Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: absolute, Absolute Batman, coverwatch, scott snyder

Absolute Batman #18 Had 330,000 Orders, When Will It Hit 400,000?

Absolute Batman #18 had 330,000 orders from comic book stores... so exactly when will it hit 400,000 orders?

Yesterday, I tried to crunch the numbers on orders made by comic book retailers for Absolute Batman, including the impact on retailer-exclusive covers, which had been attracted to Absolute Batman on an ongoing basis in more numbers than any title in that particular promotion's history. This sees comic book stores, conventions and individual creators commission their own covers for upcoming books, published as part of the print run of that comic, and limited in number. Bleeding Cool had noted that we had counted 53 such covers for Absolute Batman #19 and 45 for Absolute Batman #18, and how the number had been growing and growing this year. I estimated that the numbers for Absolute Batman #19 could add over 120,000 copies to the total print run alone.

It looks like I overestimated the print run for each issue, rather than a minimum of 3000 as DC used to set for the main exclusive retailer variant and then 2000 or 1000 for variants of that variant, the minimum has been now 1000 across the board. But that is also changing, for Absolute Batman #19, it's 2000 minimum, as DC Comics is now maxxing out the number of retailer variants they will allow, somewhere around 50. Which means for Absolute Batman #19, it might be only around 100,000 of the 300,000 print run. Except that's not the print run anymore.

In response to my article (and Rob Liefeld's love of it), Scott Snyder posted to X, "DC has to approve the art. The store has to buy a minimum of a couple thousand copies, and then DC prints the book and sends it to them. It's all based on what a store wants and thinks their customers will want. They literally can't accommodate more than a certain number, around 50 or 60. It's not a huge staff and we try to keep things manageable… Just to give a kind of breakdown of sales because people seem curious, given the topic of retailer variant covers – I don't have sales on 19 yet, but 18 sold naturally about 275-280K before retailer variant covers, which pushed it up over 300 to something like 330?"

So that confirmed my initial thesis and headline, even if my numbers were off a bit. But I clearly also underestimated exactly what was going on here. So Absolute Batman #18 gets 280,000 standard orders, and another 50,000 in retailer variant covers, to take it to 330,000 orders based on 45 retailer variants.

Well then, what the hell is Absolute Batman #19 going to get, based on the 53 retailer variants we have found so far, and a doubling of the increased minimum of 2000 per variant? At what point is Absolute Batman going to hit 400,000? 500,000 by San Diego Comic Con??? Could be.

Here, by the way, is a retailer-exclusive variant not for Absolute Batman #19, but for Feral #21 out today, from Third Eye Comics. You can find the spoilers here, but for this reason and that, I expect this cover will be in demand as well…

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