Comic Book sales for October 2007 and some Punisher: War Zone smack talk
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John Mayo, staff writer at CBR always does a good job of reporting on the sales estimates of the industry for each month. I've had this story printed out since December 5th and have been sitting on it until a slow news day. So here I go. For me, it's important and necessary for us comic book fans to digest these numbers so we have a true state of where the industry is. Even though it borders on being very boring.
So these are my thoughts on the numbers as reported by CBR.
First of all, DC Comics released 27 more books in the month of October than Marvel. That's crazy. Twenty seven more books? Huh. But, and this is a big but, they only edged out Marvel for the Total Reported Dollars mark by $100K. And when you're talking about the $9.5 million they brought in that's just a small edge in the dollar amounts. Basically what that means is Marvel is making more profit since less books means less printing costs, less distribution costs, and less creative personal costs. Interesting.
But check out this figure before I move one. In the month of October, between the big three companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, the total estimated reported dollars earned, according to this report, is $19,997,117.28. $20 million!
What I always find is encouraging is to look at small press company, say Aspen, and see that they put out one book and made $44,000.
Or our new favorites Red 5 Comics, who put out 1 book and made $10,882.55. That's quite the amount for a new publishing company with one book coming out this month. Fantastic.
DC also beat Marvel out in the TPB numbers. They had 25.95% of the sales while Marvel had 24.85%. They put out roughly the same amount of books at 22 and 20 respectively. This brought in $1.7 million for DC and $1.6 million for Marvel, without the cost of the creative staff to take into account. Almost 2 million in reprints in one month.
Dark Horse was also strong in the TPB category putting out 19 books and bringing in $1 million.
Coming in last for TPBs was Fantagraphics Books who put out one book and report $19K.
The top ten comics sold were:
- New Avengers #35
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24
- Justice League of America #14
- Mighty Avengers #5
- Justice Society of America #10
- X-Men Messiah Complex One Shot
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer v2007 #7
- Marvel Zombies 2 #1
- Uncanny X-Men #491
- Wolverine #58
Five Countdown books made it between 11 and 20, which is actually impressive since it's a weekly series and it sucks.
"Captain America: The Chosen" took a hit with #3 as people are no doubt not liking the story. The art is fantastic (hear from the artist Mitch Breitweiser here) but the story, the only real story taking place with a live Captain America in it, blows pretty hard.
My boy Daredevil is at risk of slipping into the bottom 50 at the 48 spot but is up since issue #100. Here's a tip Marvel: We're getting bored with the "grim-all-the-time" stories. Let Matt be a hero. Oh, and bring back the use of his powers in the stories.
Howard the Duck #1 rounds out the top 100, which means I could be creating and writing comics for a living.
The top trade was a Buffy book. We see Bendis break the top 10 with Powers v10: Cosmic.
See to me, this stuff is very interesting. I guess we would need to put this up against historical data, but are they really doing that poorly when you take into account single issues, trades, hard covers and merchandise? Somebody smarter than me let me know.
And let me finish up this rant with this little quote from Ray Stephenson, actor of the upcoming movie "Punisher: War Zone" in an interview with Wizard Magazine:
"This is in no way to be seen as 'Punisher 2,' or even 'Punisher 3.' "It's going full-on for the Garth Ennis and Tim Bradstreet take on Frank Castle. We're staying very, very true to the authenticity of the comic books. The whole look of the film, the mise en scene, has that light and dark, harsh sodium colors. Frank Castle is definitely the predator. Not to take away from anything Tom Jane has done, and I think that movie stands up on its own, but my take will be different. It's a newer, darker version."
No...not to take anything away from Tom Jane. But our movie is going to be watchable. But not to take anything away from Tom Jane.
I love when people talk smack in a nice way like that.
Alright, the rant is over, you have your fix. As always feel free to send in your ideas for the Daily Rant topics or let me know it you want to be a guest on the show. And of course make sure to subscribe to our feed.
Labels: Comics, Daily Rant
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