665 all sold in the region of 55,000 copies – so it’s not too much of a leap to assume that, by September, that book will be below 100,000. As far as I can see, the biggest Marvel title of September is also the only one likely to break 100,000 copies: Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1 – But, unless orders for Fear Itself made a massive, and unexplained, leap in August, even Ultimate Fallout #4, the much-hyped first appearance of Miles Morales, didn’t break 100,000 copies (UF#4 was outsold by Justice League #1, Flashpoint #4 and 5, and Fear Itself #5, according to the Diamond chart; order estimates aren’t available yet, to the best of my knowledge), which means that UCSM managing it suddenly looks a little less likely.
But, even if Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man does have more than 100,000 orders for September, will that be enough to outsell the 10 top-selling DC books for the month? And if it doesn’t, will this be the first time the 10 best selling comics of any month have all come from the same publisher?
September 13th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Wow, it sure seems like you spend A LOT of time trying to figure out ways you can prove you like DC more than Marvel. I am sure that if Marvel were to do a complete line wide re-boot and, hype it non- stop for 2 months they too could “own” the top 10. The real story here is going to be where all these titles sit 6 months from now.If DC has all top 10 spots then then there might be something worth mentioning.
September 13th, 2011 at 10:59 am
It’s only the first month of one of the biggest relaunches in recent memory, where every single DC book is getting a new #1 and hype is being pushed up to incredible levels. So of course DC sales will be stratospheric. No need to actually panic yet for Marvel.
This may be a long-term reversal for DC thanks to a new comic renaissance or only a short term boost from a quick hit gimmick, but I think it’s a little too early to say the sky is falling. It’s only natural they’re going to fall completely out of the top ten the first month of DC’s relaunch.
If DC maintains even half of this momentum six months from now then yes, Marvel needs to worry.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:05 am
long term you can’t expect much from the ultimate spider-man line since last year’s issue at this time’s sale’s fell to 36k.I think reader’s are tiered of the ultimate line,really they should have just restarted it from scratch with new writer’s instead of the same writer’s (bendis does not have the draw he use to).mind you i do think issue 1 will sell near 100k but by next year will be back below 40k.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Given how anemic Marvel’s sales have been, I could easily imagine Ultimate Spider-Man being the only Marvel title in a DC-dominated top 20, never mind the top 10.
And Josh, sorry, but this is news. Yes, DC pulled a line-wide reboot in order to boost their sales to this point, but if we start invalidating certain sales increases because they came about from sales stunts, then this only makes Marvel look worse, given that virtually their entire line consists of multiple overlapping line-wide crossover “events” featuring multiple variant covers per issue.
Marvel has been whoring itself out to stunts to boost sales for years, so trying to defend them by impugning the virtue of DC for doing the same, only more successfully, smacks of jealousy more than anything else. And I say this as someone who doesn’t even LIKE the DC reboot.
And to everyone who’s saying, “Oh, let’s wait and see what these titles are selling in six months to a year before we deem them successes,” I actually agree, but the problem for Marvel is that Disney won’t see things this way. Disney spent $4 billion to purchase Marvel, and has seen Marvel’s sales constantly go lower ever since the Mouse paid such a hefty sum for them.
Disney knows that the characters aren’t the reason for the low sales, because there’s a whole line of highly commercially successful Marvel superhero movies that have already been released which prove that the general public quite likes these characters. Moreover, now that DC is doing gangbusters, at least in the short term, Marvel apologists can no longer claim that Marvel’s sales are solely the result of the comics industry as a whole being down, because DC, which has almost ALWAYS finished second in sales to Marvel, even after “Crisis On Infinite Earths,” is not only increasing its sales but also taking the lead from Marvel, which is roughly the equivalent of if Pepsi actually managed to outsell Coke, given the much greater brand loyalty that consumers have toward Marvel as a whole.
