Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bestseller, coronavirus, pandemic

Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, 15th March 2020 – "Pandemic Week Slowed Foot-Traffic to Nearly Non-Existent"

Published Sun, 15 Mar 2020 06:00:47 -0500

This is the Top Ten Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, as compiled by a number of comic stores from their sales on Wednesday and Thursday. It measures what are known as the "Wednesday Warriors", those who can't wait till the weekend to get this week's comics. And this week – almost all marvel save for Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch sneaking in.

Wednesday Comics

Top ten bestselling comics of the week

X-Men #8
Thor #4
New Mutants #9
Darth Vader #2
Amazing Spider-Man #41
Immortal Hulk #32
Cable #1
Star Wars: The Rise Of Kylo Ren #4
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #1
The Batman's Grave 6

Thanks to the following retailers…

Famous Faces & Funnies, West Melbourne, Florida
Graham Crackers Comics – Illinois/Wisconsin/California – 12 shops
Rodman Comics, Ankeny, Iowa
Ssalefish Comics, Winston-Salem & Greensboro, North Carolina
Comix Experience Outpost, San Francisco, California
Comix Experience, San Francisco, California
Fat Jack's Comicrypt, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hourglass Comics, British Columbia, Canada

If you would like to contribute to the retailer charts, let me know at richjohnston@bleedingcool.com.

Who had this to say…

Donny Cates bookends our Top Ten Bestseller list at FFF this week with Thor and Venom taking #1 and #10 spots respectively. Star Wars also had a strong showing with Bounty Hunters, Kylo Ren and Vader also selling well. Bounty Hunters hit the gate running, especially thanks to the Kaare Andrews Boba Fett cover. X-Men and Cable both repped the mutants with a strong showing. X-Men is the strongest X-Book without a doubt. Young Cable or Bable as we've taken to calling him had a solid debut but it definitely suffered from being not the recognizable version of the character who had a 108 issue series and was in a pretty successful movie sequel. There are some people who picked it up because it's a new X-Book, but I see the numbers falling pretty quickly, especially when the other wave 2 Dawn of X books begin to come out. The only two DC books in our Top Ten were actually reprints. The second prints of Batman #89 and Hell Arisen #3 were both big hits on the shelf this week. People want a piece of that new hotness and they'll take it anyway they can. Speaking of big hits, both Strange Academy and Strange Adventures were also popular books on their second week. We had at least five people ask about Strange Academy yesterday alone. I thought I'd missed some big talk, but it turns out when a book is good that the word gets out. It doesn't take a first appearance to sell a book. Both Strange Adventure and Academy were able to stand on their own merit and have gotten a least a few more people interested in comics. I hope to see more of that happen more often.

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Good sales week. Best enjoy it while we can with this virus craziness sweeping the country. Be safe everyone.

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The number of people staying home and forgoing their weekly comic shop trip due to Covid-19 fears seems to vary region by region; Our customers seem pretty undeterred. Strangely enough, we had one of the largest sales weeks in months, with almost every heavy-hitting title selling far more than usual. Cable #1 and Decorum #1 both enjoyed a healthy launch, though X-Men ultimately took the top spot, meaning Hickman had two comics in the top 10 — And it would have been 3 if Brisson hadn't taken over on New Mutants this week.

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Marvel is just gobbling up sales thanks to its band of mutant super heroes – Is this the 90's??? X-MEN is our top seller by a good margin once again, with NEW MUTANTS and the debut issue of CABLE helping to solidify that hold by both landing in the top half of our list. They deigned to bring THOR and the IMMORTAL HULK along for the ride, giving Marvel clear dominance over our single-issue sales this week.

Smack in the middle of the list, we see X-franchise savior Jonathan Hickman's premiere issue of a new creator-owned series DECORUM. Meanwhile, DC finally shows up for work filling out the bottom half of the list with some of it's usual strong sellers: CATWOMAN, BATMANS GRAVE, and SUPERMAN.

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Pandemic week has slowed foot-traffic in our area to nearly non-existent. If only I could convince people that comics would make great toilet paper. Then we'd sell them ALL! Seriously, though, it's strange days.

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Comic-wise, there's not a lot of surprises: Decorum has done well, but maybe not as well as I'd expect. Cable didn't make my list, which isn't surprising, because it's Cable-kid, the only guy I can imagine being less interesting than Old Cable. Still, X-Men stuff is otherwise doing well, so that's a bit disappointing. I never thought I'd see the day where Venom would outsell Amazing Spider-Man, but ASM is at an all-time low for us It still makes the list – but it's traditionally been much, much higher.

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Coming in our number 1 spot this week is Decorum. No surprises here mainly because any Hickman title is almost guaranteed to be a hit. Secondly it blends a strikingly dynamic art style boasting black and white and mix of both futuristic art design and impressionist colors, switching color palates depending on what chapter your on. If I had to give a brief description on the world they're building so far without spoilers it seems to be a Western inspired Space territory war between neighboring factions. And if that doesn't hook you in I really don't know what will.

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