All the filings Marvel made with the United States Postal Service about Bendis’s flagship title can now be found here at Ultimate Spider-Man: The Postal Sales Record.It’s a bit of a complicated series to report on because it’s actually under two different postal licenses: the 2000-2009 series was rebooted with a new #1 and a new license. But the rebooted series resumed the original’s numbering with #150. There don’t seem to be any reports on the third series by that name, nor the Marvel Universe-branded title.
Another unusual element is that Ultimate Spider-Man #1 has many reprints, and those appear to have impacted the first year’s report; Marvel’s reported sales for average issues in the year are far, far higher than anything anyone else was doing in comics at the time. It’s possible to compare those sales, which include most channels, with just the sales to the Direct Market beginning with the first issue in September 2000; remember, however, that in that era reorders were not reported, so you won’t see the very large traffic in reprints that followed.
Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 25 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises.
He is the author of novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, and his upcoming release, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country. Read more about them at his fiction site.
Be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook, and check out our Youtube channel. You can also support us on Patreon!
