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Bleeding Cool Bestseller List – 1st October 2017 – "Marvel Legacy Did Surprisingly Well For A $6 Book"

Published Sun, 01 Oct 2017 08:00:45 -0500

This is the Top 10 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 to the weekend to get this week's comics. We salute you, and the keenness you bring to your passion.

Marvel Legacy hit the top – but only just. It pipped it against Murder Machine, but Detective and Action were right up there. Legacy was rarely number one in each stores, but in second place in most, with the other three beating it for individual stores. But overall…

Marvel Legacy #1
Batman Murder Machine #1
Detective Comics #965
Action Comics #988
Flash #31
Suicide Squad #26
Saga #47
Wonder Woman #31
Mighty Thor #23
Black Panther #18

Thanks to the following stores…

Ssalefish Comics of Winston-Salem & Greensboro, NC.
Famous Faces & Funnies of West Melbourne, FL.
Comix Experience, San Francisco, CA.
Comix Experience Outpost, San Francisco, CA.
Fat Jack's Comicrypt of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rodman Comics of Ankeny, Iowa.
Dr. No's Comics & Games Superstore of Marietta, Georgia.
Graham Crackers Comics – 11 shops in Illinois/Wisconsin.
G-Mart Comic Books – Chicago, IL.

…who had this to say:

Marvel's Legacy 1 and Batman the Murder Machine 1 had a heck of a fight for the top spot. Metal managed to barely come out on top. Marvel did manage to get three titles into our top ten this week with Legacy, Cable, and Generations Captain Americas. That said we sold a lot more copies of Rebirth than we did of Legacy and we pushed Legacy a lot harder while Rebirth had people buying it with often with out any encouragement. All said a very good week sales wise.
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This was Marvel's best week in a long time. They only had three books in our store's Top Twenty but they were all in the Top Ten this week. Marvel Legacy was our #3 Top seller, selling just four issues less than our #1 seller Batman: The Murder Machine. Venomverse is still holding strong in #7 and Spider-Gwen actually beat out Saga this week for the #10 spot!

Marvel Legacy did surprisingly well for a $6 book. But I 100% believe that it had absolutely nothing to do with Avengers 1,000,000 B.C. or the few pages of upcoming story arcs and everything to do with Wolverine. I also don't see a single Legacy title to make it this high in the Top Ten again. Venomverse has to be the bestselling weekly book since 52 and it'll probably stay that way until it finishes. Spider-Gwen swinging into #10 on our Top Ten can thank the speculator's market.

Saga just barely missing out on the Top Ten is a bit of a shock. It usually sits near the Top Five. We haven't had a lot of our subs come in this week yet, so I imagine once they do, Saga's numbers will improve. Redneck was #9 in our Top Ten which also sold less than usual, but it's good to see a great indie book do well. The rest of our Top Twenty were all DC books.
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Decent sales week. Rough one for Marvel. Marvel Legacy sold well enough for second place behind Detective Comics. The only other Marvel book on our chart was Mighty Thor at #8.
Action Comics and Murder Machine took 3 and 4 with Saga rounding out the top half. Suicide Squad benefited nicely as a Metal tie-in and we're glad we increased our order. I know we are the weird exception but a new Buffy issue means its in our top ten, #6 in fact. Wonder Woman and Flash continue to sell nicely.
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Generations sagged in the last week. I truly think people were burned out on these ten weekly five dollar books that really didn't accomplish much. Legacy by comparison was short, sweet, and more to the point. The Metal tie-ins like Murder Machine gave it a close run for the money though. Wonder Woman moved up in sales with James Robinson joining and the return of Grail. Many people noted that the art was really improved under Carlo Pagulayan.
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As usual, Saga dominates our top ten, selling considerably more than anything else on the list. But, the Marvel Legacy one-shot wasn't too, too far behind. It also prompted a bunch of questions from customers who haven't been keeping up with Marvel to ask what Legacy was all about. There was also a noticeable rise in Spider-Gwen sales this week with the introduction of Gwenom.
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Going by discrete SKUs, our #1 seller this week was DETECTIVE COMICS #965, however when accounting for variant covers (specifically of the lenticular variety) our best selling book was MARVEL LEGACY #1. Marvel's "me, too!" effort at mimicking DC's Rebirth success has certainly generated a lot of attention out the gate, though I can't help but think it would have done even better if it shared Rebirth's entry-friendly price point.

DC's various events are going strong, with the second part of The Oz Effect, ACTION COMICS #988, and the most recent Metal one-shot, MURDER MACHINE #1, both selling strong. WONDER WOMAN #31 and BLACK PANTHER #18 also performed well, maintaining those titles' status as two of our more reliable sellers from the Big Two.

There still seems to be some interest in the Generations one-shots, as SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES & SPIDER-MAN: PETER PARKER comes in near the end of our list. Finally, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #15, SPIDER-GWEN #24, and X-MEN BLUE #12 round out the list with a three-way tie for the bottom spot.
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Marvel Legacy killed it – doubling the # of copies sold compared to the #2 title on our charts. Everyone wants it to be a success, even the MARVEL haters are hoping for something new/fresh/return to the comics they loved.
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For the first time in many months, Marvel takes the number one slot in our store with Marvel Legacy. The advance news about character returns seems to have piqued reader interest, and a lot of lapsed Marvel Universe fans decided that it was time to give Marvel another try. Marvel benefited from having more than one cover; several customers bought at least one variant cover in addition to the main or lenticular cover, and those multiple copies were just enough to push Marvel Legacy into the number one slot (it beat Batman: Murder Machine by 3 copies, which included the sale of eight variant/standard copy combinations). Saga took sixth place in our store, and the other eight places were claimed by DC; Marvel's Star Wars books have seen sufficient sales erosion that they failed to place higher than #12.

And some sales of the week…

Rom #1 9.6 $150 – The underrated but awesome Marvel Classic ROM #1 CGC 9.6 finally found a deserving home.

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Action Comics #252 1.5 $304.00

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Incredible Hulk #181 $1,900- We have a booth at Baltimore ComicCon and the biggest sale of the show so far has been a first Wolverine.

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Giant Size X-Men #1 F – $400.00 – The Holy Grail book for any self-respecting X-Fan, this book came to us in a fantastic collection we recently purchased. The book itself was in incredible shape and crazily enough it wasn't even the crown jewel of the collection! Needless to say, this copy sold extremely quickly to one of our employees who loves the X-Men so much that Gideon is one of his favorite characters.

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