Given the obvious haste with which DC’s reboot was implemented, with several creators pointing out how late in the game it was before they were even told that DC was DOING a reboot, I’ve seen it suggested that Warner told DC, “Either you boost your sales, big time, right now, or you’ll all be out of work.” I can believe it, because this is how corporations work. They think in terms of quarterly gains and losses, often at the expense of longer-term planning, which has led to many of our current economic crises. Likewise, if DC manages to sustain its sales success for even three months, Disney is going to look at the fact that Marvel lost the quarterly war to DC in the first time since … well, EVER, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they issued a similar ultimatum.
Disney was willing to overlook Marvel’s ever-shrinking sales so long as it remained the sales leader in the industry, because they presumed that it was the fault of the industry as a whole, rather than Marvel in particular. Now, they have objective proof that Marvel’s continued low sales are the fault of Marvel alone. More importantly, Marvel’s low sales are now making Disney look bad, which Disney will not tolerate.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Marvel and DC have BOTH been whoring themselves for years to boost sales, and Marvel has been no worse at it than DC has. In fact I think they’ve been doing slightly less whoring. So I think the playing fields were even. So I don’t think this new reboot by DC is an example of DC now “doing the same” as Marvel, sorry. No gimmick of Marvel has come close to this amount of promotion and scope.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:37 am
And for those who are still wondering why the Ultimate line has been floundering so badly for the past several years, answer me this: Why does the Ultimate line still exist? As in, what unique purpose does it serve, and what needs does it meet, that are not being fulfilled by any number of other titles in the line?
Remember when Bill Jemas originally said that the Ultimate titles would offer a continuity-light, child-friendly alternative to the 616 Marvel titles? Well, leaving aside the fact that Millar botched that right out of the starting gate, we now have the Marvel Adventures line which was created precisely to cater to that market.
How about when we were told that the Ultimate versions of the characters would be more accessible to fans of the characters through their movies? Well, aside from incorporating some Bryan Hitch designs and a few elements such as the radioactive spider becoming a genetically engineered one, what’s striking about Marvel’s movies is how much more faithful they are to the 616 comics than to the Ultimate comics.
For a while, the Ultimate line was pitched as the personal playground of Bendis and Millar, where they could take chances and do whatever they wanted with the characters, except that now, Miles Morales notwithstanding, Bendis and Millar have been just as free to treat the 616 line as their personal playground and take whatever chances they wished with it, which has been evident in everything from “Avengers Disassembled” and “Civil War” forward.
Ultimate Spider-Man was the closest thing left to an Ultimate title which had its own unique and appealing reason for existing, except that even that title was hobbled by “One More Day” and “Brand New Day,” which were implemented with the explicitly stated aim of making Peter Parker younger, more inexperienced, more prone to making mistakes, and no longer married.
It’s no wonder that Miles Morales is the only part of the Ultimate line that’s getting any attention anymore, because he’s the only part of the line that’s not already being done better somewhere else. Aside from him and Ultimate Aunt May being a GMILF, everything else about the line is either redundant or unappealing. Nobody liked “Ultimatum.” Nobody wanted to see the incest adventures of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Nobody cares about Tony Stark’s blonde-haired brother.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:41 am
If DC doesn’t crush Marvel in the Comic share in September, I don’t think they ever will.
Am I worried? No.
Yeah, DC got 10 comics above 100K in August, but so does Marvel.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:43 am
I’ll agree that DC has hardly been a virgin bride in all of this, but I would argue that DC has been relatively less guilty of line-wide event crossovers than Marvel (yes, DC pulled this stunt way too many times, but they did so far fewer times than Marvel) and inarguably less guilty of sales stunts that have nothing to do with the stories themselves. The only reason Amazing Spider-Man #666 sold as well as it did was because Marvel offered individual variant covers for every single participating store — in other words ONE-HUNDRED FIFTY variant covers for a single issue. Likewise, Amazing Spider-Man #669 is offering an individual variant cover custom-made for EACH INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER who orders at least 2,000 copies. So, no, up until now, I’m sorry, but Marvel has clearly been the worse transgressor.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:45 am
marvel by far has been worse with the stunt’s,do they promote them no,but is that even a good thing?
