November was a very good month for DC Comics, who snatched eight books out of the Top Ten comics for the month. As reported by Comichron, this was the only month of 2017 to outperform its counterpart from 2016, when Rebirth was just starting. November’s sales were pulled up by the conjunction of Doomsday Clock #1 and the Metal event, which continues to be a success. Having two different covers at different prices, Doomsday Clock actually got first and second positions on the overall market ranking. The number of copies used for this analysis is the combined total.
November also had the premiere of the Justice League movie. Coupled with the Bats Out of Hell crossover event, this pulled the Justice League title to a ranking position unusually high. Also part of the event were The Flash #33 and Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps #32.
The titles not involved in any event had no significant changes in their TBU ranking positions. Despite the shifts, the titles are not switching positions, except for Gotham City Garage, Ragman, and Harley and Ivy Meet Betty and Veronica. Those titles are in their second month of publication, so the drastic drop in sales is expected. Batman: The Dark Prince Charming debuted with a small number of copies sold, but its $12,99 cover price actually put it on the #32 position of the dollar ranking according to Comichron.
BATMAN
The Batman titles are, out of all the regular ones covered in our analysis, the ones faring better on sales. King’s run continues to have its small ups and downs in sales. At this point it is fairly safe to say that having Catwoman on the cover will drive the sales up, issue #35 having her and Talia on their final confrontation. The highly praised Annual #2 did not manage to outsell last year’s Annual #1, which sold 91,033 copies. They did get an Eisner for that one though, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to guess that this one will be a contender for the next award. The issue sold out even before it hit stands.
Detective Comics’ sales went down as soon as A Lonely Place of Living finished. The sales for this entire arc went up and down multiple times. With a cover that pays homage to the final issue of A Lonely Place of Dying and with Tim finally coming back to the fold, issue #968 outsold its previous issue. The following issue though had sales dropping back to where they were before the arc. In fact, the issue precedent to it, #964, sold 53,552 copies more than #969 did.
The numbers for White Knight are very probably distorted due to retailers underestimating how well the title would do. The first issue is currently going for a fourth printing, and issues #2 and #3 for a second printing. Not only that, the title is leading the advance reorders, as reported by Bleeding Cool.
As for Dark Prince Charming, the numbers we get are from Diamond Comics, which are the distributors in the US. The title was released in partnership with Dargaud though, so this number does not include sales of the French version of the title. With Marini being a big name in the European scene, I’d say the numbers for Dargaud were probably higher. Even then, considering the issue cost $12,99, it certainly did very well financially.
GREATER GOTHAM
Gotham is a big red landscape. All of the titles are showing a monthly decrease in sales, including Harley Quinn. Issue #31 had a big enough drop for the final result to be negative, despite the small rise the finale of “Vote Harley” brought on issue #32.
Some of the titles are less worrisome though. Red Hood and the Outlaws had such a low decline that it is virtually insignificant, with Batgirl and the Birds of Prey following closely behind. Nightwing, for being bi-monthly, did not do all that bad. December will be bringing a new creative team to the tile, but Tim Seeley and Javier Fernandez have had worst results on their run.
The titles suffering the worst continue being Bane: Conquest, Batwoman, Batgirl and Batman Beyond. Issue #14 was the first Beyond in 2.5 years without Bernand Chang as part of the creative team. He is joining Sam Humphries on Nightwing beginning with issue #35.
Sales for the new series have all fallen drastically in their second month. Faring worse is Harley and Ivy meet Betty and Veronica #2, which sold half as many copies as the first issue. Ragman and Gotham City Garage had similar drops of around two and four thousand copies. They will both be coming to and end at the same time, with Gotham City Garage revealed to be due to end with issue #12.
GREATER DC
After a long wait since DC: Rebirth hit shelves, Doomsday Clock #1 finally came out. It was the third best selling single issue of the year, behind Dark Knights: Metal #1 and Marvel Legacy #1. As for the other titles, they follow a pattern very similar to Greater Gotham: two monthly titles showing lower drop rates, with the other ones having more alarming decreases.
The one that came out of its curve for November was Super Sons #10. Issue #9 had a drop of 938 copies sold, which has now almost doubled. This might be explained by the absence of Jorge Jimenéz on the title, especially after issue #9 had a last minute fill-in.
Doing better than the other titles, Titans #17 featured the reveal of the traitor amongst the team, and Trinity #15 was the final issue of the “Dark Trinity” arc. As for the Annuals, they did as well as expected, selling almost as much as the regular titles.
METAL
Out of all the one-shots that came out of Metal, November featured all three of the top selling ones, with The Batman who Laughs coming first, closely followed by Batman: Lost. Those two are the one-shots with Scott Snyder’s name on them, so these results were expected.
The Bats out of Hell crossover performed as well as Gotham Resistance, with the lowest performance being around 57 thousand copies sold.
