Michael Burns' Comments on October 2001 "Top 100" List
Carl Henderson
Comments on the October 2001 "Top 100" List
-------------------------------------------
1 Origin #2 Marvel 126.0 - 5,9%
2 Origin #3 Marvel 123.6 - 2,0%
3 New X-Men #119 Marvel 119.0 - 5,6% 6,4%
4 Uncanny X-Men #399 Marvel 113.3 - 5,5% - 1,2%
6 X-Treme X-Men #6 Marvel 89.3 - 6,5%
10 Wolverine #169 Marvel 73.3 - 2,8% -22,2%
19 X-Force #121 Marvel 50.6 - 6,7% 11,9%
21 Iceman #1 Marvel 48.6
22 Rogue #3 Marvel 48.8 -10,2%
25 Cyclops #3 Marvel 47.4 -14,8%
31 Exiles #5 Marvel 43.9 - 7,2%
36 X-Men Unlimited #33 Marvel 42.0 -22,1%
48 Brotherhood #6 Marvel 38.1 - 8,9%
60 Cable #98 Marvel 33.6 - 7,3% -13,8%
The revamped X-Men, Jemas and Quesada crown of glory, the Morrison
revolution. Well, saleswise things aren´t so brilliant. Yes, X-men is up
from last year and the stories are better, but it is not such a big
increase
from last year´s middle of Claremont run (6%).
The real success story here is, surprisingly X-Force (up 12% from last
year), which is a good sign for new and interesting concepts for the
X-franchise.
The big losers are: Wolverine (down 22,2%, hmm maybe even Liefeld doesn´t
lie every single time); X-Men Unlimited which is supposed to go by-monthly
(why?); and Cable (down 14% from last year even after recent revamp).
Cable and Brotherhood are competing to see which one get´s to be the lowest
selling X-book of all times. Exiles seems like another unprofitable book.
Expect to see Cable and Exiles disappearing soon.
In my opinion there are still too many X-books, useless mini´s and a useful
Unlimited. Cancel Exiles and Cable and bring their stories into Unlimited
and maybe there is some use in it´s by-monthly format.
5 Ultimate X-Men #11 Marvel 102.1 - 3,9%
8 Ultimate Spider-Man #14 Marvel 80.6 - 5,2% 69,7%
24 Ultimate Marvel Team Up #9 Marvel 47.5 -15,2%
The success story of the year, expect the Ultimates to be a great selling
book. Not much futures for Team Up I suppose, it has been falling like a
rock.
7 Amazing Spider-Man #36 Marvel 88.9 0% 75,7%
18 Peter Parker, Spider-Man #36 Marvel 51.5 - 4,8% 7,1%
66 Tangled Web #7 Marvel 31.6 -14,0%
95 Spidergirl #39 Marvel 24.2 - 5,3% -12,6%
Amazing is a clear winner, JMS has made a tremendous impact on sales, as
you
can see here when you compare it with Peter Parker.
Tangled seems to be a bad concept. It has been done before with Webspinners
and the mini series and the readers have spoken with theirs wallet: NO 3rd
Spider series.
I wonder how long does SpiderGirl has in it´s new lease on life, it is
still
dropping slowly, but almost every month.
12 Punisher #5 Marvel 66.0 - 8,0%
15 Daredevil: Yellow #5 Marvel 57.9 - 8,4%
16 Elektra #4 Marvel 56.3 -10,0%
17 Daredevil #26 Marvel 54.2 - 1,1%
32 Marvel Knights Double Shot #1Marvel 43.6
51 Ghost Rider: Hammer Lane #5 Marvel 37.0 -12,7%
Marvel Knight used to be dependent on Daredevil and it´s numerous mini
spin-offs. Now it is dependent on Ennis and Bendis. Let´s see how well
Elecktra and Punisher sell when they don´t have them around. Ghost Rider is
a flop on the sales department. And why relaunch Marvel Knight´s book?
14 Avengers #47 Marvel 60.5 - 6,4% -13,7%
20 Fantastic Four #48 Marvel 50.0 - 5,6% - 6,9%
50 Thor #42 Marvel 37.5 - 7,6% -20,0%
53 Iron Man #47 Marvel 36.7 - 5,4% -24,9%
55 Captain America #48 Marvel 36.3 - 3,7% -20,4%
63 Incredible Hulk #33 Marvel 32.4 - 6,7% -12,7%
64 Deadpool: Agent of WeaponX#3 Marvel 32.1 - 7,7%
65 Thunderbolts #57 Marvel 32.0 - 7,0% -19,2%
96 Defenders #10 Marvel 24.0 - 8,2%
100 Captain Marvel #24 Marvel 23.5 - 8,0% -17,0%
110 Black Panther #37 Marvel 19.8 - 5,1% -14,3%
While the Spider and X-line got new writers and revamps, the Universe line
got Tiery, Jurgens and Larsen. The results are evident: Iron Man is
Marvel´s
books with largest drop in sales from last year (25%) followed by Wolverine
(does anybody see a connection here?) and Captain America and Thor (less
20%).
