Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Take a bet on Legion sales...

Okay. Legion sales have settled in the last few months @ the 24,500 - 25,000 mark. Waid's been spurting hyperbole about how he'll "make LSH DC's #1 book."

My bet - by Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #10, the book will be selling, by icv2's figures, less than 31,000 copies.

Anyone disagree? How many do you think LSH 10 will sell?

Thanks for those sales figures. They support what I've been saying all along: DnA rescued the Legion from oblivion. Now WnK are risking its future all over again. For what? I also predict the low 30s a year from now, and that's generous. Some new readers, mainly WnK fans, will take a gander and stay, some older readers who dropped the book earlier might come back on board, but in the end it will be US -- or what's left of us after they start "messing with the characters".

Reboot=Stupid.

You know what would be helpful here? Sales figures on Waid's and Kitson's recent work. How well has Fantastic Four sold with Waid at the helm? How well has Thunderbolts/Avengers sold with Kitson as penciller? Given that information, I'd be willing to predict sales figures for Legion after the hoopla has died down.

I already have some of those figures (it came up at the DCMB).

Fantastic Four -- In the three months before Waid's debut, estimated sales averaged 43K copies. Today, it's about 51K. An increase of 20% over two years. This does not factor in the "9 cents" debut issue.

Superman: Birthright (maxi) -- Issue #1 sold 48-49K copies. Issue #10 sold about 35K. A decrease of 28% over 10 months.

Empire (mini) -- Issues # 1-6 averaged about 21K copies per month. (Excludes the 2-part issue #0 reprint, which sold about 14-15K).

I have no information about Thunderbold/Avengers, but Kitson only completed two issues.

I don't know how useful A/T or Empire would be - I picked issue 10 as a number where the early issues boost was gone completely, and before the (occasional) one-year boost. Avengers/Tbolts is completely useless in that regard.

Besides, neither of these have useful prior comparison figures. Birthright's probably the best of the DC work to compare with.

I think Waid maybe could make the Legion DC's # 1 title-- but it will take an artist of no less calibre than a Jim Lee or Alex Ross to get it there.

Personally, I'd be happy to see LSH in the top 50.

Uh...isn't it a little premature to be predicting the sales figures of issue #10 when we have little indication what their run is even going to be like.

How can the Legion succeed when even its fans want it to fail?

How can you be a fan of something that hasn't happened yet. We're fans of the established Legion, not a "re-imagined" one. I'll wait and see if I like it. (And probably miss the good old days still.)

I agree. I'm all for giving this a chance since at least it means DC cares enough not to just let the series go for a few years. And Paul Levitz is behind this one, something he really hasn't voiced in years.

But I'll always miss the era that captured me as a fan. The one we have now is a poor reflection of what was but that's just my opinion.

Just don't mess with Garth.

But consider SoM's ultimate point here: Waid has boasted that Legion will be DC top-selling book a year from now. That's an enormous boast. DC's top selling book right now is what? The Superman/Batman title, yes? And if my memory serves correctly, that title consistently sells close to or above 100,000 copies a month. So Waid is boasting that he can nearly QUADRUPLE the current sales of Legion. That achievement would certainly justify (proably not to every Legion fan, but certainly to DC executives and to the general comic book readership) a complete re-boot, yes?

So the boast Waid is making sounds to me like a way to justify a re-boot: "I can quadruple sales on Legion, but I need to completely re-boot it in order to do it."

Now....

REALISTICALLY...

Do you think Legion will be DC's top selling book one year from now? That it will be one of the top 10 comic books sold EVERY MONTH? (In the early 1980s (in the Levitz/Giffen heyday), LSH was DC's #2 selling title behind Wolfman/Perez's Teen Titans, and that was the ONLY time Legion was able to obtain enormous popularity.)

Isn't it more realistic to expect this Waid/Kitson version to sell 40,000 copies a month rather than 100,000 copies a month?

Does a increase from 25,000 copies a month to 40,000 copies a month justify a complete re-boot?

As I see it, that's SoM's implied question.

It's not that we want to see Waid/Kitson "fail." It's that many of us are wondering if a re-boot is justified when there seems to be plenty of story potential left for this current version of the Legion.

They have one... in Barry Kitson!


Teen Titans recently debuted well with a less well known artist. Ditto Superman/Batman. DC has the creators cred on the relaunch, as well as the built in fanbase. Now, it's up to them to hype it.

Doesn't really bode well for Waid's boast, does it?

I'd like to point out that Kevin Smith took a second string DEAD character and made it a top 10 book. Isn't it possible for Waid to do the same?

POSSIBLE SURE.

Will Waid do it?

PROBABLY NOT.

#1) I agree that the current Legion is a dim reflection of the Legion I first encountered, the Legion and 30th century I believed in. Therefore, I don't feel like I 'owe' DC a dime for new Legion stories when the team and future they portray have zero emotional resonance for me. I'd rather spend the money on the LSH Archives.

#2) It would take a sharp difference to bring in 80,000 new fans. Will Waid re-envision the 30th century to make it marketable and appealing? Considering his JLA run, I'd have to say NO. I was bored out of my mind and dropped the book while he was writing it. Not enough vision if you ask me. He plays it safe.

