Overall comics sells for 2018 are in and things don´t look good. With a total of 517.46m the are 1% worse then 2017. That doesn´t seem so bad until you realize that 2017 year to year sales were down by 10%.
The last time they were lower was 2012.
So the comic industry just experienced the second year of a recession.
Things get even worse if you take a look at what the top sellers for 2018 were.
Among the top 10 best selling comics for 2018 five were Number 1 relaunches. Another 3 were legacy events as in Action Comics 1000, Batman 50 and Amazing Spider-Man 800. All of those comics got their sells artificially increased by docents of variant covers.
Only 2 comics among the top 10 were not Number 1 relaunches or special event numbers. Amazing Spider-Man 798 and Amazing Spider-Man 799 which also got boosted by collectors buying the several variant covers.
So the actually amount of just random people that buy comic books might be even lower this year then last year.
What makes this bad news is that Marvel and DC won´t be able to relay on legacy numbers and relaunches in 2019. They already relaunched Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Venom, Fantastic Four, Catwoman, Justice League, Avengers, Thor, Black Panther. And the next legacy numbers like 50, 100, 150 are all far off. So 2019 could be even worse then 2017 or 2018.
For the industry to improve comics have to seriously change their attitude and win back some fan trust and support.
My tip would be to stop with all the sjw pandering, stop attacking your fans for to push leftwing politics, bring back sexy costumes, treat your legacy characters with more respect instead of trying to replace them and drastically improve the art.
Source:
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2018.html
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2018/2018-12.html
The last time they were lower was 2012.
So the comic industry just experienced the second year of a recession.
Things get even worse if you take a look at what the top sellers for 2018 were.
Among the top 10 best selling comics for 2018 five were Number 1 relaunches. Another 3 were legacy events as in Action Comics 1000, Batman 50 and Amazing Spider-Man 800. All of those comics got their sells artificially increased by docents of variant covers.
Only 2 comics among the top 10 were not Number 1 relaunches or special event numbers. Amazing Spider-Man 798 and Amazing Spider-Man 799 which also got boosted by collectors buying the several variant covers.
So the actually amount of just random people that buy comic books might be even lower this year then last year.
What makes this bad news is that Marvel and DC won´t be able to relay on legacy numbers and relaunches in 2019. They already relaunched Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Venom, Fantastic Four, Catwoman, Justice League, Avengers, Thor, Black Panther. And the next legacy numbers like 50, 100, 150 are all far off. So 2019 could be even worse then 2017 or 2018.
For the industry to improve comics have to seriously change their attitude and win back some fan trust and support.
My tip would be to stop with all the sjw pandering, stop attacking your fans for to push leftwing politics, bring back sexy costumes, treat your legacy characters with more respect instead of trying to replace them and drastically improve the art.
Source:
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2018.html
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2018/2018-12.html
