Some pages from Amazing Spider-Man #667 and #668

[cyberghostface]

So out of all of the supporting cast who gets spider-powers, guess who is the one who becomes the biggest hero with their new abilities? Is it...Aunt May? Of course not, it's CARLIE COOPER!!!!111!!!

First six pages are from #667, final three are from #668.


















Wow, is this the fifth time that Mary Jane shills Carlie for the audience?





 

Comments

[wizardru]

That's a good point. So I took a look at the previous two months (and four issues).


....

Yeah, issue 666 was a one month sales boost.

660: 58,249
661: 59,087
662: 55,883
663: 57,040
664: 54,088
665: 56,948
666: 135,568

We won't know for sure until the numbers come out, but it looks like you're right: those numbers are artificially inflated for their marketing gimmick. Spiderman hasn't sold over 60,000 issues in months and will certainly plummet back to normal next month.

By way of comparison: in June-July of 2010, Spiderman was selling around 58-59,000 issues per title. In june-July of 2009, he was selling 61-68. In 2008, he was selling 68-74. In 2007, prior to OMD, he was selling 105-108,000....but his title was monthly, not biweekly. However, he also had Sensastional (55K) and Friendly Neighborhood (46K). [we'll ignore Ultimate and MA Spidey for the discussion]

So: effectively in 2007, Spidey was selling around 210,000 comics a month with his name on it (across three titles). In 2011, Spidey is selling around 110,000-170,000 a month (depending on whether there are three or two releases that month) on a single title.

I don't know which is worse: that Spiderman's sales has fallen as much as they have...or that he remains one of the industry's top sellers (and what that means for the industry).

[cyberghostface]

i think someone said that Spidey is an 'anchor book', and when people dropped Spidey, they dropped a lot of their other comics. I know I dropped most of my Marvel titles except for Ultimate Spidey soon after.

[valtyr]

Calculating and comparing sales is quite difficult, what with variant covers and crossovers and guest starts and events complicating matters; but overall, it doesn't look great for the comics industry. Hence nuDC, I guess.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that not deliberately alienating fans might help.