Comic Shop Trends

[BobBretall]

Every week the owner lets me look at the pull customer adds and deletes. There were a ton of deletes this week

What kind of stuff was getting deleted??

[JohnMayo]

Every week the owner lets me look at the pull customer adds and deletes. There were a ton of deletes this week and the other thing I noticed was one angry customer upset he did not get his pull item Thunder Agents.

Any common items in those deletes or is it more of an across the board situation?

[comicm]

It was mostly Grim Ghost, Green Hornet, Wolverine/Hercules, Xombi. I will try and pay more attention in the future for trends.

[BobBretall]

It was mostly Grim Ghost, Green Hornet, Wolverine/Hercules, Xombi. I will try and pay more attention in the future for trends.

Not surprised by Grim Ghost. It had average "smaller Indie comic" art, and that's not enough to cut it nowadays for most people.

I really liked Wolverine/Herc (and you gave it 5/5 too), so that one surprises me. What do people want? That was a good comic, story + art......

I don't get Green Hornet at all & don't get Xombi until next week, so can't pass judgment there.

[comicm]

It was mostly Grim Ghost, Green Hornet, Wolverine/Hercules, Xombi. I will try and pay more attention in the future for trends.

Not surprised by Grim Ghost. It had average "smaller Indie comic" art, and that's not enough to cut it nowadays for most people.

I really liked Wolverine/Herc (and you gave it 5/5 too), so that one surprises me. What do people want? That was a good comic, story + art......

I don't get Green Hornet at all & don't get Xombi until next week, so can't pass judgment there.

Green Hornet could have to do with Kevin Smith leaving the book. The rest of them might not have to do with the quality of the book but the fact that he put new number ones in peoples slots because he thought they would like them. Xombi looks good and Wolverine/Hercules was great. So far after reading two Atlas books they are good but nothing that makes we want to go Wow. In my opinion for a project like that it is bad for the company in the market we are in.

[JohnMayo]

It was mostly Grim Ghost, Green Hornet, Wolverine/Hercules, Xombi. I will try and pay more attention in the future for trends.

Not surprised by Grim Ghost. It had average "smaller Indie comic" art, and that's not enough to cut it nowadays for most people.

I really liked Wolverine/Herc (and you gave it 5/5 too), so that one surprises me. What do people want? That was a good comic, story + art......

I don't get Green Hornet at all & don't get Xombi until next week, so can't pass judgment there.

Green Hornet could have to do with Kevin Smith leaving the book. The rest of them might not have to do with the quality of the book but the fact that he put new number ones in peoples slots because he thought they would like them. Xombi looks good and Wolverine/Hercules was great. So far after reading two Atlas books they are good but nothing that makes we want to go Wow. In my opinion for a project like that it is bad for the company in the market we are in.

So, really, the others are less dropped so much as people not being interested in something they hadn't requested.

[BobBretall]

Green Hornet could have to do with Kevin Smith leaving the book. The rest of them might not have to do with the quality of the book but the fact that he put new number ones in peoples slots because he thought they would like them. Xombi looks good and Wolverine/Hercules was great. So far after reading two Atlas books they are good but nothing that makes we want to go Wow. In my opinion for a project like that it is bad for the company in the market we are in.

I agree with John, it's not really "dropping" a book if you choose to not get a series that just got tossed into your box as a favor for you to check out that you never ordered in the 1st place.

On the Atlas books (or any new Indie #1 nowadays, really) I think the art is REALLY important. If it's not something that at least some segment of the customer base will think is really impressive, it's kind of doomed from the start. The Nat Jones art on Wulf was very good. The Kelley Jones/Eric Layton art was OK.

"OK" is generally not going to be good enough in today's market. There are a few people who will get a book with OK art (I'm one of them, because I have an interest in the Atlas revivals in general). For most comics fans, this means it will get passed by. Unless they change artists (inker), I'm guessing Grim Ghost will not last long.

[comicm]

I am speculating that that is the case because they were issue #1s. I will pay more attention to trends in the future.

[BobBretall]

I am speculating that that is the case because they were issue #1s. I will pay more attention to trends in the future.

If you see someone in the act of dropping books, it would be interesting to ask them about their thoughts on why.

[comicm]

Here is one for you. Especially for your monthly comic book spotlight and how some items may be highly inaccurate because we don't have sell through numbers. My shop bought 800 copies of Death of Ultimate Spider-man because he had two customers that wanted 1/200 and 1/400 variants. He only has about 40 pull list customers that get this book. I think he is going to be stuck with a lot of these copies. He also put a bunch in front loaders and is selling them for 6.99 a pop.

He through 4 copies in my pull box. Two polybagged, a 1/30 variant and a sketch cover. I only stated I wanted one and got one polybagged.

[abysslord]

Here is one for you. Especially for your monthly comic book spotlight and how some items may be highly inaccurate because we don't have sell through numbers. My shop bought 800 copies of Death of Ultimate Spider-man because he had two customers that wanted 1/200 and 1/400 variants. He only has about 40 pull list customers that get this book. I think he is going to be stuck with a lot of these copies. He also put a bunch in front loaders and is selling them for 6.99 a pop.

He through 4 copies in my pull box. Two polybagged, a 1/30 variant and a sketch cover. I only stated I wanted one and got one polybagged.

I could be confused as to how these really work, but that sounds like he didn't over order too bad right?

