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

Wouldn't it be awesome if the Legion were still as successful as it was when Gerry Conway was writing it?...

You know what? I've gotten my own brothers to read just about every comic DC and Marvel put out in the last four years. That means the X-Men and all their confusing history. That means the Titans. That means, well, just about everything. But they won't read the Legion, which they've always known is my favorite. Because they think its too confusing. The only Legion they know is the one from Crisis on Infinite Earths. My 25 year old brother told me he just isn't ready to make the committment to understand Legion history yet (I've tried to explain it to him in as simple way as possible).

Then there's the other problem that so many comic book stories are about continuity rather than building a continuity without having to continually reference and altar it.

I feel like we've talked about it so much . I do think the only way we'd ever see numbers as high as 500,000 again would be for DC to first get Superman that high and then tie the Legion directly to Superboy again...

i'd be interested to see that legion sales graph compared with one charting the drop in overall comic book buyers. the market has also been shrinking.

Wow... and I though i was AR...

Interesting stats, Lone Wolf! I am really quite astounded that Legion sales did hardly change all though the Reboot... and that those sales were seemingly the lowest ever, lower than TMK and lower than most of the Threeboot...

One of the most interesting facts is that the Giffen/Bierbaum run, even at its lowest point in sales, still never dropped as low as the lowest point in Baxter sales (though, of course, it never gets anywhere near the highest point).

It's also worth noting in regards to the reboot that fans were effectively having to buy two books a month for at least part of that period, which impacts sales.

I really enjoyed the sales chart as well, Lone Wolf. It really shows where the industry has gone in the last 50 years.

In my opinion, the only way any comic would reach a 500K circulation would be for the price to go back to 10-15¢!

Good points.

I recall TMK letter columns saying sales indicated the book was well-received depsite the objections of long-time fans, yet as much as I love that era, it never seemed to resonate in fandom.

Sort of like DS9 achieving better ratings than TNG, but TNG drew the fan buzz.

Those numbers certainly do seem to justify ending Reboot; even fluctuations in quality do not show fluctuatinos in sales.

I do not think ongoing print comics in general ever can return to anything more than the 100,000s, save for the very uppermost household-name books; the cartoon's long-term success would help far more than a Superman revival, in my opinion.

I don't think even 10-15 cents would do it; rather that would engender a sense that they were worthless. If they solsd for that, most sales would be for birdcage lining and the like.

The future is not in high sales runs, except for Manga TPs aimed at girls. Like it or not, the only way "our" comics will achieve mass audiences again will be digital.

I don't think it's impossible to regain sales in print, though I think it's highly unlikely the monthly magazine format will ever regain high sales. More likely something like TPs is the wave of the future.

I certainly don't think the problem is merely one of price. Marketing and accessibility have more to do with it than anything else, imo. In the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Age, the average ten year old could pick up a particular comic issue and at least understand the basics of what's going on. These days half the stories are incomprehensible to even diehard fans.

The most basic problem is that the comics companies are content with selling to a fairly limited fanbase. As long as they can make minimal profit off those fans, there's not much incentive to take the risks that could potentially open up comics to a wider market, but would very likely upset much of that core fanbase.

I think Eryk's very right in marketing and accessibility has a much more tremendous impact and that's where the real problem lies. This also includes/touches on the fact that most comics, like Eryk says, are almost incomprehensible for the random reader to pick up nowadays. That's a editorial fault.

Great point Kent about 10-15 cents making comics appear worthless. I think you're 100% correct.

The decline of the mass appeal isn't just comics related. There was a day where the newstand ruled the roost of media. Then it was the Big 3 networks on TV. Look at TV these days, with very few exceptions shows are narrowing their focus.

The internet has only accelerated it. And even those people that dreamed of a 500 channel world got it wrong by about 6 orders of magnitude. We are in a world of 1 billion channels. Seriously, if I wanted to only consume media about carnivorous rodents of South America i could build a life around that using the net. SImilarly If i made a web channel about the same I could likely make a living with a very modest audience.

Recently, I asked a woman that produces a web-comic about her audience and if she could make a living on just that. She told me that the fanbase was very loyal and that after several years her income now came primarily from her comic.

From what I understand, her audience can't be more than a few thousand worldwide but if each of them spends an average of 10-20 bucks on her art, merchandise, yearly contributions she can get by.

