Mayo Report

[drew]

okay I see them now, maybe it was just my old eyes-thanks

[drew]

Johns info is coming but until then, here is comicrons peek at November Comic Sales

he aggregate change statistics:

Dollars Units
November 2015 vs. October 2015
Comics 8.62% 4.93%
Graphic novels -11.93% -10.96%
Total Comics/Graphic novels 2.70% 3.80%

November 2015 vs. November 2014
Comics 30.05% 18.19%
Graphic novels -17.50% -21.76%
Total Comics/Graphic novels 13.84% 14.63%

Year-to-date 2015 vs. Year-to-date 2014
Comics 7.54% 5.45%
Graphic novels 2.24% 3.06%
Total Comics/Graphic novels 5.89% 5.26%

While periodical comics units were up more than 18%, dollars were up more than 30% over the same month a year ago. The fact that market-topper Dark Knight III: The Master Race #1 was priced at nearly $6 had a lot to do with that. With eight issues scheduled, the title is expected to be a presence in the charts well into 2016. The top comic books:

Comic Book Price Publisher
1 Dark Knight III: The Master Race #1 $5.99 DC
2 Star Wars: Vader Down #1 $4.99 Marvel
3 Deadpool #1 $4.99 Marvel
4 Secret Wars #7 $3.99 Marvel
5 Extraordinary X-Men #1 $4.99 Marvel
6 All-New All-Different Avengers #1 $4.99 Marvel
7 Star Wars #11 $3.99 Marvel
8 Uncanny X-Men #600 $5.99 Marvel
9 Star Wars #12 $3.99 Marvel
10 All New Wolverine #1 $4.99 Marvel

The first issue of Miller's previous entrant in the series, Dark Knight Strikes Again, had placed #1 in December 2001.

Dollar sales of graphic novels were down by 17.5%, but that translates to a smaller dollar amount than the increase comic books saw, and there were 20 fewer graphic novels released in November 2015 versus November 2014. Sandman Overture led the chart:

Graphic Novel Price Publisher
1 Sandman Overture Deluxe Edition HC $24.99 DC
2 Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens: Shattered Empire $16.99 Marvel
3 Star Wars: Princess Leia $16.99 Marvel
4 Ms. Marvel Volume 4: Last Days $17.99 Marvel
5 Spider-Gwen Vol. 0: Most Wanted $16.99 Marvel
6 Deadpool Vs. Thanos $16.99 Marvel
7 Low Volume 2: Before The Dawn Burns Us $14.99 Image
8 Vampirella #1969 $7.99 Dynamite
9 Star Wars: Kanan Volume 1: The Last Padawan $19.99 Marvel
10 Saga Volume 5 $14.99 Image
Having the top performers in both categories helped DC close the gap with Marvel somewhat. The market shares:

Dollar Share Unit Share
Marvel 43.20% 47.65%
DC 26.35% 26.09%
Image 8.67% 10.02%
IDW 4.42% 3.50%
Dark Horse 3.17% 2.69%
Boom 1.96% 1.67%
Dynamite 1.90% 1.60%
Oni 1.06% 0.61%
Titan 0.73% 0.64%
Valiant 0.73% 0.87%
Other 7.82% 4.66%

New title volume was relatively light, with 42 fewer items released. The number of new releases by type and publisher:

Comics shipped Graphic novels shipped Magazines shipped Total shipped
Marvel 72 39 0 111
DC 77 27 0 104
Image 61 14 0 75
IDW 42 22 0 64
Dark Horse 36 15 0 51
Boom 27 11 0 38
Dynamite 19 5 0 24
Titan 11 6 5 22
Valiant 9 5 0 14
Oni 6 6 0 12
Other 110 131 34 275
Total 470 281 39 790

http://comichron.com/

[drew]