So he immediately sends 600 of those copies, with covers ripped, back to Marvel and he gets a 1/200 issue and a 1/400 issue? Is that right? Or does that mean if you order 200 issues you get one of those 1/200 issues, and same for the 1/400. So he basically was forced to order 600 for those two customers, is that right? Seems like if that's the case those comics should be $150 and $300 respectively, or do they get even better prices than that?

Maybe I need to read a 'incentives 101' again or something.

[comicm]

Here is one for you. Especially for your monthly comic book spotlight and how some items may be highly inaccurate because we don't have sell through numbers. My shop bought 800 copies of Death of Ultimate Spider-man because he had two customers that wanted 1/200 and 1/400 variants. He only has about 40 pull list customers that get this book. I think he is going to be stuck with a lot of these copies. He also put a bunch in front loaders and is selling them for 6.99 a pop.

He through 4 copies in my pull box. Two polybagged, a 1/30 variant and a sketch cover. I only stated I wanted one and got one polybagged.

I could be confused as to how these really work, but that sounds like he didn't over order too bad right?

So he immediately sends 600 of those copies, with covers ripped, back to Marvel and he gets a 1/200 issue and a 1/400 issue? Is that right? Or does that mean if you order 200 issues you get one of those 1/200 issues, and same for the 1/400. So he basically was forced to order 600 for those two customers, is that right? Seems like if that's the case those comics should be $150 and $300 respectively, or do they get even better prices than that?

Maybe I need to read a 'incentives 101' again or something.

Not the way I understand it. He ordered 800 copies to get 2 issues of the 1/400 and 4 issues of the 1/200. Some customers are buying 2 copies because it is bagged so he had 40 pull list so best case he would sell 80. He will likely sell another 40 to interested people but I can't see him selling more than that. If I were him I would have a 50% discount to everyone that buys a regular edition.

I would like that when John and Bob go over the sales numbers shops like this would really skew the sales numbers (sell through)

[abysslord]

Ok, so then what do you think a retailer pays for a comic? Seeing as how DCBS can give out 40% discounts, I'm guessing retailers pay at least 50% of cover price?

And it would really help if there were some way to keep track of comics sold to customers as opposed to dealers. I think John has mentioned this before that it wouldn't really be hard. You'd think it would help their future ordering by seeing if they were the only shop that under-ordered and things like that.

[JohnMayo]

Here is one for you. Especially for your monthly comic book spotlight and how some items may be highly inaccurate because we don't have sell through numbers. My shop bought 800 copies of Death of Ultimate Spider-man because he had two customers that wanted 1/200 and 1/400 variants. He only has about 40 pull list customers that get this book. I think he is going to be stuck with a lot of these copies. He also put a bunch in front loaders and is selling them for 6.99 a pop.

He through 4 copies in my pull box. Two polybagged, a 1/30 variant and a sketch cover. I only stated I wanted one and got one polybagged.

I could be confused as to how these really work, but that sounds like he didn't over order too bad right?

So he immediately sends 600 of those copies, with covers ripped, back to Marvel and he gets a 1/200 issue and a 1/400 issue? Is that right? Or does that mean if you order 200 issues you get one of those 1/200 issues, and same for the 1/400. So he basically was forced to order 600 for those two customers, is that right? Seems like if that's the case those comics should be $150 and $300 respectively, or do they get even better prices than that?

Maybe I need to read a 'incentives 101' again or something.

There is no sending back of comics involved. These are sold on a non-returnable basis so the store is stuck with what they ordered.

I've been digging around in the solicitation information I've got and I can't find a 1:400 variant for Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #160.

Here is how this stuff works: The store orders 800 copies of the regular comic. That allows them to order 8 copies of the 1-to-100 Quesada variant, 4 copies of the 1-to-200 Quesada sketch variant, 26 of the 1--to-30 Kaluta cover (polybagged). The store would also be able to order 2 copies of a 1-to-400 variant. To get the Bagley spoiler cover, the story has to order more copies of the regular cover than 175% of the order the store placed for Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #156.

With only around 40 pull list customers for the title, getting 800 copies seems excessive. It seems inevitable that the store will be stuck with hundreds of copies of the issue. But that doesn't mean they will have lost money. (Although that too does seem inevitable given the high ratios on those incentive covers.) The store is getting these comics at a discount and by getting more copies they might get into a better discount bracket. Even so, the incentive covers would be priced by many retailers according to the cost of purchasing it which would include the cost of the copies of the regular cover they needed to buy to qualify for the variant cover. That cost is often computed based on the what the retailer actually paid for the copies of the regular cover and the discount the store is getting could be anywhere from around 35% to around 58%.

The bottom line is this is how incentive covers work and, yes, they do inflate the sell-in numbers and often can have very low sell-through percentages.

[Danscomics]

The store is getting these comics at a discount and by getting more copies they might get into a better discount bracket. Even so, the incentive covers would be priced by many retailers according to the cost of purchasing it which would include the cost of the copies of the regular cover they needed to buy to qualify for the variant cover. That cost is often computed based on the what the retailer actually paid for the copies of the regular cover and the discount the store is getting could be anywhere from around 35% to around 58%.

I just checked Diamond's site and there is no 1:400 variant listed. If it isn't there then I don't see how it could exist. If it had been solicited after Previews went out then it still would receive a Diamond # and appear in their online system.

The Marvel discount bracket is calculated a bit differently from all the rest. Marvel's is done based on your average total monthly order for the last 12 month and I believe it is recalculated quarterly. So these books would have been purchased at the discount level that he has been getting and won't affect his discount level until next quarter.