Flash Sales May-July 2012

It’s been a while since I’ve written up sales analysis, partly because of time, and partly because I’m really not sure my analysis means anything. So here are three months of rankings from Diamond and the sales estimates* from ICv2: for #19 in May, #31 in June, and #29 in July, selling roughly 53K copies of Flash #11.

There’s a really steep drop with #10. As The Beat points out, DC stopped shipping a 1:200 variant covers with that issue. Additionally, Flash #10 and Flash #11 both have fill-in artists, which may have led retailers to order less.

We’re also seeing, a year into the New 52, the series dropping below the level where volume 3 settled at around 55K.

It’s been dropping in the rankings as well, but a lot of that can be attributed to Avengers vs. X-Men and Before Watchmen. (Note the sharp drop in rankings between April and May, while estimated sales numbers stayed pretty close.) And the Flash isn’t alone. The New 52 seems to have lost a lot of its initial luster, which is no doubt part of why DC plans to revitalize the line with its Zero Month in September.

Numbers

Issue Rank Month Units Sold % Change
Flash vol.4
Flash v.4 #1 4 September 2011 129,260
Flash v.4 #2 5 October 2011 114,137 -11.7%
Flash v.4 #3 9 November 2011 90,417 -20.8%
Flash v.4 #4 8 December 2011 77,336 -14.5%
Flash v.4 #5 8 January 2012 71,611 -7.4%
Flash v.4 #6 8 February2012 68,061 -5.0%
Flash v.4 #7 11 March 2012 64,975 -4.5%
Flash v.4 #8 11 April 2012 63,702 -2.0%
Flash v.4 #9 19 May 2012 62,807 -1.4%
Flash v.4 #10 31 June 2012 55,681 -11.3%
Flash v.4 #11 29 July 2012 53,674 -3.6%

A few key articles covering past sales (with lots of numbers):

*What these numbers measure: US-only sales, wholesale from Diamond to comics retailers. They don’t count sales through bookstores, they don’t count international sales, and they don’t count how many copies were actually bought and read…but they do measure the same thing every month, which means they can be used to spot trends.

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4 thoughts on “Flash Sales May-July 2012

  1. Lee H

    Looking at DC’s top selling ongoing titles…

    1 Batman
    2 Justice League
    3 Detective Comics
    4 Action Comics
    5 Green Lantern
    6 Earth 2
    7 Batman Inc
    8 Batman: The Dark Knight
    9 Batman and Robin
    10 Aquaman
    11 Superman
    12 Flash

    That’s pretty good. As a franchise Flash is only being outsold by Batman, Justice League, Superman, Green Lantern, Earth 2 and Aquaman. Even then, both Justice League and Earth 2 have a strong Flash presence.

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  2. married guy

    I can’t believe Superman sells more than Flash.
    I’ve found that book to be a total car crash, so I’m surprised to see it rate 11th in sales for DC.

    It’ll be interesting to see if the numbers rise again with issue #12 and the return of the creative team.

    Reply

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