Five months into the New 52, the latest relaunch of The Flash is still a top 10 seller, with Flash #5 taking the #8 stop in Diamond’s sales rankings. ICv2’s estimates put it at 71,611 units sold*.
Comichron points out that January is usually low, but this isn’t bad for a January. (via The Beat) And if January is usually down overall, that means the 7.4% drop for The Flash — the lowest drop since the relaunch — may be exaggerated itself. Could the audience for the series be leveling out near 70K, or in the upper 60s? If so, that’s a big win for DC, because the last volume, written by superstar Geoff Johns, stabilized at sales of about 55,000 copies a month.
Digital Difference
Interestingly, while The Flash is holding steady in the top 10 for North American print sales, it doesn’t appear even in DC’s top 10 digital sales for the month. This could mean that digital readers are less interested in the Flash than print readers, but I don’t think the market is quite so simple as having digital readers and print readers. I suspect that most people who buy digital comics still buy at least some of their comics in print form, and with the art being a big selling point for the book, I’d imagine a lot of them are choosing to keep The Flash on the print side of their list.
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% |
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.
I’d interested in knowing if the variant covers offered make any significant contribution to these numbers.
The Flash is one of the few titles still offering the 1:25 and 1:200 covers.
Actually, I don’t think it’s a 1:25 variant cover for Flash, Action, Batman, and GL. I think they’re still basing it on a retailer’s lowest order for a new 52 title each month, or something like that. My retailer gets around a dozen of these variants for each of those 4 titles each month, and there’s no way he’s ordering 300 copies of each.
Ah.
Thanks for that. Seems an overly difficult way to figure the number of variants any particular store gets!
I understand the thinking behind it, but I think that’s a bit harsh on the poor bugger who has to place his/her order every month.
My hearth doth sinketh.
Having just seen the cover for Earth 2 (Featuring The Trinity yet again fighting parademons) I’m really wondering if the JSA is going to be in it besides Power Girl and Huntress.
So far every hope I have of one day contributing to DC’s bank account dwindles.
That’s just the variant cover. James Robinson has said that Jay Garrick (Flash), Alan Scott (Green Lantern) and Ted Grant (Wildcat) will be in the series.
Yeah, I’m reading that now.
What a relief.
Are there any hard numbers to go with the digital “top ten”? Seems like just listing comics in order of sales without backing data is something a middle school student would do.