September 13th, 2011 at 11:49 am
“Yeah, DC got 10 comics above 100K in August, but so does Marvel.”
This is such a BLATANT lie that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for you to not know that you’re lying.
The ONLY Marvel title to crack 100K in July was Amazing Spider-Man #666, which had ONE-HUNDRED FIFTY variant covers.
The ONLY Marvel title to crack 100K in June was Ultimate Spider-Man #160, the multi-polybagged DEATH of the character.
ZERO Marvel titles broke the 100K mark in May.
The ONLY Marvel title to crack 100K in April was Fear Itself #1, with the SECOND-highest selling Marvel issue selling only 82K.
The ONLY Marvel title to crack 100K in March was FF #1, with the SECOND-highest selling Marvel issue selling only 66K.
Shall I go on?
September 13th, 2011 at 11:59 am
No, they haven’t. I know it’s cooler to gang up online on Marvel than on DC, but seriously, how has Marvel been worse on stunts?
In fact, it wasn’t until DC started milking stunts that Marvel even got in on the game. Remember what Marvel was doing pre-Identity Crisis? It was Quesada and Jemas nuMarvel where everything was self-contained, creator-driven and standalone with zero crossovers, even among books within the same sub-lines. However when DC started cashing in with Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis crossovers and tie-ins, Marvel changed direction and started going down the same path with House of M. Since then it was the beginning of the end, as both companies started competing in stunts. Last year they were still equal, with Blackest Night vs. Siege. Until last month, they were still neck in neck in stunts. Flashpoint #5 with tons of tie-ins, Fear Itself #4 with tons of tie-ins. How exactly has Marvel been worse, and how is DC’s new reboot somehow an example of DC suddenly adopting Marvel’s strategy of stunts? Not only have they not been a virgin bride in this, they’re the ones who were leading the way.
September 13th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
You’re referring to the same sacrosanct Jemas-and-Quesada era of “U-Decide!” competition between Captain Marvel and Marville as an example of when Marvel WASN’T wallowing in sales stunts? Or “Avengers Disassembled,” which came out at the same time as “Identity Crisis,” as NOT being a sales stunt?
September 13th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
marvel-Avengers: Disassembled 2004
House of M/Decimation 2005
secret war 2005
Civil War 2006
annihiltion2007
annihilation conquest 2008
World War Hulk
Planet Hulk 2007
Secret Invasion 2008-9
Dark Reign 2009-10
war of kings-2009
realm of kings-2010
siege 2010
fall of the hulks-2010
doomwar-2010
heroic age-2010
the thanos inperaitve-2010
world war hulks-2010
curse of the mutants-2010
shadowland-2010
chaos war-2010
Siege 2010
age of x 2011
death of human torch-2011
death of ultimate spider-man-2011
death of captain america-2011
onslaught-2011
fear itself-2011
spider-island-2011
schisim-2011
they have also rebooted there book’s with new 1 about 200 time’s since 2005.Think i missed a few.
September 13th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
mind you I like marvel and dc but marvel has gotten boreing of late with bad editing and weak story’s.orignalyI only read marvel book’s but huge decine in there book’s in my opinion last 5/6 year’s.
September 13th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
DC gimmicks. If you:
Identity Crisis and tie-ins
Leadup to Infinite Crisis
Infinite Crisis and tie-ins
Amazons Attack
New Krypton Saga
Final Crisis
Batman RIP
Return of Bruce Wayne
Return of Doomsday Crossover in Superman titles
Countdown to Final Crisis and the many tie-in minis, all of which ended up having nothing to do with Final Crisis
Countdown to Infinite Crisis
52 and World War III
One Year Later
Blackest Night
Brightest Day
Flashpoint
Sinestro Corps War
Trinity
Battle for the Cowl
September 13th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
marvel 30 to 18 dc
September 13th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Oops, forgot Green Lantern Rebirth and Flash Rebirth as well. I’m sure there are more smaller scale ones I missed too.
