Three big events happened on June and the three of them figured on the top 5 issues of the month: the first installment of Dark Days, the last issue of Dark Knight III, and Batman’s proposal to Catwoman. The surprise here is issue #24 of Batman outselling Dark Knight III, a title that has continuously been DC’s top selling book of the month whenever an issue came out. Also worth noting is that all of the main regular Batman titles went up one position in the overall ranking.
Once we leave the first tier of titles, the sales numbers drop by half, with All Star Batman still being the second best selling regular title. It is interesting to notice that Harley Quinn and Titans are evened up on sales, while at the beginning of Rebirth Harley was outselling Titans by 42,000 units. This is an indication of possible problems with the direction being taken by the title. Following a similar pattern is Nightwing and Teen Titans. The two team books had enormous monthly shifts in the ranking due to the artificial sales numbers from the month of May, when the titles were featured in the crossover event The Lazarus Contract.
Batman/Elmer Fudd might not impress with the numbers alone but it is worth noting that it was a sold out issue and it has gotten a second printing. From the Batman specials below we have a difficult situation, especially for the Batgirl titles. The sales for Batgirl and Batgirl and the Birds of Prey continue to decrease rapidly, those being the least selling regular titles from the Batman family of characters. The Birds are now selling less than 20,000 issues a month, entering a danger zone. Mother Panic has now dropped below 10 thousand, but being a Young Animal title the sales are expected to be lower than the other main titles.
BATMAN
Detective Comics continues being the most steady Batman title. This month though Batman itself gave us the only green variation of all Batman Universe comics with issue #24. Issue #20, the last one before the start of The Button, sold 97,544 units. Comparatively, then, the regular-arc-sales are also up, with Batman #25, the first issue of The War of Jokes and Riddles, outselling #20 by 5,000 issues.
With only three issues to go, the drop rate of All-Star Batman continues relatively high; higher than Dark Knight III, a title that suffered multiple delays. This just proves that Frank Miller titles will sell no matter what.
GREATER GOTHAM
The high drop rate of Bane: Conquest is expected. Though showing smaller relative decreases, Batwoman and Mother Panic are more worrisome than Bane, them being on their 5th and 6th month of publication respectively and still showing high drop rates.
Despite not dropping as steeply as those two titles, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey and Batgirl are also troublesome cases. Not only are they the least selling titles among the Bats, but they are also consistently selling around 4% less every month. Both titles are in need of a shake up.
GREATER DC
This was the month to check if The Lazarus Contract paid off. One of the reasons for doing events is to boost sales for titles not only while it is happening but also to try and draw in more readers for the regular issues. Considering that, the event didn’t fully work. Teen Titans #7 had sold 36,803 and Titans #10 40,893 issues, meaning that sales went right back to where they were before the crossover.
Super Sons and Justice League of America, both titles from the second wave of Rebirth, are having similar drop rates as they are still finding their audience. Apart from those, the Greater DC titles are steady.
