Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes Sales Figures

Updated numbers, including new totals for #17:

12/2004: LSH #01 -- 59,944, including reorders
01/2005: LSH #02 -- 48,584 ""
02/2005: LSH #03 -- 44,824 ""
03/2005: LSH #04 -- 43,408 ""
04/2005: LSH #05 -- 41,664, no reorder listed in top 300
05/2005: LSH #06 -- 40,970 ""
06/2005: LSH #07 -- 39,155 ""
07/2005: LSH #08 -- 37,272 ""
08/2005: LSH #09 -- 35,834 ""
09/2005: LSH #10 -- 35,800 ""
10/2005: LSH #11 -- 34,100 ""
11/2005: LSH #12 -- 33,500 ""
01/2006: LSH #13 -- 32,730 ""
02/2006: LSH #14 -- 32,513 ""
02/2006: LSH #15 -- 31,649 ""
03/2006: LSH #16 -- 54,826, including reorders
04/2006: LSH #17 -- 47,697, including reorders
05/2006: LSH #18 -- 45,520

#18 actually outsold #17 by 720 copies, before reorders were added in. The issue was the 29th best selling overall title when specials, minis (and maxis like 52) and one-shots were subtracted. It was DC's 12th best selling title.

The Legion TPB sold 2,874 copies, 228 less than the first collection.

And here are the new top five best selling Legion issues since 1997 (#17 passed up #3 with reorders):

Teen Titans/The Legion Special #1 - 61,047
The Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #1 - 59,944
The Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #16 - 54,826
The Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #2 - 48,584
The Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #17 - 47,697

boy it sure would be nice to stay at 45K

-Nick-

I hope sales stay strong. The OYL boost seems to have helped sales a lot, so hopefully a lot of people stay on Legion.

I didn't see the original release of the Top 300 but they are out along with the numbers:

46 57.39 SUPERGIRL & LEGION O/SUPER HEROES #19

If there were reorders for #18 they didn't chart.

#19 was, minus the special, one-shots, etc., the 33rd best selling title for June and DCs 13th best selling on-going title. If we count Superman/Batman as a team book then SLoSH was DCs 5th best selling team title.

Updated numbers:

12/2004: LSH #01 -- 59,944, including reorders
01/2005: LSH #02 -- 48,584 ""
02/2005: LSH #03 -- 44,824 ""
03/2005: LSH #04 -- 43,408 ""
04/2005: LSH #05 -- 41,664, no reorder listed in top 300
05/2005: LSH #06 -- 40,970 ""
06/2005: LSH #07 -- 39,155 ""
07/2005: LSH #08 -- 37,272 ""
08/2005: LSH #09 -- 35,834 ""
09/2005: LSH #10 -- 35,800 ""
10/2005: LSH #11 -- 34,100 ""
11/2005: LSH #12 -- 33,500 ""
01/2006: LSH #13 -- 32,730 ""
02/2006: LSH #14 -- 32,513 ""
02/2006: LSH #15 -- 31,649 ""
03/2006: LSH #16 -- 54,826, including reorders
04/2006: LSH #17 -- 47,697, including reorders
05/2006: LSH #18 -- 45,520, no reorder listed in top 300
06/2006: LSH #19 -- 43,918 ""
07/2006: LSH #20 -- 41,679 ""

13 out of ??

5th out of ??

Need totals for proper reference.

Then if we don't count Superman/Batman as a team book then SLoSH would be DCs 4th best selling team title.

No estimates yet but it looks like SLoSH #20 took quite a tumble compared to #19:

53 40.12 SUPERGIRL & LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #20

#20 fell exactly as many points in the index from June to July as Marvel Team-Up #22 had in total (17.27). Still if sales for Civil War #3 were high maybe the actual number of issues sold wouldn't have dropped too much.

One-shots, et al aside, #20 ranked in at #36.

The issue ranked #16 (out of 33) for DC's on-going titles and #7 (out of 10) for DC's team books.

Estimated numbers are out and SLoSH #20 shipped 41,679 copies, 2,239 fewer than #19. The title is still selling 10k above what it was, though, prior to Supergirl joining.

I'll feel much better about this series when/if sales ever stabilize.

Don't most titles start to level out by 20 issues?

