Sales Review: March 2010

The sales numbers for March came out last week and, as usual, ICv2 does a great job breaking down the numbers. Here is the link to the top 300 comics of last month: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/17243.html. What better day to review sales than on Tax Day here in America.

Each month I review the Supergirl title sales here and it seems like I am reporting on soil erosion. It has felt like sales numbers on all the Super-titles have slowly crept down over the last year or so.

That said, I was curious to see where sales for Supergirl #51 would fall. Certainly it had a strong lead-in with last month's anniversary issue. This also was an early chapter in Last Stand which has started strongly.

Would sales be up?


Well, Supergirl #51 sold 29,845 units, which was down 11% from the 33,338 units that the Turner cover/variant cover/Helen Slater fueled Supergirl #50 sold.

But I think everyone, including me, expected a slip in sales from that special anniversary issue. The question in my mind was always 'how much will sales drop?'

So a better gauge of sales might be to look back at Supergirl #49's sales which were around 27,728. So the title gained 2,000 readers since that issue. Maybe Last Stand helps. Or maybe some people who sampled the title with the fiftieth issue liked what they read and stuck around. Either way, I look at 30,000 in sales as being 'healthy' in this market and we are there. The product is of such high quality too.

As a side note, this is the first time that I can remember since I began these sales reviews that Supergirl outsold Action Comics. Do you think it is time for Superman to return to his titles?

And how were the sales of R.E.B.E.L.S. #14, which finished the Starro storyline back in March?

It sold 11,362. The book continues to sell around 11,000. (R.E.B.E.L.S. #13 sold 11, 836.) Sales are remarkably stable for this title. Outside the Blackest Night crossovers, this seems to be its level.

The R.E.B.E.L.S. characters are crossing over in Last Stand giving them some added exposure. The Starro storyline is over so this is something of a jumping on point for new readers. And next month the book adds an established draw in the character of Starfire.

I'll be interested to see what R.E.B.E.L.S. sales will be next month. Will those waiting for the Starro story to end jump ship? Will Starfire bring readers in? Or will the same 11,000 diehard fans keep buying this nifty little underappreciated title?