Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

Yes, “buck” is supposed to be singular.

§ March 28th, 2018 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin, retailing § 7 Comments

Hey, I keep forgetting to mention that Mike over at Zombie Cat Bacon is doing a rundown of comics blogs linked at a couple of the weblog update sites (such as the immortal Comics Weblog Update-a-Tron 3000) and seeing who’s active, who’s not, who’s moved on to other formats, who’s transcended this world of pain, who’s naughty, who’s nice, and so on. That link up there goes to the most recent post, but the previous installments are mostly on the main page and the next page back.

It’s interesting, if a little…I don’t know, melancholy I guess, since a lot of the folks I thought of as “my fellow comics bloggers” have, probably wisely, found other things to do, leaving me and a few others as the last standing members of the old folks…er, old guard still doing whatever it is we think we’re doing. Meanwhile, you young folks with your Tumblrs and your Mastodons and your Snapgrams will forge ahead with your New and Now comics commentary while I’m still posting about how comics aren’t like how they were back when I was a kid, while trying to open up my Geritol with my weak, gnarled hands.

Of course comic blogging is all going to end with Johanna and I fighting each other with broadswords on a desert plateau somewhere, while Neilalien looks sadly down upon us from whatever multidimensional plane to which he’d long since ascended.

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Here, let me write a little about comics so it’s not just blogging about blogging again:

One of the recent comics retail phenomenons is of course the recent increase in demand for issues leading up to The Big Anniversary Issues, Action Comics #1000 and Amazing Spider-Man #800. To a small extent, some of the sales increase, at least in the case of Marvel’s books, may be attributable to the gradual rise in purchases due to the recent, and already about to be rescinded, “Marvel Legacy” initiative, as I wrote about here. In the case of Spidey’s book, however, the primary reason seems to be a combination of whatever is going on the Green (or, rather, Red) Goblin, a new evolution of a classic Marvel villain, plus the fact that Amazing Spider-Man sales had been kinda eh lately which means a “scarcity” of copies in comparison to the number of people trying to get their hands on them. They’re Hot, They’re Rare, People Snap Lots of Copies off Shelves, They’re Even Rarer and Hotter Now. You know the cycle.

Action Comics I’ve certainly noticed a small bump in sales as we approach #1000, but not quite the same “hotness” since I’ve had pretty good luck getting reorders on recent issues. A nice side effect is that the lenticular covers for the “Oz Effect” storyline, which, er, I may have had a few extras for and thus left on the rack, are selling again.

Now the trick of course, as has been noted, is trying to figure out how these titles are going to sell after hitting the big double and/or triple zero milestone…made especially trickier as we’ve got some changes in status quos coming to both (yet another relaunch for one, Big Name Writer for the other). As I’m pretty sure I’ve already discussed somewhere already (oh, wait, it was here), the relaunched Spider-Man I’m going to have a lot easier time figuring numbers on (the assumption being that ASM sales will likely shrink back to where they were before), while for Bendis coming onto Superman, I’m going to have to extend all my sales-estimating powers. I think it’ll do well at least at first, but how well, for how long? That’s what they pay me the big buck to figure out, so let’s hope I can.