Flatliners

Flat, flat, flat. Flat, gloriously flat. Superflat. I’ve always wondered whether or not trade paperback collections cannibalized sales of monthly “floppy” comic books. Looking at the sales of The Walking Dead, it looks as if trade paperback collections don’t eat into the monthly sales of traditional comic books in their "pamphlet" format. But more on that later. Let’s take a moment to put flat, at least in the floppy context, into perspective.

Are flat, steady sales really all that interesting? Maybe. Since looking at a relatively straight line of sales figures for The Walking Dead is well, kind of…flat, I thought I’d compare it side by side with the sales figures for Superman:



While it is true that Superman outsells The Walking Dead, it is interesting to note that sales for the former title have been in free fall, and more importantly, Superman has a cultural resonance and a legacy that The Walking Dead doesn’t. With all the toys, merchandise, cartoons, television series, and movies out there, it’s surprising that circulation has been in a steady decline for the last fourteen months. If sales figures on Superman are anything to go by, the core audience for that title probably isn’t that significantly larger than the audience for The Walking Dead.

The trade paperback sales for The Walking Dead indicate that there is a larger audience for the title beyond that of the floppy readership. All trade paperback volumes and hardcover compilations combined account for roughly 33% of all sales of The Walking Dead comic book series. No trade paperback volume or hardcover compilation ever comes close to exceeding sales of the monthly title.



While the combined sales for all trade paperback volumes and hardcover compilations don’t exceed – with two exceptions - those of the ongoing monthly series, Image (the company that publishes The Walking Dead) does manage to sell an impressive number of copies. January and August saw the release of new trade paperback collections. Some combination of trade paperback followers and die-hard collectors of the series helped gave a boost to the sales of the new trade paperback collections released in January and August.



Given the length of the series (it has been around for over five years) I’ll assume that the number of people buying “Volume 1” of the trade paperback collections are probably all new readers. The total sales figures for each of the trade paperback volumes over the course of the year bear out this hypothesis. There is some evidence of attrition as there is a drop in sales for each volume, but chances are that if a reader likes the first volume, that reader will continue to buy more.



What about the future of The Walking Dead, once the series has reached its inevitable end? If sales of Watchmen or V for Vendetta are anything to go by, The Walking Dead should be generating a steady stream of revenue for Image long after the series has run its course.



Nota Bene Watchmen made its film debut in 2009, so V for Vendetta is probably closer to the norm in terms of sales. As with previous posts, all sales figures can be found here. Please keep in mind that all the sales figures pulled from this sight represent estimates from independent comic book shops, and do not take into account sales figures from online retailers like Amazon, independent bookstores, news stands, or big box retailers like Borders.

Lesson Learned

Well, I might have missed the boat on Marcel Dzama, but I like to think that I've since learned my lesson, and have bought some illustrations done by Rob Ullman, a local illustrator who does stuff for the City Paper, Richmond Magazine, and a ton of other places.

My sweetie bought me a nice pin-up from Ullman's website for my birthday, and when my bonus was deposited into my bank account, I decided to add another a piece that is DNSFW to my collection.

Like Pia Guerra,, Ullman has a nice, clean style that is reminiscent of earlier comic book artists like Dan DeCarlo or Carmine Infanito. Not a lot of artists emulate that sort of look, but when they do - as Ullman does - it stands out on the page like nothing else out there.

Sex Cells?

Does sex sell comic books? It's hard to say. There are relatively few female superheroes that have their own solo titles, and the top seller in the female superhero category, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon has described Buffy as such in interviews) ties in with a television series. Despite the television tie-in, I think it is worth pointing out that Buffy is in the top twenty best-selling comic books and outsells all of her female counterparts and most of her male competitors without having to wear a skimpy costume.



As further proof that more flesh doesn't always lead to more sales, Power Girl, Spider-Woman, and Batgirl all started relatively late in 2009, and either went on to surpass, or closed the gap relatively quickly (in terms of sales) their more scantily clad counterparts, Red Sonja and Witchblade.

Spiderman, Batman, and Superman outsell their female analogues, however, the distance between Superman and Supergirl, in terms of sales, is not that great.