September 13th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Yes, but that’s because Marvel leans more toward smaller scale events that cover sublines (Spider-Island, Curse of Mutants, Schism) while DC tends lean more toward events that are much huger in duration and scope and are linewide. But if you count the actual individual issues of gimmick-related tie-ins for each company for the past 7 years, they’re both equally bad. Countdown to Final Crisis alone had a weekly series, and an insane amount of tie-ins across the whole line for about a year’s time along with at least six or more miniseries that easily add up to at least 7 or more of those Marvel mini-events combined. Same with the scope of Blackest Night.
At the end when you count the actual issues of gimmick it all evens out, and may even put DC ahead.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
To K-Box,
Of course is a lie
I wanted to know a DC fan reation to the posibility that Marvel could get the same result without doing anything.
The worst thing about Marvel events is that they lost sales of pretty good books (like Iron Fist) because the flood the market with Tie-Ins. I don’t know about DC, I haven’t read a crossover since 52.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I think that this comic will sell, though obviously the hype and/or buzz about Mr. Morales has been washed away in a sea of DC bullets. But Ult-Spidey sold pretty well before, and Bendis always seems to sell. 100,000 is not completely impossible.
Just unlikely.
And it doesn’t help that the cover price is still a dollar higher than anything DC is releasing tomorrow. I have said this many times: I really like Ult-Spidey, and was ready to start buying it when the last renumbering started. Except that the price is too high and I can easily find it in my local library. (Yes, my library has actual comics.) Mr. Quesada, if you lower that cover price to $3, I will be there. Until then, nope.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
“Of course is a lie I wanted to know a DC fan reation [...]”
You assume I’m a DC fan. Yes, I hate everything that Quesada’s Marvel is doing, but I also hate everything DiDio’s DC has done. I don’t even WANT the DC reboot to succeed, because I think its reinterpretations of these characters are offensively wrong-headed, but I also think that anyone who denies that DC will wipe the floor with Marvel this quarter is KNOWINGLY rejecting reality.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
about time we killed off the fake cracker-man and put a black-man on top!
September 13th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
–Countdown to Final Crisis alone had a weekly series, and an insane amount of tie-ins across the whole line for about a year’s time along with at least six or more miniseries that easily add up to at least 7 or more of those Marvel mini-events combined. Same with the scope of Blackest Night.–
Scary thing is, you count Countdown then you have to also count Dark Reign and if you do, the numbers become very clear who’s been putting out more of these types of titles.
Take for example the mentioned Blackest Night that you included had less tie-ins then at least 2 of Marvel’s recent event books not including Dark Reign.
–At the end when you count the actual issues of gimmick it all evens out, and may even put DC ahead.–
I’d actually start counting them then. You brought up Marvel runs more toward smaller events as compared to DC’s larger ones, but it starts adding up quick when you remember that Marvel is running at least 2-3 at a time with one ending and another taking it’s place immediately. And when we’re looking at about 15-30 tie-ins per smaller event the numbers add up quick.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
well I counted a few of them the smallest one for marvel i found was 35 and the largest was about 200.
blackest night had around 90.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
DC has been maximizing the amount of tie-ins and gimmicks they could get out of any event, same as Marvel. Unless you think things like Countdown: Arena and 5 Search for Ray Palmer one-shots had any bearing or were at all necessary to enjoy Final Crisis.
The arguments people are using here seem to imply that DC is taking some sort of high ground when it comes to gimmicks and tie-ins, when that’s not the case at all. It’s kind of like Boston Red Sox fans when they blast the Yankees for having such a big payroll, when they themselves have a huge payroll. The only reason the Red Sox don’t have as big a payroll as the Yankees is because they simply can’t afford it. If they had the money they’d pay just as much as the Yankees do without hesitating. Boston like New York spends as much as it can given what it has to spend. And it’s same for DC with gimmicks. DC maximizes it’s gimmicks as much if not more than Marvel given what they can get away with.