I disaagree with EDE that marketing and accessibility are the main issues. Tamper is more on the mark: we see in virtually all forms of media this trend of decentralization/smaller, narrower ventures.

Kids are spoiled for choices in TV, video games, websites, etc - having to seek out a publication and wait a month or more between installments is as foreign as the 40s-style Saturday Matinee with cartoons, serials and news reels.

Even standard comics marketed towards kids without ongoing stories are in the toilet - even comics based on popular cartoons/video games, etc. The only exception, as I mentioned, is Manga aimed at teen girls, which is generally in TP format, and seems largely serialized volumes of longer stories - not simple 30-page one-shot stories as was common in the pre-Claremont era.

If comics companies are serious about growing numbers, you're going to see more and more catering to the Manga audience - in style, content and format. No Legion that's seen print thus far has entered this realm, although the cartoon series and comic may be the closest.

Barring any extraordinary cultural shifts (which are fully possible), I think it's clear we'll never be more than a niche within a niche within a niche.

sunnovaniche...

But that's the thing. We don't see the same trend in all forms of media. Take TV, for example. While it's true that the Big Three networks don't have the same impact that they had thirty years ago and there's a plethora of cable shows targeted at niche audiences, the situation for comics just isn't analogous. It's not as though the reason why the Big Two comic companies are selling a couple of hundred thousand per title per month less than they did thirty years ago is because that audience has moved towards reading indie comics. They've stopped reading comics altogether.

Nor is the situation similar to the music industry, where the big record labels are the verge of collapse because everyone is downloading music instead of buying cd's, and they've been unable to adapt to the changing format in which people obtain their music. People still listen to music, they just don't obtain it in the same way.

I would suggest that the reason manga is the one growth market within the broader comics industry has a lot to do with the fact that manga are simply far more accessible than "mainstream American comics". They're sold pretty much exclusively in TP format, in nice numbered volumes so that you know where you need to begin, that last for finite runs, and there's no having to worry about massive company-wide crossovers interfering with the storyline, or needing to know some obscure bit of trivia from fifty to seventy-five years worth of "continuity" that may be relevant one month and then vastly altered six months later.

I have no idea why manga have become popular or "cool" among teenage girls in particular, but if I was DC or Marvel I'd be trying to figure this out so that maybe I could learn something about how to create similar phenomena among other demographics as well.

It's also worth noting that while American comics have been on the decline, in Japan manga has been consistently popular for the last several decades, and far more culturally influential than American comics have been. My understanding is that the Japanese will talk about the latest volume of a popular manga at a business lunch or cocktail party much the same way we might talk about the latest bestsellar or hot movie or TV show.

EDE is completely right.

Beginning in the 1970s, the comics industry began being captured by "insiders" -- fanboys turned creators. The rise of the comics shop, the development of the "direct only" market, all of these things are guaranteed to drive down readership, even though they please the core fanbase. While reading comics was never totally respectable for kids, it at least had a veneer of mainstream acceptability when comics were prevalent at the 7-11, the drug store, the grocery store, next to "Tiger Beat" and "Popular Mechanics." As soon as the comics industry gave up on those distribution channels, it consciously chose a much smaller circulation. Now, you have to seek out a "comic shop" and brave the fear and uncertainty of venturing into such a geek-rich environment. I was in my local Borders the other day and checked out their spinner rack. It was a disaster. If Marvel and DC cared about distributing comics, they would work with the major chains to upgrade both the display and the content. Meanwhile, the graphic novel nook in the back was busy, as it typically is, with manga readers outnumbering comics readers at least 2 to 1.

DC's efforts to reach "the next generation" are particularly pathetic. Marvel's all-ages material includes a roll call and an "origin" blurb in each issue, pluse usually a mini-marvels one page funny comic. I've particularly enjoyed reading X-Men: First Class with the 5-year old. The book always starts with a great orientation to the characters and story.

Contrast with how awful the art, story and "universe" building often is in the JLU book. This book should be the centerpiece of the DC kids line, but it's been an afterthought for a lot longer than Jann Jones has been working on "Super Friends." The lack of an origin blurb, roll call, etc. -- not to mention often incoherent stories -- is just inexcusable.

In this regard, the Legion 3Boot has actually been pretty exemplary, although it's often been lacking in the "what went before" department (maybe because nothing happened last issue!). When I look at these charts, I see how steady things have been since the direct market reached full maturity in the late 1980s. The Legion market is what it is, a tiny niche in an industry full of tiny niches.

