Marc-Oliver Frisch writes:
Any signs yet of the financial crisis affecting the periodical direct market in October? No, not really. Thanks to several high-profile books that weren’t published in September coming out again, DC Comics’ average periodical sales jumped back up, as expected. The publisher’s DC Universe line continued to be dominated by the blockbuster events Final Crisis and “Batman RIP” and their numerous spin-off and tie-in titles. In other news, Pa Kent died, Supergirl got another new creative team and Superman kicked off the “New Krypton” crossover, with modest results. In terms of new launches, there were Terror Titans, Vixen and, um, Superman & Batman vs. Vampires & Werewolves, none of which charted very highly, unsurprisingly. Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s original Joker hardcover book led the Graphic Novel chart with a very respectable 17,296 units, meanwhile.
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Average periodical numbers of DC’s Vertigo and WildStorm imprints kept eclipsing the 11,000 unit mark, which, shall we say, is not very impressive compared to their past numbers. At Vertigo, the new Unknown Soldier series by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli was off to a reasonably good start by recent standards. At WildStorm, no less than three new licensed properties got their comic-book miniseries. With the exception of Gears of War, they crashed and burned. Casey Blue, one of the few remaining creator-owned books at WildStorm, slipped off the Top 300 chart again with its final issue; for the sake of the average sales calculations, I’m assuming that it sold as many units as the previous issue - which it probably didn’t, but never mind.
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