I’ll explain further, take this Ifanboy article asking why DC doesn’t “flood” the market the way Marvel seems to. And it comes to the conclusion that DC doesn’t release as many books not out of some principle or show of restraint but simply because it CAN’T. http://ifanboy.com/articles/are-marvels-floodgates-open/
They just don’t have the fanbase. If that’s the case, the same applies for its gimmicks. Even if Marvel releases slightly more tie-in or gimmick issues than DC, it’s not because Marvel is greedier or more gimmick prone than DC, it’s because they simply have a bigger fanbase and can get away with it. But make no mistake about it, DC has been squeezing every last gimmick it could out of its line and if it had the fanbase Marvel did and could get the sales, they would have released as much if not more. If you look at the PROPORTION of their comic line dedicated to gimmicks they are no better than Marvel.
And what was the largest for DC?
Also, how are you counting? Are you including shameless gimmicks DC did like for example an issue of Batgirl where it was a Infinite Crisis tie-in because it had two panels of an Omac smashing a biker and disappearing? Or are you excluding those because they weren’t relevant to the big story? Because if you include all those issues I read of a DC title that had a single panel of an OMAC in the background or the most tenuous tie to the main crossover, there were a lot of issues. And a lot of the online lists of DC crossovers you read omit these types of books from their tallies.
Also with Final Crisis are you including all those books leading up to Countdown to Final Crisis that were tying in left and right? And I think the QUALITY of the tie-ins matter too. For example with Marvel’s tie-ins, at least they tended to be relevant to the main event and didn’t contradict it. On the other hand, not only did DC’s Countdown to Final Crisis and its tie-ins have ABSOLUTELY ZERO to do with what actually was printed with Final Crisis, and I repeat ABSOLUTELY ZERO, Grant Morrison himself admitted no one checked with him to ask him what he was doing in Final Crisis. They just did the whole series without even researching what he was actually writing in Final Crisis. Then they even created side miniseries like Death of the New Gods THAT NOT ONLY HAD NOTHING TO DO with Final Crisis but ACTUALLY CONTRADICTED IT IN MAJOR WAYS!
Think about that. How shameless must you be to milk a year of weekly miniseries, multiple one shots, multiple miniseries, hijack a year’s worth of JLA stories McDuffie had planned in order to force him to do tie-ins (a mess that eventually got him fired) knowing all along that you weren’t even talking to the architect of the main event and that it wouldn’t even coordinate with it?
No matter what you say about the quantity of Marvel’s tie-ins, they at least are never that egregious and audacious a scam as that was.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Here’s another one I forgot, No Man’s Land with Batman. Wasn’t that like 90+ issues or something.
I also forgot other gimmicks like tokenism: lesbian Batwoman, latina Question, latino Blue Beetle, Asian Atom, Black Firestorm and the various press releases that went into announcing many of them. Especially Batwoman, as they gave press releases and made a big deal about it several years before they even had anything for her to actually do. Her Detective Comics run came years later. It made it so obvious it was just a gimmick for attention without any long-term plan attached yet.
Another gimmick I forgot, Dick Grayson’s tenure as Batman.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
no man’s land was from 10 year’s ago we go back that far we gonna have like 100′s for marvel.dick grayson’s batman u did mention already.
If your gonna count createing or revamping a character then you have to count almost any book.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
“No matter what you say about the quantity of Marvel’s tie-ins, they at least are never that egregious and audacious a scam as that was.”
Objectively untrue. As just one example, Amazing Spider-Man: The List actually took the time to show Peter Parker using his brains and his background as an investigative journalist to do what fans had been calling for someone in the Marvel Universe to do up to that point, which was to dig up dirt on Norman Osborn’s activities and expose him for the monster that he was to the public. It was a story that was intelligent, entertaining, inspiring and constructive, and it was one of the few moments post-OMD that reminded me of why I used to like Dan Slott as a writer.
And it was undone before it was even published, when the rest of the 616 Marvel titles immediately established that Loki had magicked away any and all consequences of Peter revealing Norman’s secret.
