April 2019 – In Review Part I

With these reviews, we find out how right or how wrong we were, what we missed and what you can likely still find at cover price, likely at the local comic shop or at online retailers.

I missed the March Review due to a delay in Comichron releasing numbers for the month and working hard on getting the new forums up and running. So for a quick recap, let’s review the top ten books from March before we dive into April’s top ten and overall review.

  1. Detective Comics #1000 – 526,941
  2. Batman Who Laughs: The Grim Knight #1 – 133,656
  3. Doomsday Clock #9 – 120,079
  4. Batman #67 – 84,463
  5. Batman #66 – 83,102
  6. Heroes in Crisis #7 – 78,587
  7. Amazing Spider-Man #17 – 78,464
  8. Amazing Spider-Man #18 – 74,466
  9. Marvels Spider-Man City at War #1 – 72,285
  10. Justice League #20 – 64,675

I do need to mention that out of these top 10 books from March, the one that really stands out is Justice League #20 which saw some heat. It was the 3 connecting cover issue. Most of the demand seems to be for the right issue and the center issue.

Also, look at that print run for Detective #1000. Anyone who paid full price, I told you all to wait for Midtown’s 75% sale.

Now, onto April’s top ten books from April based on Comichron print run totals.

  1. War of Realms #1 – 187,851
  2. Symbiote Spider-Man #1 – 165,841
  3. Batman Who Laughs #4 – 103,645
  4. Immortal Hulk #16 – 90,305
  5. Batman #69 – 88,666
  6. Batman #68 – 87,557
  7. Thanos #1 – 81,356
  8. Heroes In Crisis #8 – 79,512
  9. Web of Venom Cult of Carnage #1 – 77,722
  10. Amazing Spider-Man #20 – 76,903

Most if not all of the top ten books from the past two months you can still find at your local shops. Buy with caution but you never know how these fair long term. Pick them up to read, tuck away in the long box, you never know what happens later on that makes the relevant and in demand in the future.

April 3rd Books

Amber Blake #1 – 3,553

The regular issue of Amber Blake was still available for quite some time but now most retailers seem to have sold out.

The Nodet was the issue to grab though, being a 1:10 ratio incentive variant, you can do the math on the print run of it from the total print run.

Was an easy $100+ flip initially but things have settled down since then. It’s still a nice grab and flip if you can find them for cheap.

Die #5 – 19,491

The Hot new series out from Image is selling out, most issues have gone back for additional printings.

I actually read issue #1 when I got an advanced digital preview but never picked these up. I opted to wait for the trade to read them.

It’s now been optioned. * Issue #1 is the key book to get though. Issue 5 can still be found out in the wild and you can find this one for under cover on the secondary market.

* Edit: Sorry, while typing I was thinking of another book that got optioned and missed this on my proof read before publishing.

Immortal Hulk #14 2nd Print Kyle Hotz Variant – 4,600

I loved this Immortal Hulk #14 (2nd Printing) cover by Kyle Hotz. It’s the only additional printing I’ve picked up of Immortal Hulk so far.

Great series, great read and you gotta love also the regular Alex Ross covers. Sadly this one you can still find at your local shop and online.

This one even saw a 3rd printing.

Immortal Hulk #16 – 90,305

Saw a huge surge in print run. Issue #15 went from 53k print run and now it has a 90k print run total for Immortal Hulk #16.

This also had the first ratio variant that you can still find for $105 at Midtown. It even saw a second printing for both the regular and the ratio variant.

Huge print run, easy to find, no love yet on the secondary market. If you got one of the ratio variants early and cheap, that was the only money made but once those die hards got their copy, those ratio’s have settled down (since Midtown even dropped their initial $150 price tag to $105).

Think of it this way, just imagine the print runs prior to #16 were hovering around the 50-55k range. For giggles let’s say half of those people are buyers who are buying to read while the other half have been collectors, etc. If on average there were 25k regular readers, that means there’s now an additional 40-50k extra books that were published that are not catering the readers but the collector market where the push was likely just to obtain the 1:25 ratio variant. It’s going to be a while before #16 supplies are diminished if we’re ever to see any heat or value from this issue.

Red Sonja #3 Tedesco Virgin Ratio – 12,959

Red Sonja #3 Tedesco Virgin Variant had one sold listing for $37 and only one other listing with an asking price of $90 or best offer.

Great looking cover even if you aren’t a Red Sonja fan.

Potential big flip if you can find them for cheap. It was a 1:40 variant so you can imagine with a total print run of 12,959 and most shops not likely near the qualifying order number, this one will be a ghost.

Click the next page for book from April 10th Week..