If DC wanted to leverage the Legion brand to the max, I would do a "Little Legion" comic and a "Saturn Girl Loves Lightning Lad" manga series. In fact, Legion seems tailor made for manga, with the large, female-rich cast and the teenager clubhouse setting.

Yep comics chose large margins from a small number of customers versus tiny margins from many customers.

Manga is cool for teenage girls because manga that speaks to them. I'd argue that Marvel does have some idea of what attract girls to manga. The Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane series is an Americanized version of shojo manga.

The thing is they don't really promote it correctly or heavily. I just think that the comic guys have been in the box so long they forgot there's anything outside of it let alone think outside of it.

Manga also capitalized on the power of cross media selling. My comic store guy says manga sales are tied directly to what new show just appeared or video game was just released. 13-episodes a year of LSH doesn't compare to what seems like 1000 episodes of Pokemon in circulation.

My understanding is that it wasn't so much that the comics publishers chose to leave the newstand market as much as the newstand market chose to kick the comic publishers to the curb due to distribution dealings of the time.

I think the market now is close to being in a similar situation as the music industry was a few years back. There is tremendous growth possibilities out there for accessing comics via the web just waiting to be tapped.

One of main things which killed "comics on the newsstand" was fairly simple and is almost never mentioned - the only whole-US distributor was worth less on the stock market than the value of it's assets minus its debts. So a vulture fund bought it and sold it off piece by piece.

Okay, it's as near to official as we're likely to get - the January charts are screwed up

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/02/25/where-are-the-charts/
http://comiksdebris.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-numbers-update.html
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/...-picks-up-his-calculator-again/#comments (and it's the comments that are important, not the entry itself)

At the links, they've gone through it and noted that it's the Diamond index data itself that's wonky - not icv2's estimates, as I first thought, possibly due to February sales "leaking" onto the January chart - to pick an example, Amazing Spider-Man #549, which didn't ship until February, charted in January at 202 with icv2-estimated orders of 7,247. Either way, the later in the month, the further from what's expected the sales get (in an upward direction, not downward).

So unless Diamond issue a corrected chart, don't trust the Jan figures OR rankings (and possibly the February figures & rankings if they proceed to get underestimated by the sales which leaked backwards).

And thus you demonstrate it is NOT marketing at all; it is content.

It wasn't so much a choice as a retrenchment. Sales were dropping anyway; the 60s conventional wisdom was to hope comics would survive long enough for the WWII-era guys to collect their pensions.

Direct distribution was a survival mechanism that saved comics. It was a distribution innovation that allwoed the Big Two to continue to operate by catering to the fanboys, who were the last stable remnant of comics buyers. Eigh-to-twelve year-olds were not buying as devoutly as in past decades, and this is what fed to decline in magazine-rack sales.

Companies of the 60s/70s that did not pursue/succeed in the direct market were the ones to peter away: Gold Key had recognizable 'name' products, like Star Trek. Archie began its dwindling. Charlton, Dell and a slew of former giants went belly-up, or abandoned their comics divisions.

And as fanboys aged or grew up (not always the same thing) and branched out into indies, this created the diversified media I described before - within the fanboy community; EDE was largely correct in noting the populace at large were not buying indies (but indies have and do attract people who would not buy a superhero comic, too).

If not for direct distribution, the fanboy niche would not be so dominant, very true - but there might not be a comics medium to dominate, in terms of periodicals as we've known them.

Instead, the general public's reading of comics would likely be more or less as it was all along since the 70s: Sunday funnies, compilations of favorite strips, and now manga. Maybe a fewsuperhero books would have limped through, as they did in the 1950s. Maybe not.

As a kid of the 70s, comics were only a mainstay for a few of us as a longtime endeavor; for most it was an occassional purpose and one easily gone without. TV was of far greater interest to the average kid, and this was still the era where many of us had only 3 channels.

Most magazines by the 1980s (and probably well before) were about 70-90 percent subscriber-driven; that made the mgazine rack sales less intrinsic; even if 75% of magaizines were returned unsold, they paid for themselves by keeping the magazine visible - people who did not buy the magazine still knew the name, and were still potential subscribers someday. Comics, pre-direct distribution, had no such built-in security; subsciptions were maybe 10 percent, as I recall - and before the 1980s were notorious for arriving mangled in the mail. This made the newstand market vulnerable.