WoW-nearly half a million $6 bat books to retailers

Top 300 Comics – November 2015
Rank Title Price Pub Est.Qty
1 DARK KNIGHT III MASTER RACE #1 $5.99 DC 440,234
2 STAR WARS VADER DOWN #1 $4.99 MAR 384,969
3 DEADPOOL #1 $4.99 MAR 180,565
4 SECRET WARS #7 $3.99 MAR 177,019
5 EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN #1 $4.99 MAR 133,716
6 ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT AVENGERS #1 $4.99 MAR 128,570
7 STAR WARS #11 $3.99 MAR 126,780
8 UNCANNY X-MEN #600 $5.99 MAR 126,447
9 STAR WARS #12 $3.99 MAR 123,133
10 ALL NEW WOLVERINE #1 $4.99 MAR 119,786
11 DARTH VADER #13 $3.99 MAR 113,448
12 MIGHTY THOR #1 $4.99 MAR 112,053
13 BATMAN #46 $3.99 DC 106,989
14 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3 $3.99 MAR 93,848
15 DEADPOOL #2 $3.99 MAR 92,008
16 DARTH VADER #12 $3.99 MAR 90,077
17 BATMAN EUROPA #1 $4.99 DC 80,721
18 MS MARVEL #1 $4.99 MAR 79,222
19 CARNAGE #1 $3.99 MAR 69,773
20 ALL NEW HAWKEYE #1 $3.99 MAR 68,933
21 WALKING DEAD #148 (MR) $2.99 IMA 65,526
22 DOCTOR STRANGE #2 $3.99 MAR 65,091
23 CHEWBACCA #3 $3.99 MAR 64,672
24 EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN #2 $3.99 MAR 64,595
25 SPIDER-GWEN #2 $3.99 MAR 62,209

[JohnMayo]

I'll be recording with TJ on Wednesday evening (12/16) and Sam on Thursday evening (12/17). If you guys have any questions about the latest round of sales data or general questions, now is a great time to post those questions.

[erickowabunga]

I'll be recording with TJ on Wednesday evening (12/16) and Sam on Thursday evening (12/17). If you guys have any questions about the latest round of sales data or general questions, now is a great time to post those questions.

As I was driving in to my full-time job, I was thinking about our comic shop, and what I wanted to look at for the end of the year. I decided that I have a pretty good gut feel of who as creators sell well in our store, but I wanted factual data to back that up. Do you have any way of seeing across the entire year, what writers and artists sold the most units?

I think there would be some interesting breakdowns between single issues vs collected editions. Thinking about Brian K Vaughan, we sell 3 single issues monthly of Saga, and always have 1 or 2 on our shelf. The trades, on the other hand, we sell through 15 when they come out, and always stock 5-10 on the shelf that slowly trickle out. That versus Jason Aaron on Star Wars, where we sell 30 issues per month, but only 5 of the trades have sold.

More for me, this is to make sure I am connecting with my customers, and providing them the right advice for "If you like Saga, you may like Paper Girls" type stuff.

First blush on the numbers posted below, it looks to be holding true that Star Wars, Darth Vader, and Batman remain relatively steady 100k books. I am assuming that Bat 50 will have a 10-20k jump with Bruce coming back. As for DKIII, this is clearly a variant cover chase party. If we take the same metric we got from Star Wars, it looks like DKIII could end up around the 50-100k mark at the end of the run.

[JohnMayo]

As I was driving in to my full-time job, I was thinking about our comic shop, and what I wanted to look at for the end of the year. I decided that I have a pretty good gut feel of who as creators sell well in our store, but I wanted factual data to back that up. Do you have any way of seeing across the entire year, what writers and artists sold the most units?

I'm close-ish to having a revamped number crunching system which would allow for that sort of analysis. It might be close enough to do that now, I'll check when I get a chance.

[JohnMayo]

As I was driving in to my full-time job, I was thinking about our comic shop, and what I wanted to look at for the end of the year. I decided that I have a pretty good gut feel of who as creators sell well in our store, but I wanted factual data to back that up. Do you have any way of seeing across the entire year, what writers and artists sold the most units?

Keep in mind that the system I am pulling this data out is a half-baked development system so these numbers could be wildly incorrect. That, having been said, I just did a quick query of my new, still in development system and got the following results for the best-selling writers within the top 300 comics for 2015 (minus December):

5,968,913: Aaron, Jason
3,212,609: Bendis, Brian Michael
2,877,069: Snyder, Scott
2,835,451: Gillen, Kieron
2,378,847: Duggan, Gerry
2,233,599: Slott, Dan
2,135,255: Hickman, Jonathan
2,029,933: Bunn, Cullen
2,006,588: Waid, Mark
1,970,079: Soule, Charles

Here are the results for the best-selling artists within the top 300 comics for 2015 (minus December):

3,609,294: Cassaday, John
2,122,699: Larroca, Salvador
1,324,315: Kudranski, Szymon
1,222,731: Capullo, Greg
1,176,300: Adlard, Charlie
1,148,945: Camuncoli, Giuseppe
1,037,473: Dodson, Terry
1,016,937: Rodriguez, Javier
1,013,700: Ribic, Esad
882,208: TBD

I always suspected TBD was a fairly successful artist...

