{"id":4288,"date":"2017-02-06T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T03:54:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-28T03:00:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T03:00:48","slug":"february-comics-flashbacks-some-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/06\/february-comics-flashbacks-some-strong\/","title":{"rendered":"February Comics Flashbacks: Some strong winters past"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Top comics shop seller:\nJustice League #6 (DC)\n135,400 copies first month\n145,200 copies sold by year-end<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nFebruary 2012 was that rarest of beasts, as it had five Wednesdays; that helped the month end up considerably over the year before. It was the start of a very strong year for the Direct Market, as the DC relaunch was still young; Justice League<\/i> #6<\/b> was the top title.<\/p>\n
Click to see the sales charts for February 2012<\/a><\/b>. You can also read my original preliminary<\/a> <\/b>and final analysis<\/a><\/b> pieces for the month.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nCivil War #7 (Marvel)\n265,900 copies first month<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nCivil War wrapped up with an issue that helped give the Direct Market as strong a February in 2007 as January had been, a month with an additional shipping week. It was the best February since the Diamond Exclusive Era began, and with sales up 20% in the first two months of the year, it kicked off a very strong 2007.
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\nClick to see the sales charts for February 2007<\/a><\/b>. You can also read my original analysis<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nDark Knight Strikes Again #3 (DC)\n184,300 copies sold first month<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nAt $7.95, Dark Knight Strikes Again<\/i><\/b> remains one of the most expensive comic books ever to top the sales charts. Issue #3 brought in more dollars for retailers than the next half-dozen comic books on the charts combined.<\/p>\n
Click to see the sales charts for February 2002<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nUncanny X-Men #343 (Marvel)\n171,400 copies preordered first month\nAround 300,700 copies sold overall<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nUncanny X-Men<\/i><\/b> #343<\/b> led the charts in a weak month for the Direct Market. In addition to being the dead of winter \u2014 with no “Age of Apocalypse” or “DC Versus Marvel” event as in the previous two years \u2014 changes in discount incentives at Diamond resulted in lower sales. Soon Diamond would offer products from all the industry’s publishers again; on February 7, Marvel announced it would be shutting Heroes World Distribution<\/b> down and returning to Diamond.<\/p>\n
Click to see the sales charts for February 1997<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nX-Men Vol. 2 #7 (Marvel)\n535,200 copies sold to comics shops\n645,400 copies sold overall<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nMarvel’s “adjectiveless” X-Men<\/i><\/b> series, launched the previous summer with the bestselling comic book to that time (or ever since!) was still going strong by this point in 1992. Internal Marvel records put the number of comics sold to the Direct Market at 535,200 copies; 150,600 of those went to Capital City.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nUncanny X-Men #217 (Marvel)\n270,000 copies sold to comics shops\n431,400 copies sold overall<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nPreorders for January-shipping titles were found in the January issue of Capital City’s Internal Correspondence <\/b>magazine, where reports were slightly out of sync with the shipping schedule. Capital ranked Uncanny X-Men #217 at #1. Capital sold 55,400 copies out of the 267,300 copies that Marvel internal records report were shipped to the Direct Market. The total was 431,400 copies sold overall once subscriptions and other markets were accounted for.<\/p>\n
 Marvel, which had just been sold by Cadence to New World, had a 48.3% market share at the end of 1986 at Capital. DC was at 26.8%. <\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nUncanny X-Men #157 (Marvel)\nAround 313,000 copies sold overall<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nOne of the first of many Phoenix-is-back-from-the-dead tease covers, Uncanny X-Men #15<\/i><\/b>7<\/b><\/i> found Kitty Pryde pretending to be Jean Grey while aboard a Shi-ar ship. The comics series was riding high, selling around 313,000 copies per issue.<\/p>\n
There were no indexed distributor sales charts before 1984, but we know from Statements of Ownership that Uncanny X-Men<\/i> was by far the year’s bestseller, beating out second-place Amazing Spider-Man<\/i><\/b> by more than 20%. <\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nAmazing Spider-Man #168 (Marvel)\nAround 282,000 copies sold overall<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nAmazing Spider-Man did lead once you go five more years back; February’s issue, #168, featured Will-o-the-Wisp and probably had close to a 45,000-copy lead on Superman. Supplementing this issue’s sales were simultaneous printings for sale in three-pack bags from Whitman.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nSuperman #250 (DC)\nAround 318,000 copies sold<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/i>
\nSpider-Man<\/i> was chasing Superman<\/i><\/b> down in this era, but DC’s flagship title still had a lead of about 30,000 copies per issue.<\/p>\n
The series by now was monthly after many years with two skip months, which impacts what months it was leading as we project backwards.<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nSuperman #195 (DC)\nAround 649,300 copies sold<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nThe bestselling comics series in 1967 was Batman<\/i><\/b>, boosted by the ABC TV series \u2014 but there was no Batman issue in February, so Superman<\/i> took the top slot in this tale of the “Furty of the Kryptonian Killer.”<\/p>\n
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Top comics shop seller:\nSuperman #152 (DC)\nAround 740,000 copies sold<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nAnd it’s Superman all the way to the end of our sales data, with the challenge of “The Robot Master” leading sales during the second month of 1962.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top comics shop seller: Justice League #6 (DC) 135,400 copies first month 145,200 copies sold by year-end February 2012 was that rarest of beasts, as it had five Wednesdays; that helped the month end up considerably over the year before. It was the start of a very strong year for the Direct Market, as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-4288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-flashbacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4289,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions\/4289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}