Strom said:
Yes, we disagree on the quality of the stories and the writers.
But on the sales of Red Sonja:
6 months: -20.6%
1 year : -58.8%
A new arc featuring Marvel Comics villain Kulan Gath and a cover drawing by Jim Lee result in a sales bump. The year-on-year comparison still looks pretty dire.
Looks like the gimmick covers are working pretty good.
Compared to Conan:
6 months: - 2.6%
1 year : -14.4%
I stand by the dropping like a rock comment. I predict that Conan will rise to the top again very soon. :lol:
Percents don't mean much to a lot of people, so let's put some more detailed numbers up, shall we?
Conan #1 - 51,416
Conan #2 - 52,157
Conan #3 - 48,588
Conan #4 - 50,759
Conan #5 - 51,307
Conan #6 - 48,339
Conan #12 - 39,311
Red Sonja #1 - 80,600
Red Sonja #2 - 55,100
Red Sonja #3 - 41,900
Red Sonja #4 - 41,800
Red Sonja #5 - 38,800
Red Sonja #6 - 35,000
Red Sonja #12- 33,200
Sadly, Diamond does not keep track of .25 cent special sales for the very good reason that such numbers are rarely good indicators of how well a title will sell. I believe both titles, respectively, set the records for the years in which they were released. So we cannot compare the #0 issues.
Certainly Sonja did benefit from a higher first-issue "#1" spike than Conan did, most likely due to the alternate covers by hot artists with a fan base that will buy anything the artist does (Alex Ross, Mark Silvestri, Joe Liesner).
And while it certainly did suffer a faster dip in sales (there's not nearly as many speculators as there once were and the delays KILLED a lot of interest in the title), it did stabilize much faster and in a relatively stronger position in terms of sales than Conan did during its first year.
A 9-10 thousand loss vs 1-2 thousand reader loss. And a 1,000-2,000 difference in printing numbers is hardly sigificant in terms of comic book publishing.
Of course all of this is meaningless since all these numbers show is how much the retailers bought - not how many actually sold to customers. I know that the comic shop I was at routinely sold out of Red Sonja (and not all 30 copies to one customer nor to only dirty old men in trenchcoats, I might add.
)
I think both books will continue at the strong level they are at now. Even if their sales dipped as time went on, they are both still in the top 100, and usually in the bottom of the top 50. And that is no small thing.