Paul O’Brien looks at the orders for Marvel over the last few months, and doesn’t exactly like what he’s seeing, when it comes to recent launches:
91,99. X-TREME X-MEN 07/12 X-Treme X-Men v2 #1 - 36,802 08/12 X-Treme X-Men v2 #2 - 25,689 (-30.2%) 09/12 X-Treme X-Men v2 #3 - 24,490 ( -4.7%) 09/12 X-Treme X-Men v2 #4 - 22,584 ( -7.8%)An 8% drop, four issues in, and below the 25K mark? This isn’t looking at all healthy.
Captain Marvel‘s in the same boat, falling from an estimated 41K to 24K between #1 and #4, and Gambit looks like it’s heading in the same direction; #3 has 28,530 estimated orders, down from #1′s 40,418. Hawkeye seems to be doing better, though; #2 comes in at 33,563 which is above the second issue levels of both X-Treme and Captain Marvel.
(Also: How odd is it that two X-Titles are firmly in the mid- to low-list of sellers? Those of us who lived through the ’90s are having cognitive dissonance right now.)
There’s almost no doubt that the Marvel NOW! books aren’t going to have this kind of problem – Uncanny Avengers had launch numbers of, what, 300,000 in total? – and it’s possible that the four titles mentioned above suffered through launching at a time when Marvel’s promotional engines were still firmly on Avengers vs. X-Men mode. Nonetheless, it’s looking very much like Marvel is going to settle into a mode very similar to DC’s, wherein its high-sellers are doing really, really well, but there’s no real mid-list books, and everything that isn’t a big name sells at dangerously low numbers and risks cancellation within a year of launch. But how to fix this?
October 24th, 2012 at 11:12 am
I do wonder how much of this is also due to double-shipping. I liked Captain Mavel’s first issue, but not enough to commit $5.98 the following month to the two issues on the schedule.
October 24th, 2012 at 8:14 pm
I don’t think that’s really surprising. With all the competition out there, you’re comic has to be PHENOMENAL to even get noticed. Hawkeye is PHENOMENAL! Captain Marvel is good and Gambit is good, and I hope they last because I enjoy reading them. But there’s a lot of “good” stuff out there and not a whole lot of money in people’s hands.
November 14th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
How about quality control? In the case of X-Treme, it is a bloody god-awful, cheesy book with a cringe-worthy cast. Dazzler in the lead is a dodgy enough prospect, but when you throw in an Evo Nightcrawler rip-off — a child version of an iconic, currently dead character — and just toss in a generic, flat Wolverine to try and boost sales, what do you expect? I mean, who let this mountain of crap go to print?
Gambit and Captain Marvel might benefit from guest appearances, as neither character is especially strong regarding carrying a solo.