This line really took the worst beating of the year as a result of the
little attention and changes it got. Captain America, Iron Men and
Defenders
have been about the worst books Marvel publishes and it shows on sales.
Smaller, but still strong drops on Thunderbolts (19%), Captain Marvel
(17%),
Hulk (13%) and Black Panther (14%).
34 Fury #2 Marvel 43.1 -23,1%
37 Alias #2 Marvel 41.3 -20,1%
84 US War Machine #8 Marvel 28.2 0%
The new MAX line is selling as good as it could be expected in a good case
scenario. US War Machine experiment seems to have been a failure however.
61 BloodStone #1 Marvel 33.2
62 Nightside #1 Marvel 32.8
Three words: Dead on arrival. Let´s see how long do these last. Probably
under a year.
As a whole, Marvel seems to be doing better than last year, BUT that is due
to the fact that they have many more titles out nowadays, and got a good
success in it´s Amazing Spider relaunch and Ultimate titles.
Marvel´s sales are still eroding, however with so many new titles they
manage to keep an artificial dominance of the top 25. When this titles have
stabilized around #12 then most of them will be under that. Nowadays it is
easy to launch a title into the Top10, the tricky part is keeping him
there.
October is only the best month in recent times for Marvel because they got
2
numbers of Origin coming out and the 100best collections. Expect no big
celebration from Jemas when the November numbers are in (and they probably
already have them).
23 Spawn #115 Image 47.9 - 6,3% -25,5%
59 Tomb Raider #17 Image 33.9 -10,2%
71 Witchblade #52 Image 30.3 - 3,7% -21,7%
86 Powers #15 Image 27.6 2,4%
87 HellSpawn #15 Image 26.5 21,3%
93 Witchblade/Lady Death SpecialImage 24.5
94 Universe #3 Image 24.3 -13,0%
7 Titles on the top100, what happened to Image? My guess would be no new
ideas, no new talent added, the loss of Cliffhanger and Wildstorm, no Joe´s
comics ready this month. That and Top Cow and McFarlane´s titles losing
it´s
popularity.
Let´s see what we got: 2 McFarlane titles (Spawn and Hellspawn); 4 Top Cow
titles; and 1 Image Central title.
Top Cow seems to have lost it´s edge and depends a lot on Joe´s comics.
Darkness has been canceled, Witchblade is selling worst then ever and Tomb
Raider is dropping like a rock, making me wonder how long until it´s no
longer profitable to publish it.
McFarlane´s Spawn is the highest dropping book of the year (25%), it is no
longer in the top20. The other books are well under top100 with Hellspawn
sometimes resurfacing.
11 JLA #59 DC 69.6 - 5,2% -10,4%
26 Superman #175 DC 47.3 - 3,5% 10,3%
30 Batman #596 DC 44.2 2,1% - 2,4%
Superman and Batman and a good year keeping their sales, and in Superman´s
cases sometimes increasing them over Batman, but that was mostly due to Our
Worlds at War crossover and anniversary issues like the one from this
month.
JLA is no longer in the Top10 due to Marvel´s overload of new titles, it is
still dropping slowly but steadily.
67 Doom Patrol #1 DC 31.6
76 Legion #1 DC 29.2
98 Suicide Squad #2 DC 23.8 -22,2%
DC´s wave of new launches doesn´t seem to be working well, at least if they
plan to be competing with Marvel. The Suicide Squad relaunch is said to be
failure commercially and storywise.
113 Hellblazer #167 DC 18.7 - 2,4% - 4,6%
114 Transmetropolitan #50 DC 18.7 - 3,2% - 3,1%
121 100 Bullets #29 DC 17.4 - 5,4%
The only Vertigo profitable titles that sell as units and as paperbacks.
123 Impulse #79 DC 17.1 15,3% 13,2%
126 Orion #19 DC 16.5 16,7% - 6,3%
120 Azrael #83 DC 17.6 14,9% - 7,8%
How long will Impulse and Azrael be able to escape Orion´s fate, crossover
tend to help them.