That is an unrealistic expectation - for example

Top 10 selling comics
January 2004:
1 Ultimate Fantastic Four 126,700
2 New X-Men 124,000
3 New X-Men 118,100
4 Marvel 1602 109,200
5 Wolverine End 100,100
6 Ultimate X-Men 99,600
7 Ultimate Spider-Man 95,900
8 Ultimate Six 94,200
9 Uncanny X-Men 89,900
10 Batman 89,100

Current position & sales

Ultimate Fantastic Four - 22 - 84,400
New X-Men - 55 - 39,800
New X-Men
Marvel 1602 - mini series
Wolverine End - mini series
Ultimate X-Men - 30 - 70,600
Ultimate Spider-Man - 27 - 76,600
Ultimate Six - mini series
Uncanny X-Men - 19 - 88,800
Batman - 5 - 113,600

He said 'most'- walk into a fully stocked comic book store and you'll see the ones he's talking about. That includes all the non X books out there, the books like firestorm and manhunter, all the Vertigo books, indy books, Darkhorse etc...

I do shop at a well stocked store - one that carries every Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse title plus a slew of independents. Plus it has one of the largest back issue stock of any store within a hundred miles.
The owner is a good friend of mine and I have reviewed the sales charts that he uses to review his sales and to project his orders. I can tell you that sales tend to fluctuate based on a myriad of special events - cross overs, new writers, new artists etc.
I also see that you mentioned a variety of publishers but only two specific titles and quoted no numbers to back up your assertions.
So I did a little research and here are the numbers:( I don't see a lot of stability)
Firestorm
Firestorm 1 46,300
Firestorm 2 35,400
Firestorm 3 31,000
Firestorm 4 28,400
Firestorm 5 26,400
Firestorm 6 28,000
Firestorm 7 22,100
Firestorm 8 21,100
Firestorm 9 20,000
Firestorm 10 20,200
Firestorm 11 19,400
Firestorm 12 19,000
Firestorm 13 18,900
Firestorm 14 18,400
Firestorm 15 17,700
Firestorm 16 17,700
Firestorm 17 22,600
Firestorm 18 23,200
Firestorm 19 23,000
Firestorm 20 23,500
Firestorm 21 22,500
Firestorm 22 21,100
Firestorm 23 25,100
Firestorm 24 23,700
Firestorm 25 23,300
Firestorm 26 21,800
Firestorm 27 19,800

Manhunter

Manhunter 1 25,500
Manhunter 2 20,300
Manhunter 3 19,200
Manhunter 4 15,800
Manhunter 5 15,400
Manhunter 6 14,300
Manhunter 7 14,100
Manhunter 8 14,200
Manhunter 9 13,600
Manhunter 10 13,700
Manhunter 11 14,000
Manhunter 12 13,600
Manhunter 13 22,100
Manhunter 14 17,200
Manhunter 15 14,300
Manhunter 16 14,300
Manhunter 17 13,600
Manhunter 18 13,200
Manhunter 19 13,000
Manhunter 20 16,100
Manhunter 21 14,900
Manhunter 22 15,700
Manhunter 23 15,500
Manhunter 24 14,600

I compared the % change from one issue to another for the first 20 issues - the first set of numbers is S&LSH, the second Firestorm and the last Manhunter, And i don't see the Legion as any better or worse than the others.
2 -19% -31% -26%
3 -8% -14% -6%
4 -3% -9% -22%
5 -4% -8% -3%
6 -2% 6% -8%
7 -4% -27% -1%
8 -5% -5% 1%
9 -4% -6% -4%
10 0% 1% 1%
11 -5% -4% 2%
12 -2% -2% -3%
13 -2% -1% 38%
14 -1% -3% -28%
15 -3% -4% -20%
16 73% 0% 0%
17 -13% 22% -5%
18 -5% 3% -3%
19 -4% -1% -2%
20 -5% 2% 19%

So, I usually let Scooter figure all this stuff out for me cuz I'm all lazy and stuff, but according to newsarama and CBG LoSH did pretty damn well in Oct 2006!

It looks like its about 39 in the Top 100 right now (is that right? or is it 43?). The figure looks to be at 66,560, or am I not reading it right?

If I am, that's pretty damn good for the Legion! Of course, its a pretty strong month for the industry as a whole, and everything looks to be doing better.

