How healthy is the New 52? Marc-Oliver Frisch crunches numbers for the answer:
As far as the boosts for the “zero” issues are concerned, the notable thing is that only 11 of the 45 current “New 52″ titles that were around six months ago display a sales increase in their six-month comparison, and out of those 11, three are titles that are about to be axed. So, while the overall figures of the DC Universe imprint keep suggesting a healthy market position for DC’s comic-book line, there is still a considerable underlying rot that keeps eating away at the line, and which is being masked by things like the release of Annuals for the better-selling titles, or the Before Watchmen books, or the replacement of lower-selling “New 52″ titles with new ones.
In other words: Yes, DC may have won the dollar and market share for last month, but that doesn’t mean that they should necessarily feel happy with the way things are going over there. When you look at some of the order estimates for the individual books, that really gets underscored: Fury of Firestorm only has 17,000 orders and is getting another relaunch with Dan Jurgens at the helm this month…?
October 25th, 2012 at 10:34 am
Firestorm isn’t a metric that says anything about the health of the line.
October 25th, 2012 at 10:39 am
DC and Marvel are essentially the comic book versions of TV networks, forever trying to find new things and forever cancelling the failures. There isn’t anything wrong with this model, given that sometimes a network goes on a roll, like NBC has this season. But it does mean a lot of failure along the way.
I think DC should scale back to 35 or so a month, and more well-promoted miniseries (unless you really think that The Ray and Phantom Lady were well promoted).
October 25th, 2012 at 9:11 pm
and why do we keep listening to frisch-schtick? he is constantly anti-0DC and has been for year and the bias he shows in writing his articles as a way to downplay ANY succeeses is fairly obvious….
stop using this guy as a source for news and info and his opinions in the same way that no one should use FOX for news and opinions
he paints a picture with factually information that is biased
although you posting this in you blog is like Glen Beck reporting facts about the commenting of Rush Limburger..
October 26th, 2012 at 6:52 am
One of these days every DC book will be tied for #1 on the Diamond charts, all with estimated sales of 1,000,000 copies apiece.
And on that day, Frisch will still be using the power of Bad Statistical Analysis to claim it’s all going down the tubes. For people interested in such things, John Jackson Miller’s column is a far better alternative, given that he seems to actually understand the data he is using.
October 26th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
macmillan and frish are both **** tards.
October 26th, 2012 at 12:38 pm
testtesttest
October 26th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Interesting. When I post an elaborate reply under my real name, it never shows up here. When I enter blatant fake and nonsense information, it shows up immediately.
Might want to take a look at your filters, guys. Or do you purposely favor trolls?
October 26th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
how many times do people have to point out the oliver frish-stick is an marvel zombie that tries to paint ANY success DC has in a negative light DC when DC relaunched the New 52 he was negative about it….when Dc has a number 1 comic he is negative.
his reporting is tainted. it would be fine if this was an aberration but this is a continued thing that shows his bias OVER YEARS
October 26th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Well, that answers that, I guess.
October 26th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
What’s odd is that the troll above seems to be responding to a point I made in one of the posts that never showed up.
Is someone at Newsarama having a little fun as ThePlainTruth here?
October 26th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Once again, under the fake name:
Frisch’s points make sense to me.
And a lot of the griping against his comments seems to be by people who identify strongly with super hero comic books or DC in particular and see things from a fan perspective, feeling personally insulted when their characters or publisher don’t get their due. Look at the comment section – a lot of folks just seem butt hurt and have nothing to offer but insults and attempts to derail without being able to point out anything in particular other than just plain not liking Frisch’s opinion.
Miller makes good points too, but he doesn’t take things like variant covers or other stunts into account, not to mention those sales declines that Frisch points out, which happen to be fact, no matter how much you might want to disagree with him.
Also, Miller is a comic writer, a part of the industry he reports on and clearly a fan himself. His reports often seem gung ho to me and conveniently leave out concerns that Frisch covers in his column.
So I think both have their pros and cons but personally put more stock in Frisch because he is clearly independent and provides some solid counterpoints that often get lost in other analysis such as Miller’s.
October 26th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Okay, it seems all you need to do to be able to post here is post under a stupid fake identity. Unusual, but hey, whatever.
October 26th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I’m Roman by the way, in case anybody is ever looking at this to fix the filters and clear up the thread to maybe foster actual discussion instead of anonymous mud slinging.
October 28th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
The “rot” is at the top. DiDio has to go.