#3) For the 90s, I had enough extra money to get LOADS of LSH backissues to fill in my collection. My comic stores were overjoyed to make considerable coin off this product sitting in their bins. Recently, I tried to get my nephew and niece into the Legion (I've gotten them into the Bat Family). Do you know how difficult it is to pass on Legion comics when there are SO MANY reboots? The stories don't make sense anymore; they're not connected. It's difficult to get comic stores to believe in your product AT ALL when the company finds REBOOTS an effective way of dealing with flagging sales (imagine where JSA would be if DC had just done reboots to the Golden Age, rather than allowing Johns to pull ingenious threads together in modern retellings). That's like saying 'ANY BACK ISSUES YOU HAVE ARE CRAP', so stores will be reluctant to order any but the most conservative numbers. I'm not sure how DC is planning on getting the merchants to buy into their 'all-new and improved' title.

With all these factors, I'm really not sure where the new LSH is going. I'll take a dip in it, but I'm not even going to put it on my 'pull' list. The fact that Waid has already chosen to tie LSH into the Teen Titans (rather than JSA or JLA) is not a good sign for me. It shows his emphasis on the 'teen' aspects of the Legion.

Ain't it the truth?

By looking at the numbers I'd guess that there a little over 15000 die hards that always buy the Legion and about another 7000 more that are part timers. I don't know if there is any actual signifigance to that but it's a nice little snigglet.

(I wonder if Green lantern or Wonder Woman have that many die hard fans)

My gut tells me it won't sell much better than the current series. If I like it I hope it sells big numbers but I doubt it will. No offense to Barry but I don't think his name is big enough to be the #1 book. I am looking foward to his work personally and the comment Waid said about Kitson defining the future I think will pay off...so lets see.

Still gut says not a big seller. And if I don't care for it I hope it doesn't do well. Selfish I know.

Jorge

I think we'll see a LSH sales record for the #1 issue. Waid gets lots of fanboy press and the faithful will follow along. Many of them will buy that extra issue to bag and tuck away in their long boxes.

#2 will tell a completely different story.

It'll get a boost, but considering the depressed state of the industry, it will NOT set a new record. And I doubt it'll be in the Top 5, never mind top.

But yeah, expect at least a quarter of issue 1 sales to vanish with 2.

Forgot to post this:

Personally, I think that #1 is going to do shockingly well. I was lurking over at Newsarama's board this morning and it seemed to be on an awful lot of posters' must buy list when the December solicitations came out.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will be number one, but it will be on the better side of the top 100.

In terms of its staying power, I think its a fifty-fifty proposition. If they can do something original, edgy, and with a broad appeal, I think it could be a good selling title. That is to say, if the new legion can offer the curious fan boys and Waid lovers something truly different than the majority of Superhero titles it will do well.

Oh, and while Birthright was fairly unspectacular, both in terms of story and sales, I like to think that Waid will be allowed to take way more risks on the Legion than he was on Superman.

I'm certain it's going to sell really well. We already know it's going to have 2 big name creators, a re-pre-post-das-jack boot to end the slow descent into bordom and capture the interest of new readers, a decent amount of hype and it's "hey Presto!! decent sales again"

Well thats my opinion anyway And I bet a set of Bevis's gorgeous Queen of Diamond books against the first poster who disagrees that in Dec 2005 the Legion will be back in the top 10 again best selling DC comics.

Imo, the new generation of fans they yearn for will consist largely of current comic book readers who USED TO be Legion fans but dropped the book for one reason or another, plus followers of Waid and/or Kitson. I just don't see how this will translate into DC's stated goal of 50-60K new readers (or even 50-60K steady readers total). Their expectations for this franchise seem highly unrealistic. That's dangerous, because if sales don't match the numbers DC is dreaming of, the LSH will find itself in trouble again this time next year, even if it's selling at a perfectly decent 35K.

I think the marketing machine is more strongly behind this one than the previous Legion #1, leading to some pretty strong sales for the franchise (which has been dying a slow and painful death for over a decade now) and I'm hearing some of the fans who I remember loudly complaining about Legion of the Damned (I just grew indifferent) show interest in the franchise again. Taking in all factors, I'm thinking a debut in the low 40s.

Number ten's sales really depends on the marketing, IMO. If DC were to put a digest-sized collection behind the relaunch (I've always thought the Legion was a good fit for the manga audience and this one seems an even stronger fit) they might finally manage to bring the franchise to a new audience.

'course that's expecting good marketing. I expect marketing to quickly forget about the Legion after the first issue, as usual. (Aside from the typical underprinting and 'issue one sold out' press releases.) In that case my prediction for issue ten falls at about 32K.

BTW, what do those ICV2 numbers reflect? Pre-orders or total orders?

Yeah. Green Arrow sold like gangbusters because of Kevin Smith (and Brad Meltzer), not Oliver Queen. Superman/Batman and Superman are similarly being carried by Mike Turner & Jim Lee (as Lee boosted Batman before that). Meltzer's carrying ID Crisis now.

Neither Waid nor Kitson have anything LIKE that level of cache.

Apparently, Levitz said on the Baltimore panel that DC would support the new Legion series with a quick turnaround on a TB of the first story arc, priced at around $10. This action has proven incredibly successful with Fables and Y The Last Man, and has kept Losers and Human Target alive.

Granted, these are Vertigo books - though certainly a wide spread in terms of subject material and style - and the DCU superhero side has not seemed to benefit the same way from this tactic (Dial H for HERO, Aquaman, Fallen Angel, Gotham Central). But if the Legion can stretch beyond the appearance of a DCU Superhero book and return to its Superhero/Science Fiction straddling roots, then it's certainly possible that the series could be supported in similar fashion. Right?

Just wanted to point another avenue of sales support on this thread.

I collect most my comics in trade. Only get a handful of monthly titles and about 3 to 10 trades depending on the month.

Great idea to release this in trade so quickly.

Jorge