Mayo Report for 2017-08
|
|
Top Comics List Top Comics Breakdown Top Trades List Top Trades Breakdown
August 2017 had 6,593,275 units in the top 300 comics list, an increase of 321,945 units from last month. Marvel Comics accounted for 45.33% of the total units with 2,988,705 units in the top 300 comics and was up 247,114 units in the top 300 compared to last month. DC Comics placed 2,367,694 units in the top 300 comics which accounted for 35.91% of the total units and was up 188,247 units compared to last month. DC had the three items over 100,000 units with Dark Nights: Metal #1 and Batman #28 and #29. Marvel rounded out the rest of the top ten with issues of Secret Empire, Generations: Wolverine and All-New Wolverine, Generations: Unworthy Thor and Mighty Thor and Star Wars.
The premiere publishers accounted for 93.27% of the units in the top 300 comics this month while all of the other publishers with items in the top 300 accounted for 6.73% of the units. Most of the lift this month came from Marvel and DC offsetting the minimal losses from the other publishers. From this vantage point there doesn't seem to be a lot of swing in the numbers. Looking at the sales swing by category shows a very different picture with an up-swing of 1,781,510 unit and a down-swing 1,459,565 units netting out to the increase of 321,945 units.
I've added a new category this time around of Non-Series. This category is for items which are not part of an ongoing series. The definition I'm using is if Diamond assigns the items a Series Code or not. Typically, each new ongoing series gets a new Series Code. One-shots often don't get a Series Code.
Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting and the various True Believers: Kirby 100th one-shots which were not assigned Series Codes and therefore fall into this new Non-Series category. Annuals and specials which are connected to an ongoing series will still be in the Annuals/Specials category.
What is and isn't considered a new series is not exactly clear. Captain America #25 falls into the Non-Series category since it doesn't have a Series Code. A case could be made that it should have been given a new Series Code or, since it continues the Captain America: Sam Wilson numbering, that it could have that Series Code for that series. Presumably it didn't get a Series Code because it is a one-shot bridging the Captain America: Sam Wilson series and the upcoming Legacy Captain America series. The various Generations one-shots have each been assigned a Series Code and therefore show up in the New Titles category one month and the Defunct Titles category the next.
How the Series Codes are assigned might not seem like a big deal except for one important thing. Some of the software used to manage pull and hold system use the Series Code to determine what gets pulled and what doesn't. When things like the Monsters Unleashed tie-in issues don't use the Series Code for the series there are connected it can result in lower sales for those issues compared to the related series. This can impact how many copies a store orders and/or how many they are left with. The Legacy numbering on Marvel titles seems to be triggering new Series Codes which makes a certain amount of sense.
Using the Series Code to categorize titles isn't perfect and will no doubt cause some oddities in the report from time to time. For instance, my system often won't have the Series Code information for items solicited between Previews which have an item number of higher 8000 which as a few of the the True Believers one hosts from Marvel last month. In those cases, my system will default to treating the items as an ongoing title (as if they have an unknown Series Code) rather than presuming those items are one-shots.
Ultimately, my system will be guided by how Diamond assigned the series code which might yield some seemingly odd results at times. Hopefully this new Non-Sereis category will remove most of the transient items from the New Titles and Defunct Titles categories.
Looking at just Marvel, we can see how new titles provided about half of the up-swing for Marvel with the Non-Series category also being a major factor. Most of the month-to-month sales loss came from publishing fewer issues and from titles that ended last month.
Secret Empire ended on an increase in sales but sold under 100,000 units into stores for nearly the entire run. The tie in issues didn't see the bump in sales common for many past Marvel events.
The largest factor for DC was new titles, specifically Dark Nights: Metal #1 which brought in 261,997 units. The Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting one-shots leading up to the miniseries set the stage for a potentially successful event series for DC. While the sales will likely drop significantly from the unsustainable 261,997 units for the first issue, it is likely the series might sell better than Secret Empire did.
The other publishers were down a bit this month. Titles not shipping caused most of the drop with new and returning titles failing to offset that loss.
The continuing titles which gained sales category added 23,742 units compared to last month. Supergirl and Ultimates 2 accounted for nearly half the gains in the category. For whatever it is worth, Ultimates 2 #100 was the final issue of that series and kept the Series Code from the prior issue even though it adopted legacy numbering on the final issue.
The continuing titles which shipped more issues category added 162,447 units compared to last month. Secret Empire shipped an extra issue in August resulting in a month-to-month increase in sales slightly more than the lowest selling of those issues. Most of the items in this category were Marvel titles
The continuing titles which shipped fewer issues category removed 172,105 units compared to last month. All of the titles in this category were Marvel titles. DC seems to have much more stable and predictable publishing pattern with monthly and twice-monthly titles while the number of issues related from month to month varies a bit more on Marvel titles.
The continuing titles which lost sales category removed 505,686 units compared to last month. Of the largest drops, Astonishing X-Men #2 dropped by just over 58% and Spider-Men II #2 dropped 44.18%.
The titles in this category accounted for 57.84% of the unit sales this month. The chart only shows the items which lost more than 5,000 units. Another 124 items lost between 251 and 5,000 units from the previous month. If sales attrition could be slowed down a bit, the result would be better sales in this category which is the majority of sales in most months.
The new titles category added 1,047,601 units compared to last month.
Clearly Dark Nights: Metal is off to a strong start. The various Generations one-shots have been doing decently. These are showing up in the New Titles category because each one was assigned a unique Series Code. These titles are bridging the gap between Secret Empire and Marvel Legacy #1. The spread on these titles gives a clear indication of the perceived sales appeal of the featured characters.
The returning titles category added 229,740 units compared to last month. Of the titles returning to the top comics in August with the best selling of them, Justice League/Power Rangers sold 22,804 units.
The suspended titles category removed 395,969 units compared to last month. Around 55 titles which shipped last month failed to ship in August. The highest profile of them was Wild Storm and Doom Patrol. This list does not include all of the other titles which were suspended prior to last month.
The defunct titles category removed 352,003 units compared to last month. The True Believers items were solicited between Previews and my system didn't have the Series Codes for them and treated them as if they were ongoing titles. We are going to see some activity in this category in the coming months as Marvel rolls out the legacy numbering on the various titles. Most of the titles seem to be getting a new Series Code and will be treated as the old series ending and a new series starting.
The Annuals/Specials category added 208,102 units compared to last month. The DC/WB crossovers and Star Wars: Rogue One: Cassian and K2SO were assigned Series Codes landing them in this category instead of the Non-Series category. Since annuals and specials are transient sales by nature, I've opted to include the reorder activity for them into this category.
The non-series category added 109,878 units compared to last month. Most of the sales in this category this month are the True Believers: Kirby 100th one-shots from Marvel and the various Kirby specials from DC. Captain America #25 bridges the gap from the two concurrent titles to the upcoming Legacy title and fell into this category because it wasn't assigned a new Series Code.
The Non-Series category acts as a wildcard in terms of the month-to-month sales changes. This month there was a bunch of items with most selling between 10,000 and 20,000 units. Last month had only a handful of items but one of them, Dark Days: The Casting topped the list last month. The influx of sales from it last month and the departure of those sales this month and the influx of the Kirby items this month result a fair amount of sales churn. This category is unpredictable in the long term but allows for some educated guesses about the short term based on what has been solicited.