Now someone impress me with your dorkiness and tell me what this all means!

It sold 66.5% of what Detective Comics sold - that's not going to be anywhere near 66.5k.

And it was #39 in a month without Civil War, one issue of Civil War: Frontline, Amazing Spider-Man, Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways, Ultimates and Astonishing X-Men on the Marvel side, and All-Star Superman, All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Batman, Wonder Woman, Justice League of America, Teen Titans, Superman/Batman, Green Lantern and Supergirl on the DC side. I may have missed a few titles.

On the other hand, it got beaten by that perennial top-seller Spider-Girl.

You'd almost think your post was negative 'Boot!

Normally it's indexed against the sales of Batman (not Detective) but for the first time in, well, a REALLY long time Batman missed a shipping month.

So while the index number looked like it's jumped through the roof vs. last month, it is because the comparison is to a lower selling book.

Add to that the lack of perenniel best sellers (see post above) and I think sales may have slipped a little. It shouldn't be long before ICV2 works out the projection of actual sales and we'll know for sure.

I am predicting that sales actually went up a bit - probably to just over 40K. I am sure the incentive cover resulted in dealers ordering a few extra copies.
We will know for sure in a few days.
One other thing of note - the Spidergirl issue was a number 1 which usually results in inflated sales. When I used to get over 30 titles a month, I had on my pull list any No.1 comic from Marvel or DC. And when I ran my shop, I also had customers that had similiar pull lists.
Probably explains why the comic companies love to relaunch titles.

I guess that shows what a poor excuse for a comic book geek I am! I buy books that I enjoy reading and it's never occurred to me to buy a book I don't care about simply because it's a number "1" though I guess it makes sense if you are interested in potential future value. (I assume that's why people would purposefully buy #1s. Is that correct?)

I take it another reason that #1s sell well is that people will often pick them up to sample a new title. So, for instance, maybe I didn't like the last Green Arrow series, but I'll pick up the first issue of the new one to see if it's a direction that I might enjoy more. If I don't, then I'm probably not buying beyond the first issue.

That's exacttly it!
I wanted to sample the new series to see if I liked it. I collected comics to read and not for investment value.
I never bought more than one copy of a book.

Looking at the numbers again, I think you're right. Even taking into account Detective's slides month over month, if its trends hold it would clock in around 62K. Legion being 2/3rds of that via the index would be about 40K. We might be looking at a modest bump here.

Let's just hope Detective didn't crash and burn this month!

Valor and Rouge are right. The numbers for #23 came in at 41,554. But when you take into account that for every 10 issues sold there was one Hughes variant cover sold, 4,155 of those issues were the variant. And as #23 sold 4,819 more issues than #22, that leaves only an extra 664 actual extra issues sold.

Guess I should also mention that the third trade of the series charted on the TPB list for October, coming in at #23 with 2,972 copies shipped.

Here are the updated numbers for the current series.

12/2004: LSH #01 -- 59,944, including reorders
01/2005: LSH #02 -- 48,584 ""
02/2005: LSH #03 -- 44,824 ""
03/2005: LSH #04 -- 43,408 ""
04/2005: LSH #05 -- 41,664, no reorder listed in top 300
05/2005: LSH #06 -- 40,970 ""
06/2005: LSH #07 -- 39,155 ""
07/2005: LSH #08 -- 37,272 ""
08/2005: LSH #09 -- 35,834 ""
09/2005: LSH #10 -- 35,800 ""
10/2005: LSH #11 -- 34,100 ""
11/2005: LSH #12 -- 33,500 ""
01/2006: LSH #13 -- 32,730 ""
02/2006: LSH #14 -- 32,513 ""
02/2006: LSH #15 -- 31,649 ""
03/2006: LSH #16 -- 54,826, including reorders
04/2006: LSH #17 -- 47,697, including reorders
05/2006: LSH #18 -- 45,520, no reorder listed in top 300
06/2006: LSH #19 -- 43,918 ""
07/2006: LSH #20 -- 41,679 ""
08/2006: LSH #21 -- 39,800 ""
09/2006: LSH #22 -- 36,735 ""
10/2006: LSH #23 -- 41,554 ""

Are we talking #23 or #22? I'm confused.