While the sales of Batgirl are eclipsed by that of Batman, it is interesting to note that the disparity between Batgirl, and another Batman spinoff, Red Robin is not that significant, if the sales figures for the first five issues are anything to go by.



Co-relation doesn't always equal causation, but if the sales of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batgirl are anything to go by, the editors of Wonder Woman and Power Girl might want to think long and hard about serving up more cheesecake in 2010.

All sales figures can be found here.

Update: Slightly tangential, but an interesting post on marketing comic books to women can be found here.

2/18/07

Two slash eighteen slash
two thousand and seven I
felt lucky, happy,
and loved when you said "I do".
two one eight zero seven

Coffee

Writing is...okay, but it's DEFINITELY not even ⅛ as fun as making a film with a friend!

Red and Blue Make Green

She-Hulk and Swamp Thing are two superheroes that I've been following on and off since I was twelve. I've been buying up the trade paperback collections of She-Hulk and Swamp Thing on Amazon and half.com like crazy lately, and while I was jonesing for my latest Swamp Thing fix, it occurred to me that color might help explain the sales of superhero comic books.

I've always liked offbeat superheros - She-Hulk, Swamp Thing, Booster Gold, and Animal Man to name a few - and the two common denominators that they all share is middling sales and costumes or pigmentation consisting of unusual colors.

Since I was curious to see what impact color might have on the sales of super hero comic book, I crunched the sales figures for a number of different superheroes over the course of 2009:



A couple of notes about my data. The sales figures were pulled from this website. The Amazing Spiderman is the only title that comes out three or four times a month, while the Hulk, Green Lantern, and Batman were all featured prominently in major storylines that without a doubt goosed the sales of their titles.

While I'm hesitant to draw any conclusions about green, I think red and blue, or some combination thereof, is the clear winner when it comes to comic book sales:



Having been raised on a diet of "grim 'n gritty" comics from the eighties through the ought oughts, I'm surprised black isn't a more popular color. While Ms. Marvel and the Punisher outsell their blue and yellow counterparts, Booster Gold and Nova, they only do so by about a 75,000 copies a year.



White is the clear loser in terms of sales. There aren't that many superheroes that incorporate white as a major part of their costumes, but when they do sales fade faster than a pair of Levis in the wash.



Red and blue puts Marvel and DC in the black, while white puts them in the red. However, for this comic book reader, green is the only color that "pops" on the cover of a comic book.

Update: I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings for the Occasional Superheroine, but as further proof of my thesis that a white costume kills sales, Emma Frost (a superheroine who likes to fight crime in white lingerie) had her own solo series that made its debut in July, 2003. The first sold a respectable 54,107 copies, however, when the series was canceled in December of 2004, only 24,519 copies of the title were sold.

The REAL Mad Man

A vibrating Santa. Stuffed, plush, and cute in that really bland, obnoxious way that Hello Kitty is. And it vibrates. Worse yet, it laughs. When Dad showed it to me years ago, I winced. Maybe I was in my early twenties, still in university, and had a lot of vulgar, half-assed Marxism rattling around my noggin. Or it could have been my late twenties. By then the half-assed Marxism would have been pounded out of my skull by cold, hard reality. However, my fear of remaining forever on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder brought a pained expression to my face.

But not this year. When my sister brought it out, that tacky ball of plush fabric stuffed with cotton made me smile. My Dad sold a million of them. It was one of many good calls that he made during his career as a buyer for Saan Stores, a discount clothing retailer in Western Canada. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teletubbies, Big Mouth Billy Bass, and countless other fads. The executives above him would hem and haw, but the old man had a gut instinct that was never wrong.

Even when he got kicked to the curb, forced out into early retirement, Dad had the last laugh. Almost to the month after his severance package ran out, the company went bankrupt. Anyone that had stayed on with the company, including the Doubting Thomases that second guessed my father's judgment for a good chunk of his career, got nothing.

When Matthew Weiner was still running around getting half-caf no foam soy cappuchinos for David Chase, my Dad was the original Don Draper. Dad earned a fraction of what Draper earned (adjusted for inflation), didn't smoke, was a moderate drinker, and was faithful to his wife, but inasmuch as I love watching Mad Men, I consider it an accurate reflection and vindication of my father's core values as a businessman: hard work, honesty, integrity, dedication, and loyalty.