Also, while in 1940ish both comics and "real" magaizines like Time were a dime, but the 1970s, they were 15-40 cents versus around $2; it was "okay" for Time to go up 10-20-fold, but comics were supposed to be a dime; they were 'worthliess' kids stuff, and even today you see people claiming a 10-cent price-tag would magically bring back the good old days.

as a result, comics provided essentially no profit margin for newstand retailers; selling one copy of a glossy mag brought in more than 10 comics would. Guess which takes precedence? And with less kids buying, the decision became all the easier to edge comics off the shelf to make room for something that pays the bills.

market forces, changing tastes, changing technologies, resistance to change, pigeon-holing as kiddie books... these are the reasons the field shrank. Without the feild shrinking, the ascendancy of the fanboys would have never taken root. Comic magazines were state of the art in the 1930s, but culturally marginalized by the 1970s. The future lies in TPBs and the Internet, not in 32-page monthlies.

As expected, Diamond has released corrected numbers and ICV2 has also released corrected estimates. LSH comes in at 33,045, meaning a few thousand less copies than originally reported. This means a 12K + drop-off from Shooter's debut issue. The next few months will be critical to see if the trend continues or the numbers firm up a bit. Revised list below.

10/2004: Teen Titans/The Legion Special #1 -- 61,047
12/2004: LSH #01 -- 59,944, #25 out of 300 (sold out)
01/2005: LSH #02 -- 48,584, #30 out of 300
02/2005: LSH #03 -- 44,824, #40 out of 300
03/2005: LSH #04 -- 43,408, #46 out of 300
04/2005: LSH #05 -- 41,664, #44 out of 300
05/2005: LSH #06 -- 40,970, #42 out of 300
06/2005: LSH #07 -- 39,155, #44 out of 300
07/2005: LSH #08 -- 37,272, #54 out of 300
08/2005: LSH #09 -- 35,834, #69 out of 300
09/2005: LSH #10 -- 35,800, #69 out of 300
10/2005: LSH #11 -- 34,100, #54 out of 300
11/2005: LSH #12 -- 33,500, #57 ouf of 300
11/2005: LSH TPB #1 -- 3,102, #27 out of 100
01/2006: LSH #13 -- 32,730, #54 out of 300
02/2006: LSH #14 -- 32,513, #62 out of 300
02/2006: LSH #15 -- 31,649, #65 out of 300
03/2006: LSH #16 -- 54,826, #41 out of 300 (sold out) (includes reorders of 7,400)
04/2006: LSH #17 -- 47,697, #44 out of 300 (includes reorders of 2,897)
05/2006: LSH #18 -- 45,520, #49 out of 300
06/2006: LSH TPB #2 -- 2,874, #28 out of 100
06/2006: LSH #19 -- 43,918, #46 out of 300
07/2006: LSH #20 -- 41,679, #53 out of 300
08/2006: LSH #21 -- 39,800, #61 out of 300
09/2006: LSH #22 -- 36,735, #54 out of 300
10/2006: LSH #23 -- 41,554, #39 out of 300
10/2006: LSH TPB #3 -- 2,972, #23 out of 100
11/2006: LSH #24 -- 33,985, #68 out of 300
12/2006: LSH #25 -- 33,288, #61 out of 300
01/2007: LSH #26 -- 32,342, #56 out of 300
02/2007: LSH #27 -- 31,387, #65 out of 300
04/2007: LSH #28 -- 31,525, #71 out of 300
04/2007: LSH #29 -- 30,906, #72 out of 300
04/2007: Showcase: Legion #1 -- 4,812, #11 out of 100
04/2007: LSH TPB #4 -- 2,702, #39 out of 100
05/2007: LSH #30 -- 30,758, #79 out of 300
06/2007: LSH #31 -- 30,385, #72 out of 300
07/2007: LSH #32 -- 29,826, #84 out of 300
08/2007: LSH #33 -- 29,315, #92 out of 300
09/2007: LSH #34 -- 28,294 , #88 out of 300
10/2007: LSH #35 -- 27,370 , #91 out of 300
11/2007: LSH #36 -- 26,814 , #88 out of 300
12/2007: LSH #37 -- 45,803 , #50 out of 300
01/2008: LSH #38 -- 33,045 , #64 out of 300

Also, as a point of interest, Action #861 sold an estimated 56,093 copies (down only 200 copies from the previous month and still up almost 5K from the issue before the Legion crossover started).

so basically, I could be writing the Legion, and the numbers would stay the same?

