Posted in: Comics | Tagged: charlie adlard, Comics, october, robert kirkman, walking dead

Exactly Why Walking Dead #103 Sold So Well In October

Published Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:40:45 -0600

Bleeding Cool made note of Walking Dead #103 hitting ninth place in the October sales charts, without having eleven variant covers, but have noticed a few people questioming as to why that issue did so well. Here are the three reasons as far as I can see.

1) The Walking Dead #100 did very well, hitting the number one spot with a lot of celebratory publicity, variant covers and collectability drive. Yes, issue #101 dropped to 31st, but #102 rose to 24th place. It gave an inkling as to what was coming….

2) The third season of The Walking Dead started, and people picked up the comic book again. The Walking Dead comic has taken advantage of public interest in another media version more so that pretty much anything else to date. And #103 came out at just the right time for the new season.

3) And here's the big one. More than anything, this is the reason why #103 smashed into the top ten. Not by having any orders being tied to anything, not by having tiered variant covers, but by the simple fact that it was the start of a new arc. Which means that while #101 and #102 will be collected in a trade paperback any day now, #103 won't be collected in any other form until May 2013. And retailers have cottoned on to the fact that, at any point, someone will want to buy all the Walking Dead comics they can up to date. They can get most of them in trades, but the last few issues will only be in individual single form. And previously this has meant that the first few issues of any arc rapidly go up in price as the demand outstrips the supply. This time, retailers think they have ordered enough copies of #103 to prepare for that demand.

Still probably won't be enough to last till May though.

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