{"id":5528,"date":"2010-01-12T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T18:37:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T23:37:10","slug":"december-2009-flashbacks-to-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/12\/december-2009-flashbacks-to-past\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2009: Flashbacks to the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"
by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n

Following the report on comics orders for December 2009<\/b><\/a>, here’s a look back at what was going on in previous years…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

December 2008<\/span>‘s top seller was Marvel’s Secret Invasion<\/b><\/i> #8<\/b><\/span>, ending the series with orders through D<\/span>iamond Comic Distributors of approximately 152,408 copies. Unit sales for December 2008 were up <\/span>versus December 2007, but this boost was not enough to push 2008’s year-end unit sales numbers past 2007’s. Overall comics, trade paperback, and dollar sales were up slightly for the year. <\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>Check out the detailed analysis of the month’s sales here<\/a> <\/span>\u2014 and sales chart <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

December 2004<\/span>‘s top-seller was Marvel’s New Avengers #1<\/i><\/b> with first-month Diamond orders of over 240,700 copies. The title’s launch capped a year of changes within the Avengers titles, including “Avengers Disassembled,” and contributed to a 6% growth in overall comics, magazine, and trade paperback sales over the previous year. Trade paperbacks saw a large boost in their sales numbers from the prior year, with growth of 29%. Check out the sales chart here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

December<\/span> 1999<\/span>‘s top-seller was Marvel’s X-Men #97<\/i><\/b>, with orders through Diamond of more than 117,400 copies, topping both Uncanny X-Men #377<\/b><\/i> and the previous month’s number one, Tomb Raider<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n

Sales of Diamond’s top-selling trade paperbacks were up a whopping 102% in December, thanks largely to the JLA Earth 2<\/b><\/i> hardcover; at $24.95, it saw first-month orders of more than 22,000 copies. Strong trade paperback sales kept December from posting a sales deficit, as comic sales were down 6%. Still, 1999 was slightly down overall for the year.<\/p>\n

Check out the December 1999 sales chart here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

December<\/span> 1994<\/span> once again had a consensus top-seller at Diamond and at Capital City Distribution: Marvel’s X-Men: Alpha<\/i> #1<\/b> (actually, X-Men <\/b><\/i>#A<\/b>), launching the “Age of Apocalypse” storyline that led the industry in the first quarter of 1995. During the storyline \u2014 a definitive example of an “icebreaker” event crafted to enliven sales in the usually slow “dead quarter” \u2014 the regular X-Men titles went away for four months, to be replaced by series in a variant timeline. (Amazing X-Men<\/b><\/i> replaced X-Men<\/i>, Astonishing X-Men<\/b><\/i> replaced Uncanny X-Men<\/b><\/i>, and so on.)<\/p>\n

Capital’s orders for the $3.95\u00a0 X-Men: Alpha<\/i> amounted to 127,225 copies, putting overall sales in the 400,000-copy range. Alpha<\/i>‘s acetate cover, incidentally, makes it one of the most difficult comics to photograph!<\/p>\n

December<\/span> 1989<\/span>‘s top seller was Legends of the Dark Knight #4,<\/span> with orders of 125,500 copies at Capital City and overall sales likely north of half a million copies. It was the end of a strong year of recovery for the industry following the black-and-white comics glut and crash a couple of years earlier.<\/p>\n

Finally, December<\/span> 1984<\/span>‘s top comic book was Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #12<\/span>, ending the series with twelve consecutive months in the number one slot.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley Following the report on comics orders for December 2009, here’s a look back at what was going on in previous years… December 2008‘s top seller was Marvel’s Secret Invasion #8, ending the series with orders through Diamond Comic Distributors of approximately 152,408 copies. Unit sales for December 2008 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5529,"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-5528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-flashbacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528","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=5528"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6641,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528\/revisions\/6641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}