Marvel Solicits

[Jimmy T]

Referring to the June 2017

Holy crap; you see the pure number of books they are publishing?!!! It's staggering!! Is DC's that much? I usually don't look too much at DC, but I gotta go compare just to see.

And, who the hell are these writers?! LOL I don't know any of these names!! It's like they'll throw a book at anyone these days!!

But I gotta go compare and see if DC is throwing everything at the wall too.

[Perry]

Haven't looked at Marvel's count in a couple months, but I know a little while ago they were publishing over 90 titles. Not ISSUES, but titles, a month.
I've been screaming like a banshee at the LCSs about this very issue.

Will also go look to see what the latest info on file is from two months ago.

[Perry]

Okay, so in February, that is the latest month I can easily see what was shipped  Marvel shipped 104 titles while DC shipped 82 (which includes Rebirth bi-weeklies). Going back four months to November, Marvel had 88 to DC's 84 and going back to July, when I was really getting ticked about the amount of titles (and thus the watering down of the industry), Marvel shipped 97 to DC 64 (Image had 63 by the way ... which is pretty high for them as well as they usually average around 50 or so)

What that does - Shipping that many titles only takes the chances of new titles being successful, even from your own god-damned company, and rips it to shreds. It use to be a strategy that worked as shelf and rack space was minimal, so publishers that shipped the most could crowd out the other guys. That is not the way anymore. You can sell just as many (well, more) issues by releasing fewer titles. You can. I hope Marvel, under their new "whatever All-New banner we will have next" marketing strategy soon realizes it.

However, and I say this to every single person that paid $10 for that last issue of Amazing Spider-Man ... IF YOU DON"T STOP BUYING COMICS WITH THAT PRICE, THEY WILL CONTINUE TO SELL THEM AT THAT PRICE!!!!!!!!!!
STOP IT!!!! PUT DOWN THAT DAMN BOOK. COMICS ARE FOR CLOSERS!!!
 

Anyway, another thing I found, from John Mayo (over at CBR) is this -
In February, the total units (issues) sold to comic shops was down by 223,000 from January. Okay? The bigger aspect of that number ... Marvel titles accounted for 213,000 of that total. Most of that was due, in no small part, to Marvel sending "free" comics to the LCS in January to raise the bottom line on issues shipped to retailers (a dirty ass, tricky thing to do, but legit), so it looked like they (Marvel) sold so much more (they didn't).

So think about that number. The total of comics shipped, from every other publisher to the LCS's, was down 10,000 from the previous month. Now with approximately 2,200 shops across the U.S, that essentially means that each shop received or ordered around 5 less issues in February than they did in January, from every publisher but Marvel.
Yep, each shop (again approximately and by average) ordered or was shipped about 95 issues less issues than they received in January from Marvel. That is some serious free over shipping going on in January.

Just to make it look like they were selling a lot of issues on the books
 
 

[Jimmy T]

All I got to say in response to that is 'Geesh.'

I mean, those June 2017 solicits have all kinds of new books in the Secret Empire banner, as well as Weapons of Mutant Destruction banner and add-ins, and tons of new issues double shipping (in addition to the other 60 'normal' monthly titles they put out). It's a bit of madness, to be honest.

If they are working to crowd out DC, and make so many books seem so accessible and wanted because so many issues are available of each title each month, it's honestly just too much.