Cracking the Numbers
(The perhaps not so secret comics sales for March 2002 through Diamond.)
Hardly an exercise in high math, but while looking at the Top 300 Comics for March I saw that they'd included a retail ranking and more importantly what they call a Guide. The Guide picks one item (in this case Batman no.601) and gives that a no. of 100.00, and then assigns numbers relative to that based on the quantities ordered. So, Ultimate X-Men no.16 pulled a Guide # of 200.05, it means that just over twice as many copies of UX-M were ordered as there were of the Batman issue. This means that each Guide point equals one percent of this thusfar unknown reference value.
So far, so good.
Since these represent average, relative orders, it makes sense that if one knew the exact quantity of a given comic that was ordered by everyone buying from Diamond, one could use that and its Guide no. to figure out the total order numbers for any comic based on its Guide no.
At no.259 on the March 300 is Paradigm no.1. It has a Guide no. of 3.14. (Hmmm.... pi...) The publishers reported on their site's messageboard back in February that the orders through Diamond for this issue were 1,728 copies. This provides a key.
Paradigm no.1 has a Guide of 3.14 (i.e. the number of copies ordered is 3.14% of the copies of Batman no.601ordered) and sold 1,728 copies, this means that Batman no.601 sold 1728/0.0314 = 55031.8473 roughly copies. Shifting the decimal two places to compensate for the fact that the Guide value is presented in percent, we see that each Guide point is roughly equal to 1728/3.14 or 550.3184713 copies. Simply multiply this number by the Guide no. for a comic in question, and if my reasoning's solid you should have the approximate number of copies ordered through Diamond for that issue.
It's important to remember that Diamond is not the only distributor of comics, and that other distribution routes mean that more copies of nearly all of these comics have been sold. It's also fairly well known that large chunks of comics, particularly the Archie line, still have an extremely healthy distribution through magazine distributors, and that if such things were factored into the sales figures that the Archie sales would blow away most of what mainstream comics readers think of as the top-sellers. Something to look into, certainly, but for now we're focusing on sales through Diamond, which provides essentially all the comics to North American comics shops and mail order services.
Applying this to a few points on the sales list, we see that the top-selling comic for March, New X-Men no.124, sold 119, 237 copies. Since Marvel is holding fast to their no reorders policy, any of the Marvel numbers for this list should be fairly hard and fast. Since DC does go back to press for titles that sell out - and retailers know this - the Diamond Top 300 is unfairly biaseed in favor of Marvel since it doesn't reflect those reorders. Therefore, it's important to remember that this is pretty much just a snapshot of the initial orders. However, the Marvel numbers should hold.
From this, we see that Alias no.7 sold 38,390 copies, while The Order no.2 sold 32,034 copies. (The links are to my reviews of the most recently-read issues from each series - each one issue earlier than the issuee in question.)
Marvel's three poorest-selling, ongoing monthlies sold as follows for March:
Spider-Girl no.45 26,410 copies
Captain Marvel no.30 24,924 copies
Black Panther no.42 22,002 copies (Again, this link is to the previous issue.)
(I'm hoping to see the Captain Marvel and Black Panther numbers in particular rise in the next few months, as each of these three series have only recently been given a year's extension of their run, and that at the cost of having their cover prices go up by 25 cents.)
So, keeping in mind the various other routes through which comics are sold, and the considerable adjustments that could happen to some of DC's top-sellers when they sell out and a re-order printing is done, do these numbers suprprise you? I know that in the early mid-90's Marvel would pretty much axe anything that
If you have any comments, questions, or general ridicule to pitch my way for some egregious mathematical blunder, feel free to email me or post a on the messageboard. Even if you think I've somehow gotten it right, I'd appreciate seeing comments on whether or not the sales figures surprise you one way or another.
Mike Norton