And speaking of stories that were unforgivable insults to the audience, both “One More Day” and “One Moment In Time” are both so totally horrible that anyone who finds them defensible in any way whatsoever is FACTUALLY wrong.
September 13th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
We’ll have to agree to disagree then. None of those, while bad to me, are as big a dick move as creating a WHOLE YEAR OF COMICS LINEWIDE as a giant gimmicky cash grab by pretending they were a need-to-read lead-in to the next big event the way DC did with Countdown to Final Crisis and it’s related miniseries and tie-in issues, knowing full well they knew little more about what Final Crisis was about than the fans at home. And not only unrelated and unessential, but rushed, awful and downright contradictory to the actual story.
By the way, another post-Didio crossover/gimmick/event I forgot:
Batman: War Games/New Female Robin/Death of Spoiler
Here’s some great background into that and how it was conceived and played out behind the scenes. Nope, DC wasn’t gimmicky at all:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/15/%E2%80%9Csome-kind-of-gang-war-in-gotham%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cspoiler-was-gonna-die%E2%80%9D/
September 13th, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Disney doesn’t dive a shit about comic sales kbox. They bought Marvel for the rights to use their characters. Its why you can see a guy dressed as spider man in disneyworld now. That and ABC and ABC Family have at least half a dozen shows based on marvel properties in production. Look forward to “Teen Hulk” Teen Wolverine” “Teen Spiderman” showing up on the various Disney networks over the next few years. That is the audience Disney wants, and trust me they will get them.
Time Warner decided to turn DC into a business instead of just an investment because they have the same idea. CW has been trying to get new DC shows on the air for years.
Honestly though why do you even care about any of this? you literally hate everything!! whats the point man
September 14th, 2011 at 5:19 am
“Disney doesn’t dive a shit about comic sales kbox.”
I remember when people said the same thing about Warner with DC. And yet, here we are.
Disney spent $4 billion to purchase Marvel, and yes, they were primarily concerned with the movie, TV and merchandising tie-ins, but anyone who honestly believes that Disney has any tolerance whatsoever for divisions that don’t make as much money as they could be making is irrevocably divorced from reality.
Disney is revoking its Darkwing Duck license from BOOM!, in spite of the fact that this title a) has maintained solidly consistent sales throughout its run and b) would seem to be selling an amount that Disney wouldn’t care about, and Disney is doing this because it’s like the high-roller gamblers in Martin Scorsese’s Casino; Disney doesn’t see things in terms of how much money it IS making, but rather, it sees things in terms of how much money it ISN’T making that it COULD be making.
Right now, Disney is paying Quesada, Alonso, Bendis, Brevoort and a lot of other folks who have a lot of seniority a lot of money, and what it’s getting in return for its investment is Marvel about to be outsold by DC for the first time in EVER. If YOU spent billions of dollars to purchase Coca-Cola, and you kept on all the same executives, and after you did so, Pepsi started outselling Coke for the first time in history, would YOU refrain from firing people?
“Honestly though why do you even care about any of this?”
I care because I’m right and you’re wrong.
September 14th, 2011 at 5:28 am
“Nope, DC wasn’t gimmicky at all.”
I’m not saying they weren’t. I’m saying that Marvel was even MORE gimmicky, from “Avengers Disassembled” and “House of M” to “Civil War” – which was written so ineptly that NONE of the writers could even agree on whether the RIGHT SIDE HAD WON or not, thereby completely invalidating it as an overarching story, especially since half the tie-ins told IRRECONCILABLY CONTRADICTORY versions of the SAME EVENTS – through “Secret Invasion” and “Dark Reign” and “Siege,” all of which told the EXACT SAME STORY, which is that evil had won and good was too weak and stupid to do anything about it, on up through “Fear Itself” – which Marvel TRIED to sell by offering variant cover issues of it for Flashpoint tie-ins, only for retailers to tell Marvel that they have a lot more unsold copies of “Fear Itself” than Flashpoint – on up through “Spider-Island,” which started with an issue with ONE-HUNDRED FIFTY variant covers, and this month will feature an issue with one variant cover for EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER who orders 2,000 copies or more.