112 Gen 13 #70 DC 18.7 -10,9% -24,3%
130 WildCATS Vol.2 #28 DC 16.3 - 3,9% -27,6%
What is left of WildStorm when you take Authority out? Some unsucessful
spin-offs like Establishment and Monarchy both headed for cancelation. And
these two previous most important titles. One is canceled and the other is
rumoured to be going away as well.
--
Carl Henderson carl.he...@airmail.net
Top 300 Report Archive http://j_carl_henderson.tripod.com/
RAC/RACM FAQ http://www.enteract.com/~katew/faqs/miscfaq.htm
Scott Bailey
> Amazing is a clear winner, JMS has made a tremendous impact on sales, as
> you can see here when you compare it with Peter Parker.
Perhaps if Mr. Jenkins included Spider-man in some of his stories, he might
see
a positive fan response? He seems to think he's writing for Tangled Web . .
.
--
Scott Bailey
scott...@hotmail.com
91101
"Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent."
Stranger
around that in the past year. Aside from a few cases, it's not like 2000's
comics were way better than 2001's. Take Avengers for instance...why an 11%
drop? Busiek is strolling along just as always.
And darn it people, buy Impulse! I'll reimburse anyone who buys next
month's issue and tells me it wasn't worth $2. C'mon, the current team is
doing a great job!
--
Stranger- Impulse's #1 fan, next to Max of course.
Eric J. Moreels
> 62 Nightside #1 Marvel 32.8
>
> under a year.
They'll definitely last under a year, because they're both 4 issue
mini-series ;)
--
Eric J. Moreels
Cinescape X-Fan Editor
e-mail: xf...@ihug.com.au
Web: http://www.cinescape.com/x-men/
AIM/MSN: XFan2K
Johanna Draper Carlson
> Expect to see Cable and Exiles disappearing soon.
I hope you're wrong about EXILES. It's got some problems, but it's a fun
read, and one of the few Marvel books I whole-heartedly enjoy.
> The success story of the year, expect the Ultimates to be a great selling
> book.
I would much rather see another writer on that book, because I would rather
see a more light-hearted take than Millar's typical Morrison-lite riffs.
> Not much futures for Team Up I suppose, it has been falling like a rock.
Given the book's structure, though, I wonder if that could change with the
right characters and/or artists. Although maybe not, if retailers order it
out of habit and don't notice.
> I wonder how long does SpiderGirl has in it´s new lease on life, it is
> still dropping slowly, but almost every month.
It didn't do anything different when it was saved before. I'm sure its fans
appreciated that, but if it didn't sell enough before, I would have thought
some (even slight) change would have been in order. Or more publicity.
> Now it is dependent on Ennis and Bendis. Let´s see how well
> Elecktra and Punisher sell when they don´t have them around.
Does this refer to a rumor I haven't heard? I would imagine that if Ennis
decided to leave Punisher, they'd just end the series (and relaunch with
someone else, if that's what they wanted).
> Captain America, Iron Men and Defenders
> have been about the worst books Marvel publishes and it shows on sales.
Iron Man, maybe, but Captain America is just a non-sexy standard superhero
title. That's not why people are coming to Marvel these days, though.
Defenders is an unholy blend of nostalgia, attempted humor, large-scale
action, and Larsen's art. It's not hitting any of its potential audiences
squarely, which is turning many who try it off.
If I had to list the worst, Ultimate X-Men would be one of them. FF: World's
Greatest would be another (but it's a limited series). Thunderbolts and US
War Machine would also be on my list.
> US War Machine experiment seems to have been a failure however.
They messed it up themselves, with the instant book solicitation.
> 61 BloodStone #1 Marvel 33.2
> 62 Nightside #1 Marvel 32.8
>
> Three words: Dead on arrival. Let´s see how long do these last. Probably
> under a year.
Interesting that neither of us knew they were limited series. Is Marvel
hiding the info or do we just not care enough to notice? Probably the
latter.
> Nowadays it is easy to launch a title into the Top10
Only if you're Marvel.
> That and Top Cow and McFarlane´s titles losing it´s popularity.
To be popular, McFarlane would have to release some books.
> Darkness has been canceled, Witchblade is selling worst then ever and Tomb
> Raider is dropping like a rock, making me wonder how long until it´s no
> longer profitable to publish it.
People tiring of boob books? Say it isn't so! :)
Johanna Draper Carlson joh...@comicsworthreading.com
Reviews of Comics Worth Reading -- http://www.comicsworthreading.com
Ralf Haring
<joh...@comicsworthreading.com> wrote:
>> Now it is dependent on Ennis and Bendis. Let愀 see how well
>> Elecktra and Punisher sell when they don愒 have them around.
