I've been ionized

21st November 2013

Question reblogged from Uncanny Panels with 77 notes

wakabamm asked: I am so confused by your guys method of numbering stuff these days. Do comics with higher numbers actually turn readers away? It never bothered me when I started reading Uncanny X-Men around issue 300. Of course, I mentioning this because the new Wolverine #1 with the same writer and continued story from the previous volume.

uncannypanels:

brevoortformspring:
The way comics are read and produced is changing, and so too is the way that they are numbered. And at the end of the day, like it or not, it’s the audience that really determines things like this. A new #1 inevitably, invariably increases the sales on a book, whereas a #whatever doesn’t. And the same story with the same art but a #1 will inevitably, invariably sell better than it will with a #30 or a #570 or what-have-you. You’ve shown us this time and again—and so we’re changing the way we think about issue numbering. And really, most magazines and publications don’t carry serial numbering at all, so it’s a stylistic convention of comics going back to the earliest days. I understand the comfort and familiarity of it, but at the end of the day, comfort and familiarity won’t keep the lights on at Marvel HQ.
This is what I’ve been saying for months. If you look at the sales charts, every subsequent issue sells less copies than the one before. There are only a handful of titles that maintain high numbers and those are usually your flagship titles. Plus it makes it so much easier to bring attention to a shift in creative teams or new direction. Think of them less as new volumes, but new “seasons”.

I totally get the point of renumbering. I like the idea of doing comics as mini-series and only keeping continuous numbering on the top books or flagship titles. What I don’t get is why, the example in the original question being a good one, relaunch books with nearly identical creative teams and directly continuing the story from the previous volume.(not to mention it makes volumes themselves a nightmare!) I understand the medium is changing and I am more than comfortable adapting to it but it seems pointless to relaunch like that.

Not to mention, that boosts in sales for #1’s have a couple factors behind them. It’;s a number one so it is bound to draw attention, people will buy it just because it’s a number one. On top of that, comics publishers skew their sales numbers by running soooo many variants with number ones that certain obsessive collectors still buy up copies of each version(if their store caries them) and others buy variants to flip on ebay(not a big market but it happens). So you have skewed results but the same drop in sales that Justin mentioned still happens and that is going to happen more dramatically when people see that the creative team hasn’t changed; you may not even see that boost thanks to relaunch gimmicks and frankly does Wolvie really even need that many books?

Wolverine is a great example because the sales on that book have been steadily dropping by pretty big increments. Back in June they were at 46k, in July they dropped to 40k, in August they only dropped to about 39k but in September they hit 35k and then 34k in October. Still that’s not a bad number, especially not for a solo hero book and especially given the near saturation of that character(Savage Wolverine, Wolverine and the X-Men, several other x-men and avengers books). I haven’t seen the sales numbers for this month so I can’t comment on how much the book has dropped but it very well could stay at that 35k baseline much like a soon to be ending book called Daredevil. I wish I could really draw a good comparison there but we don’t know what the next DD book is going to be like, if Waid is leaving the book and thus prompting a relaunch, but you know there will be a new book because DD has had an ongoing solo book almost constantly since the 1964.

All that to say. Renumbering books to mark shifts in the creative team? Yay! Renumbering books as a gimmick to get those new #1 sales boosts? Boo! If your books can’t sell on the strength of your creative teams alone, then change up your creative teams and find something that works.