“Savagedragon99” asks:
Question: Am I the only one, or have many fans dropped Captain America
(’cause of the “death” of Mr. Rogers) and Spiderman (’cause of the
revelation of his identity). I stopped buying most Marvel comics right after
civil war. World War Hulk was the icing on the cake-Oh no, the Hulk is on a
rampage and nobody can stop him. Really? Thanks for listening.
Well, Savdrag, that’s actually three questions, but that’s what The Professor is here for. Let’s see:
(1) Based on sales, the “death of Captain America” has been a success — it’s brought fans to the title and kept them there. Paul O’Brian posts an analysis of Marvel sales figures each month over on Heidi McDonald’s indispensable website The Beat, (at http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/ ), and here are the latest figures on Cap:
15. CAPTAIN AMERICA
10/04 Captain America #32 – 37,309
10/05 Captain America #11 – 45,162
=====
10/06 Captain America #23 – 81,323 ( -7.9%)
11/06 Captain America #24 – 82,348 ( 1.3%)
03/07 Captain America #25 – 344,270 ( 318.1%)
04/07 —
05/07 Captain America #26 – 129,365 ( -62.4%)
06/07 Captain America #27 – 99,108 ( -23.4%)
07/07 Captain America #28 – 89,721 ( -9.5%)
08/07 Captain America #29 – 83,781 ( -6.6%)
09/07 Captain America #30 – 79,554 ( -5.0%)
10/07 Captain America #31 – 77,131 ( -3.0%)
6 mnth ( — )
1 year ( -5.2%)
2 year ( 70.8%)
3 year ( 106.7%)
Note that Cap last month, seven months after his “death,” was the 15th-best selling comic (counting all publishers). The issues from a year ago, #s 23 and 24, were Civil War tie-ins, and because of that they’d doubled the Cap sales figures from the previous year. The current run is holding on to most of those sales. In sum, you have a title that, three years ago, was selling 37,000 copies an issue, and today it’s selling over 75,000. The Professor will argue that this is largely due to Ed Brubaker’s talent as a writer, and his ability to tell a good story while making the supporting cast the stars of the book. In terms of popularity, dying seems to have been the best thing that ever happened to Cap.
(2) The same pattern is true for the Spider-Man titles after his unmasking. If we just concentrate on Amazing, here are the sales figures:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
10/04 Amazing Spider-Man #513 – 89,615
10/05 Amazing Spider-Man #525 – 79,520
=====
10/06 —-
11/06 Amazing Spider-Man #536 – 121,003 ( -1.6%)
12/06 —
01/07 Amazing Spider-Man #537 – 123,160 ( 1.8%)
02/07 Amazing Spider-Man #538 – 145,435 ( 18.1%)
03/07 Amazing Spider-Man #539 – 155,980 ( 7.3%)
04/07 —
05/07 Amazing Spider-Man #540 – 119,662 (-23.3%)
06/07 Amazing Spider-Man #541 – 108,284 ( -9.5%)
07/07 Amazing Spider-Man #542 – 105,715 ( -2.4%)
08/07 Amazing Spider-Man #543 – 106,485 ( 0.7%)
09/07 Amazing Spider-Man #544 – 150,788 ( 41.6%)
The unmasking was issue #532, so it’s clear that sales compared to two or three years ago are up significantly, from the 80,000s to the 100,000s.
(3) Finally, here’s the figures for Incredible Hulk over the last year or two:
INCREDIBLE HULK
10/03 Incredible Hulk #62 – 55,530
10/04 —
10/05 Incredible Hulk #87 – 42,454
=====
10/06 Incredible Hulk #99 – 47,878 ( -9.6%)
11/06 Incredible Hulk #100 – 84,169 ( 75.8%)
12/06 Incredible Hulk #101 – 47,927 ( -43.1%)
01/07 Incredible Hulk #102 – 46,965 ( -2.0%)
02/07 Incredible Hulk #103 – 46,690 ( -0.6%)
03/07 Incredible Hulk #104 – 47,823 ( 2.4%)
04/07 Incredible Hulk #105 – 53,256 ( 11.4%)
05/07 Incredible Hulk #106 – 119,735 ( 124.8%)
06/07 Incredible Hulk #107 – 115,912 ( -3.2%)
07/07 Incredible Hulk #108 – 107,714 ( -7.1%)
08/07 Incredible Hulk #109 – 104,322 ( -3.1%)
09/07 Incredible Hulk #110 – 96,835 ( -7.2%)
… and for World War Hulk:
WORLD WAR HULK
05/07 Prologue – 111,153
06/07 World War Hulk #1 of 5 – 204,823 ( 84.3%)
07/07 World War Hulk #2 of 5 – 165,402 (-19.2%)
08/07 World War Hulk #3 of 5 – 156,526 ( -5.4%)
09/07 World War Hulk #4 of 5 – 148,610 ( -5.1%)
… and they show that the WWHulk event has doubled sales of the regular book, and tripled sales for the mini-series itself.
Whew — that’s a lot of numbers, and we’re almost out of space. The long answer to your short question, though, is that most readers have stuck around, and that Marvel books continue to sell in increasing numbers (reflecting this, the new Wizard Magazine issue names them Publisher of the Year for 2007).
Now, there’s a whole other set of questions that can be asked, about reader fatigue with the big event/crossover series, about how much the numbers on those charts — which measure sales to retailers — really reflect new reader sales, and about whether the whole genre of superhero books isn’t due for a recession soon. That, though, is the topic of some other post, because the Professor has to shut up now, and go grade some actual freshman English essays. Thanks for giving him an excuse to postpone that and play with comics for a while instead, Savdrag.
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