>
>Does this refer to a rumor I haven't heard? I would imagine that if Ennis
>decided to leave Punisher, they'd just end the series (and relaunch with
>someone else, if that's what they wanted).
Iirc, Ennis will do six issues in the book every year.
-Ralf Haring
"The mind must be the harder, the heart the keener,
the spirit the greater, as our strength grows less."
-Byrhtwold, The Battle of Maldon
Carlos Hernandez
>Carl Henderson at carl.he...@airmail.net wrote:
>> Now it is dependent on Ennis and Bendis. Let愀 see how well
>> Elecktra and Punisher sell when they don愒 have them around.
>Does this refer to a rumor I haven't heard? I would imagine that if Ennis
>decided to leave Punisher, they'd just end the series (and relaunch with
>someone else, if that's what they wanted).
It's always been planned that these books would have rotating creative
teams. For Punisher, Ennis is out after #6, to be followed by Dillon
trying his hand at writing, a writer off the Howard Stern show, then Tom
Peyer takes over for I think six issues. Then, I think Ennis is scheduled
to return, but who knows with it nearly a year down the road.
On Elektra, Bendis is alternating with Greg Rucka, who takes over on issue
#7, I believe.
--
Carlos Hernandez Fisher | "Beef makes the crust!"
cahe...@nospam.sfu.ca | -- Gallery of Regrettable Food
remove 'nospam' to reply | www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
Joe Ankenbauer
> > That and Top Cow and McFarlane´s titles losing it´s popularity.
>
> To be popular, McFarlane would have to release some books.
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
JMA
Johanna Draper Carlson
> It's always been planned that these books would have rotating creative
> teams.
Thanks for the info, to you and Ralf.
Michael Burns
> > 61 BloodStone #1 Marvel 33.2
> > 62 Nightside #1 Marvel 32.8
> >
> > Three words: Dead on arrival. Let愀 see how long do these last. Probably
> > under a year.
>
> They'll definitely last under a year, because they're both 4 issue
> mini-series ;)
Hmm, distracted Mike. I had my doubts about Bloostone, but I was quite
sure that Nightside was a monthly, sorry.
Mike
Paul "Duggy" Duggan
> Carl Henderson at carl.he...@airmail.net wrote:
> > I wonder how long does SpiderGirl has in it´s new lease on life, it is
> > still dropping slowly, but almost every month.
> It didn't do anything different when it was saved before. I'm sure its fans
> appreciated that, but if it didn't sell enough before, I would have thought
> some (even slight) change would have been in order. Or more publicity.
More publicity, different sales tactics.
A fan-based save is not the time to tamper with the product - you want to
keep the fans you have, since they are the ones you are keeping the book
around for.
> > Darkness has been canceled, Witchblade is selling worst then ever and Tomb
> > Raider is dropping like a rock, making me wonder how long until it´s no
> > longer profitable to publish it.
> People tiring of boob books? Say it isn't so! :)
Maybe they need to make the boobs bigger? Or more nude variety
covers. Or just more variety covers.
---
- Dug.
---
Le fiabe sono vere.
---
Carl Henderson
news:Pine.OSF.4.21.011028...@marlin.jcu.edu.au:
> Maybe they need to make the boobs bigger? Or more nude variety
> covers. Or just more variety covers.
Making boobs bigger to increase sales is like lowering interest rates to
boost the economy--you can only go so far.
Paul "Duggy" Duggan
> "Paul \"Duggy\" Duggan" <jc12...@jcu.edu.au> wrote in
> news:Pine.OSF.4.21.011028...@marlin.jcu.edu.au:
> > Maybe they need to make the boobs bigger? Or more nude variety
> > covers. Or just more variety covers.
> Making boobs bigger to increase sales is like lowering interest rates to
> boost the economy--you can only go so far.
Are they bigger than the woman they're on? I don't think so. There's
still aways to go.
Paul O'Brien
Draper Carlson <joh...@comicsworthreading.com> writes
>
>Interesting that neither of us knew they were limited series. Is Marvel
>hiding the info or do we just not care enough to notice? Probably the
>latter.
I knew Bloodstone was a miniseries. It's always been promoted that
way. I didn't know Nightside was supposed to be a mini.
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS REVIEWS - http://www.esoterica.demon.co.uk
ARTICLE 10 - http://www.ninthart.com
Brevity is the sister of talent.