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Monday, February 07, 2005
Inventory Day
The five month wait between issues has killed sales on Superpatriot: War on Terror. At this point the only books who don't have their sales hurt by long delays are those that appeal to an audience outside of the super-hero buyer who comes into the store weekly. Which is one of the reasons why I'm very reluctant to pick up new titles from Image. Whenever there's a title that appeals to me, like Beyond Avalon or Lions, Tigers and Bears, I have to stop and think seriously if I'm prepared to put up with the almost certain delays between issues. And that's even assuming the book lasts long enough to finish up a story-line, a rare feat for many Image books these days. And assuming I decide to split the difference and pick the series up in trade format, as I did with Rex Mundi, I often end up waiting in vain for a second trade which never seems to come out because the last issue due to be collected in it never seems to actually come out.
Both Authority and Planetary have had jumps in sales recently. Both are very strong sellers in the trade format for us, so I'm wondering if this is a case of trade buyers switching over to the comic format now that they've caught up. I'm also wondering if the jump in sales in Authority is due to good word-of-mouth regarding Ed Brubaker's run, and how his recent exclusive contract with Marvel will affect sales.
We can't give copies of The Hire away. We do okay with The Ride, so there is an audience out there for comics about cars, but I'd have thought Bruce Campbell fans alone would have sparked some interest in The Hire. Nope. Which is especially surprising given that Army of Darkness is the only Devil's Due title to have decent sales at the shop. Not great sales, mind you, but decent. The first issue of the first mini sold like gangbusters, but it shed a tremendous number of readers with the second issue. The third, fourth, and new number one have all sold about the same number of copies, so it seems to have found it's level, i.e. I now know about how many hard-core Evil Dead fans are in our area.