Sales Of DC’s ‘New 52’ Titles Slipped Just 6% In October. It’s Working!

DC’s New 52  initiative is bringing the sales in, for themselves and others. Jesus Christ, could this actually be working? How fantastic would that be? The New 52  titles performed well again in October, thrashing their Marvelous competition. Again.

Robot 6:

In  a month when half the books ordered by direct market retailers were from DC Comics, sales of October’s New 52 titles declined just 6 percent from those of the September debuts, a figure ICv2.com  notes  is less than half the typical decay between first and second issues.

As  Comic Book Resources reported on Friday, DC claimed 42.47 percent of the market in dollars and 50.97 percent in united sold in October and dominated Diamond Comic Distributors’ Top 20 with 17 spots. According to newly released estimates from ICv2, the top six DC titles broke the 100,000-copy mark, led by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s  Justice League  #2 with about 180,700.

Sales of 14 New 52 titles saw gains from their first issues, with  Animal Manboasting a 14-percent jump, followed by  Batman  and  Swamp Thing  with 7 percent each.  Superman  and  Blackhawks, however, saw 26-percent drops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two DC relaunches that attracted controversy,Catwoman  and  Red Hood and the Outlaws, saw 6-percent jumps.

Just one  Marvel  title sold more than 100,000 copies:  Incredible Hulk  #1, by Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri, with about 106,470.  Wolverine and the X-Men  #1 and  Fear Itself  #7 each hovered above 95,000.

It’s probably also worth pointing out the sheer number of DC reorders that appear high on  October’s Top 300, led by  Aquaman  #1 in the 88th spot with more than 28,000 copies (pushing total sales of the first issue past 100,000 copies). That’s more than the orders for new issues of Marvel’s  Hulk,  Deadpool,  Punisher  and  Thunderbolts.

Sales a-go-go, baby!