Diamond numbers for February are out (see below). So sales are back to where they were a year ago. I imagine it will still be a few months before the sales stabilise (hopefully) and we get a good metric on what the S&M era numbers look like, but barring something huge, it looks like it will be well below the WaK numbers.

10/2004: Teen Titans/The Legion Special #1 -- 61,047
12/2004: LSH #01 -- 59,944, #25 out of 300 (sold out)
01/2005: LSH #02 -- 48,584, #30 out of 300
02/2005: LSH #03 -- 44,824, #40 out of 300
03/2005: LSH #04 -- 43,408, #46 out of 300
04/2005: LSH #05 -- 41,664, #44 out of 300
05/2005: LSH #06 -- 40,970, #42 out of 300
06/2005: LSH #07 -- 39,155, #44 out of 300
07/2005: LSH #08 -- 37,272, #54 out of 300
08/2005: LSH #09 -- 35,834, #69 out of 300
09/2005: LSH #10 -- 35,800, #69 out of 300
10/2005: LSH #11 -- 34,100, #54 out of 300
11/2005: LSH #12 -- 33,500, #57 ouf of 300
11/2005: LSH TPB #1 -- 3,102, #27 out of 100
01/2006: LSH #13 -- 32,730, #54 out of 300
02/2006: LSH #14 -- 32,513, #62 out of 300
02/2006: LSH #15 -- 31,649, #65 out of 300
03/2006: LSH #16 -- 54,826, #41 out of 300 (sold out) (includes reorders of 7,400)
04/2006: LSH #17 -- 47,697, #44 out of 300 (includes reorders of 2,897)
05/2006: LSH #18 -- 45,520, #49 out of 300
06/2006: LSH TPB #2 -- 2,874, #28 out of 100
06/2006: LSH #19 -- 43,918, #46 out of 300
07/2006: LSH #20 -- 41,679, #53 out of 300
08/2006: LSH #21 -- 39,800, #61 out of 300
09/2006: LSH #22 -- 36,735, #54 out of 300
10/2006: LSH #23 -- 41,554, #39 out of 300
10/2006: LSH TPB #3 -- 2,972, #23 out of 100
11/2006: LSH #24 -- 33,985, #68 out of 300
12/2006: LSH #25 -- 33,288, #61 out of 300
01/2007: LSH #26 -- 32,342, #56 out of 300
02/2007: LSH #27 -- 31,387, #65 out of 300
04/2007: LSH #28 -- 31,525, #71 out of 300
04/2007: LSH #29 -- 30,906, #72 out of 300
04/2007: Showcase: Legion #1 -- 4,812, #11 out of 100
04/2007: LSH TPB #4 -- 2,702, #39 out of 100
05/2007: LSH #30 -- 30,758, #79 out of 300
06/2007: LSH #31 -- 30,385, #72 out of 300
07/2007: LSH #32 -- 29,826, #84 out of 300
08/2007: LSH #33 -- 29,315, #92 out of 300
09/2007: LSH #34 -- 28,294 , #88 out of 300
10/2007: LSH #35 -- 27,370 , #91 out of 300
11/2007: LSH #36 -- 26,814 , #88 out of 300
12/2007: LSH #37 -- 45,803 , #50 out of 300
01/2008: LSH #38 -- 33,045 , #64 out of 300
02/2008: LSH #39 -- 31,123 , #59 out of 300

Action, meanwhile, shipped 55,658 copies, meaning it's dropped less than 500 from the previous issue and remains above the previous (non-Legion) arc by a comfortable margin.

For comparison (stolen from the Beat analysis ( Here ) :

10/2007: Action Comics #857 — 51,401 (- 4.5%)
10/2007: Action Comics #858 — 54,596 (+ 6.2%) [59,031]
11/2007: Action Comics #859 — 54,572 (- 0.0%)
12/2007: Action Comics #860 — 56,254 (+ 3.1%)
01/2008: Action Comics #861 — 56,093 (- 0.3%)

The bracketed number for 858 (the first Legion issue) is accounting for re-orders)