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Why Batman #75 Seems to Have Sold Fewer Copies Than Batman #74

Published Fri, 09 Aug 2019 11:10:56 -0500

That is one statistic and a half. There I was, implying that someone at Diamond Comic Distributors must have had made an error. Because in the July initial statistics Batman #74 was in the top ten, but there was no sign of the extra-sized $4.99 Batman #75 that kicked off the much-anticipated Batman: City Of Bane storyline, and promoted as part of DC's Year Of The Villain event.

Clearly that had to be an error. Look, the double-sized Amazing Spider-Man #25 was jumping up the charts for an anniversary bump, how could Batman #75 possibly do worse than Batman #74?

Well, Diamond has confirmed to Bleeding Cool, ahead of this Sunday's Top 100 list and Monday's Top 500 list that Batman #75 was only the 13th most-ordered comic book by the direct market in North America in July 2010. And the 11th highest revenue raiser.

How was this possible? And how come DC Comics were gaining revenue on June, when the placement of their usual biggest title in an anniversary month was way further down than…

Hang on.

Oh gods, I know what's happened. And it's going to royally screw up this month's direct market statistics. And it's all the Year Of The Villain's fault.

Batman #75 was one of The Offer titles. Which saw every major DC Comics title in the crossover get two covers. And one, the card stock cover, was a dollar more expensive.

And while usually variant covers all get counted as one comic book by the statistics, when they have different prices, they are counted separately. Batman #74 wasn't one of them. Batman #75 was. So to get a better idea of what's going on, you are going to have to add the sales of the card stock and the non-card stock covers together. As well as work out what the average price will be. It is notable the stats above is for the non-cardstock cover, the $5.99 version did not sell as well as the $4.99 version. But it may have been enough to put it ahead of The Immortal Hulk, Black Cat and bloody Vampirella.

Bleeding Cool will try out best to do just that. It also explains why DC Comics has so many more titles for July than June – they count the card stock and non-card stock covers separately…