You are OBJECTIVELY wrong.
September 14th, 2011 at 8:42 am
–If that’s the case, the same applies for its gimmicks. Even if Marvel releases slightly more tie-in or gimmick issues than DC, it’s not because Marvel is greedier or more gimmick prone than DC, it’s because they simply have a bigger fanbase and can get away with it.–
And to most people, that’s quite simply the same thing. Doing something not for the story, the brand or anything like that, but just because they know they can get more money out of their fanbase?
See T, the thing is, most people aren’t defending DC here that they’re taking the high ground. They just don’t agree with you that Marvel has been less gimmicky then how you’re portraying them as being and there’s a large list several people can think up off the top of their head to prove otherwise. I think partially Marvel has a large number of different types of gimmicks is to not tire a single one out like what happened in the 90′s but to also see which ones sell more, but in the grand scheme, that’s still a lot of gimmicks.
But as for being relevant, I think it’s very debatable just how relevant Marvel’s tie-ins have been to it’s main title. Excluding red sky examples like the mentioned Batgirl one above (though one could mention Cap showing up in Amazing as an AD tie-in but not making any mention of AD during that time). Take for example Secret Invasion’s tie-ins, the list of relevant titles shrinks very quickly when you start knocking out all the titles where it’s just “heroes punch lots of Skrulls” as it’s story. For example like Incredible Herc was probably the biggest example of where a title’s content should have been relevant to the main’s titles story but wasn’t in the slightest.
And Civil War…oh God Civil War.. I swear writers were trying to see to how much they could contradict with the main title as well as be relevant to it and that’s not evening counting titles like The Return.
Look, we all know DC isn’t the innocent party in this, but don’t think anything other then Marvel is pretty much the one that sets the standard on gimmicks.
September 14th, 2011 at 10:28 am
Anything DC does to get real, new readership and not just the same fanboys will grow the whole market.
It’s difficult to see the appeal of the grimacing Jim Lee characters to any normal human, alas.
September 14th, 2011 at 11:15 am
I know. And I still disagree even with that. Marvel has done nothing as qualitatively bad and disrespectful to the fans as the Countdown to Final Crisis fiasco. Pretending over a hundred comics were consequential need-to-read comics for its major upcoming crossover when they actually never discussed the details of the crossover with the guy actually writing it was dirty pool I’ve never seen Marvel do. Even if Marvel published double the amount of event-driven issues DC did, the sheer deceptive nature of that gimmick would more than make up for it.
At the very best, DC has been AS gimmicky, particularly if you measure the gimmicks in proportion to the size of their respective comic lines. DC both maximizes their gimmicks to the extent the market will allow them to, and was the one who started the recent rush of gimmicks with Identity Crisis. Before DC really cut loose around the time of Identity Crisis, both sides had severely cut down on gimmicks after the speculator 90s era.
The idea that DC is only now entering a gimmick mindset with the DCnU reboot to level the playing field because Marvel “forced” them there with rampant gimmicks is laughable revisionism at best.
September 14th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
What do you think disney is going to do? Reboot mravel suremaybe? My question is how you think this will lead to better comics?
September 14th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
This book was fantastic. Not sure what orders on it will end up being, but I hope positive word of mouth gets it some attention.
September 15th, 2011 at 2:19 am
Why are people not counting the DC re-boot as a gimmick???
It’s probably the biggest one for the last 20 years.
I don’t have any problem with big events if they are good. Ultimate Spider-man should sell very well.
Marvel don’t need to be concerned about a couple of number 1s of mega popular characters selling over a 100,000. They’ve done it for months now and they know the sales will level out.
December 13th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Disregard the goofy pop superstar image, Lady Gaga’s simply just a home girl at heart. The vocalist, 25, who showed up on Japanese TV attired as a panda, considered. She had become really good at making all types of pasta and loves home cooking and cleaning.