Again, keep in mind this was a test of if I could get the sort of data out of my new still in development system and the results should not be considered anywhere near rock solid.

Any items with an item code of mmmyyy8### aren't included in the list and the items below 300 that were available on the top small comics and top indie comics were included. Also, the writer is based on the solicitation, not the person who actually wrote the comic if that changed between the solicitation and the time the comic shipped.

Also, the writer data has not been cleaned so any variations on spelling aren't included either.

[erickowabunga]

Again, keep in mind this was a test of if I could get the sort of data out of my new still in development system and the results should not be considered anywhere near rock solid.

Simply fantastic! Knowing this is still in development, the first pass is pretty cool. Well done.

[drew]

Johns full list:
http://comicbookpage.com/MayoReport/Top ... 5&Month=11

TJ-you are preven right again, as sandman overture HC tops the list and trade readers will not experience any of the pain and misery of the delay-plagued single issues - yet another case for the trade-waiting

[Perseus]

I guess this is just a comment. But I think it's absolutely ridiculous that Marvel has 39 out of 50 top books shipping to retailers.

I know they shipped out a good amount of number 1's again, but this trend is disheartening to see. They relaunch titles every few months to get sales numbers, but it seems customers fall for these tricks.

[Perseus]

John, a general question.

If you were in charge at DC right now seeing monthly numbers like these, would this be alarming?

Do you expect Marvel to take this many top slots with their number 1's and other titles?

Then, how would you try to increase sales at DC? I think they have great characters, but it seems people are not into them as much as Marvel these days.

In your opinion, is DC on the right track with their titles or is there more they need to be doing?

[Perseus]

John, we always hear from you how Marvel and DC have a danger zone for weak sales, and then the title gets cancelled.

However, do the other publishers like Boom! or IDW have a danger zone? I know their sales are lower on their titles, but I'm not sure where the line would be.

I think Big Trouble in Little China is ending soon and its sales are low. Do creators get to tell the whole story they have at these other publishers?

I know Jim Zub commented on Samurai Jack (IDW) ending due to low sales. I just wasn't sure if these other publishers had a cut off line.

Thanks again!!

[bralinator]

All good questions Perseus!

[NiklasJ]

From Johns earlier comment I understand you did the comic book part of the Mayo report on the 16th so im late with this but anyway I wanted to share some not really questions but thoughts?

There are still soo many number #1s out there especially from Marvel which make it hard to say anything at all about a longer term...

Do anything stick out a lot from what is expected? The new IronMan opened stronger than many expected for example, is there any simliar properties that have gotten an upswing with the all new not so different relaunch?

Deadpool opens very strong for some reason... (one of the few books I never read or buy)
ANAD Avengers and Mighty Thor also have strong #1 sales
Ex-X-Men already down to 65k with #2, not quite a flagship title in sales
compared with a DrStrange that has to count 65k sales on #2 as a win?
AN Wolverine #2 at 55k, how does that compare to earlier logan books?
did AN Hawkeye #1 have a lemire/sorrentino jump?
Batman is over 100k again, are we warming up to RoboBat?

SpiderGwen(2015b) #0 sell 30k, an issue that is a reprint of another story which sold high numbers, we have good times for a Gwencomic. Talking about Spiders, AMS, SP2099, SW, SGx2, Silk, Webwarriors combine for some 392k sales, almost comparable to the Batbooks? (excluding the DKIII mini)

DC... mostly batbooks in their top, JLA and HarleyQuinn(semi-batbook?) squeeze inside top 50.

20k+ (in diamond salenumbers) looks like a comfortable threshold for many marvel (superhero) comics. DC and Image have many more in the 10k-15k range good in a way we get many different styles of comics, bad in a way that some titles may not generate enough profit for number crunching corporations?

Was it really a good idea to do oneshots with the different JL characters for Darkseid War, JL was up at almost a 100k with the regular issues, the oneshots are at 35k.

[MisterFerro]

John,

Hopefully you see this post before you & Sam discuss the top 300 comics.

I just compared 3 ANAD Marvel series' with previous volumes that launched in 2014:

Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen and Mighty Thor.

ASM #3 is already in range of what 2014 ASM #18 did. Spider-Gwen(b) #2 is under #5 of (a). Mighty Thor #1 did not have as strong a debut as Thor 2014 had.

Should Marvel be worried that the numbers on the relaunched books are lower than the 2014 launches?

Also I replied to your report analysis over at cbr in regard to Vader Down #1. I'll link it here. http://community.comicbookresources.com ... ost1669201.