Sales Review: August 2018

Last month we got a new direction and a soft reboot of the Supergirl title. While the numbering remained the same, we waited three months for the Bendis-izing of the super-titles to gel. Now we are back, bold and new. And since the revamp, I have been waiting for the sales numbers for August to drop.

As someone who has been watching sales numbers of Supergirl books closely, I had been pretty impressed with what was happening in the latter stages of the Orlando/Houser/Rocha run book. Sales, most likely boosted by Artgerm variants, were up. Supergirl was nosing around the 31K mark. And the stories themselves were really starting to click. It was as if the creative team had found their groove, concentrating on some of the plots and letting others fade. Suffice it to say, I was very happy with the book's directions and sales were more than healthy.

So how did Supergirl #21 fare? Well, you can look at the top 500 books ordered for the month of August here on ICv2: https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/41375/top-500-comics-august-2018

So after a couple of years living as Kara Danvers, daughter of Eliza and Jeremiah, DEO agent, CatCo intern, and student at National Tech, Supergirl decided she needed to investigate Rogol Zaar's claim that he blew up Krypton.

Basically, the baby of the Orlando Rebirth book was thrown out with the bath water. Healthy sales or no, Kara was going in a new direction, one leading her away from Earth.

So did it bring in new readers?

Well, it landed in the top 100, coming in at 82, right behind cash cow Harley Quinn.

But orders were only at 28507.

It wonder if we would still be up in the 31K range if Artgerm was on the variants. But Amanda Conner on variants is now slouch.

So new direction; lower sales. This bears watching.

I decided to look at the Superman title for another peek into sales.

As I have said in my reviews, I am enjoying Action Comics more that Superman. The whole Phantom Zone and Rogol Zaar stuff hasn't grabbed me yet.

But it is selling!

I was pretty shocked to see it land at #8 with orders of  77,464!

That is pretty amazing. I will say that Ivan Reis and Joe Prado on Superman is fantastic. And I think this book has two variants a month.

I'll never complain about a Superman book being in the top ten.