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12 thoughts on “April 2019 – In Review Part I”

  2. You’re missing it here also. Comichron doesn’t break down the sales from Diamond to stores by Variant or later printing, they’re all lumped together. Immortal Hulk 16’s 90,000 number is the 1st printing, the ratio, the 2nd printing and that ratio all mashed together into one number. If you assume 16 had a slight increase over 15 on the 1st Printings orders, the Second Printing should count for around 15 to 30,000 copies especially since the price gouging on the First Printing Ratio variant didn’t begin until after FOC on the First Printing. As you can see here clearly, Comichron is using the shipping date of the First Printing of Naomi #3 with their listing for what you said was the Final Printings numbers. That means the numbers could possibly include late sales of First Printings to stores also which happens due to returned inventory and overstock held back for replacing damages.

    244 Naomi 3 $3.99 03/20/19 DC 5,111

    In other cases if a book hasn’t even sold out at Diamond you’d have to check the numbers from multiple months and keep adding them together to guess at what the actual print runs were. If later printings are mixed in there’s no way to really know and break it down.

    1. Usually Comichron does break them off for additional printings. Perhaps since #16 were so close together they lumped those together. Still though, most additional printings were small so a 90k print run is still massive if it’s including the 2nd printings..

      1. If you see some on there labelled as Second or Third Printing let me know. I’ve yet to find that breakdown on the Monthly lists other than on the Yearly one which will have variants separated out. Immortal Hulk #16 in this case mathematically couldn’t have more than a combined 3,500 copies in existence for the two ratio’s combined and realistically it’s probably a good bit less than that since many stores First Printings orders probably weren’t in 25 increments. In our own case we got 50 Second Printings, 25 First Printings and sold all 3 ratio’s prior to arrival actually making money on the First Printing one up front and steadily making money on the Second as they sell slowly now that the sales of the 2 Second Print ratios covered the cost of having them. There’s no justification for deaming these failures when the qualifications for being a success are so low. It’s easy to call any Marvel Ratio that sells for ratio or above a complete success and in this case even if they drop down to ratio for all covers in the short term, that’s still a win. The math’s pretty simple. If you get 50 to $60 in a Presale for the Ratio there’s no cost to having ordered them. It’s covered. ANY sales of the standard cover Second Printing is all profit at that point whether you sell just one a month or all 25. If you don’t sell the ratio at the early inflated price you still only have to sell about half the 25 reprints to break even or in this case, just one a month for a year. Then any price you get for the ratio is profit even if it sits until the end of year half price blowout. If the leftovers end up in the dollar bin, great, the kids and late comers get a deal as well and the amount in the black goes up even more. If in cases like this it makes me by 25 all at once because they dangled a carrot and that saves me from buying 8 for each of the next 3 Printings that’s an even bigger win. take friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6. It was such a great and inspirational story I would have bought 25 to 50 copies to make sure I had a copy in stock for years to come without and ratio offering. The fact that they did was just icing on the cake and in this case icing I tried to give to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Even if it bottoms out and sells for $10 I’d still call that a win.

        1. That’s the thing, comichron doesn’t usually label them as 2nd, 3rd, or beyond printings. It gets a bit confusing but most issues will only have an additional printing per month but IH was an exception I think.

          You can look at https://comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2019/2019-04.html and see Immortal Hulk Issues listed. These are mostly additional printings (besides #16 but they likely did roll these into the first print since the 2nd print came out so fast) and are all reported in April Sales:

          1. And yes, they do use the original sale date from the first printing. We’ll never know the exact print run number of any book sadly. We can only guess based on sales units. But we can all assume in April IH #2 first print was sold out. So that listing for issue #2 at print run 5,698 was probably a majority of the 4th print that was released on April 10th. We’ll likely see another Immortal Hulk #2 in May’s comichron monthly sales since the 5th printing hit shelves on May 29th.

          2. And if they did lump #16 second prints in with the first prints, we can only assume by the average numbers of the additional printings being around 3-5k units, that still likely pushed the first print for #16 to the mid to upper 80k print range, which is still a huge increase from the range the previous printings were averaging.

  3. I would suggest that there is another reason for IH16 to have a higher print run beyond those listed. It’s the first issue of Vol 4.

    We have a number of customers who, when they realize a book is smoking hot and they may not want to fork over the cash for expensive back issues, will choose to purchase trades for the first X number of issues and then start collecting single issues from that point on.

    In this particular case, we added 8 additional subs for Immortal Hulk beginning with issue 16. And most of those were customers who realized a couple issues ago that that would be their best jumping on point.

    We always order heavier on “first issue after a TPB” for popular titles, because there are quite a few collectors out there who are happy to buy trades up through issue X and then start single issues with X+1.

    1. Possibly contributed some to the print run but I can’t buy that IH obtained that many more readers.

      I still think it’s safe to assume the huge increase is based on the first ratio variant in the series after issue #1. Hot series with a 1:25 ratio variant usually equals quick sale and easy money. Seems some got greedy, trying to set the price too high (yeah, I’m talking about you Midtown since you now had to lower the price) and they’re still now trying to dump them and these were too easy to obtain. Then the second print came too soon with it’s own 1:25 variant of the same cover.. Marvel really screwed the pooch with these types of shenanigans.

      1. Issue 2 had a ratio variant, but yes, your point still stands.

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