What a surprise! Relaunched Justice League takes colossal sales plunge
IIRC, the fourth issue of Justice League of America’s latest volume sold almost 130,000 copies? Well I just took a look at , and what an amazing feat has come about: this volume being written by Brad Meltzer has lost a considerable amount of its audience, dropping to rank 66 on the chart with its 5th issue, just below Birds of Prey #102, and sold only 28,992 copies.
In other words, the new JLofA volume may have lost more than 100,000 units in sales figures this past month!
And IMHO, it is richly deserved, if for no more reason than the fact that the writer is one whose works I decidedly will not be spending my money on, and his books will not find their way into my house anytime soon. Even if I were still buying more pamphlet issues than I actually do today - trade paperbacks make up the bulk of my purchases - I still wouldn’t dare to waste time and money on the works of an overhyped writer who crossed the line more than most other writers and artists have when he wrote Identity Crisis.
Looking at a few of the verdicts voiced by readers in the past month or two for Meltzer’s scriptwriting, which definitely smells of padding out, it certainly had it coming to it from that perspective too. I wonder if any success he had with Green Arrow in 2002 was just a fluke, or he was clever enough at the time to lull the audience into a false sense of confidence?
On the other hand, while the also relaunched Justice Society of America seems to have lost some audience too, it still sells a considerable amount more than JLofA does: rank 15 with 86,180 copies sold. Nevertheless, that too has lost some audience by almost 20,000 units.
But turning to Marvel now, the scene there is almost sad. Civil War, which I’d like to find what to comment on now that it’s ended, is one the most wretched crossovers they’ve put out in recent memory, and yet the 6th issue sold number one on the chart with 259,264 copies. The lateness did lead to its losing at least 20 percent of its audience, yet it still sold alarmingly well, and the 7th and last issue is likely to do just as well.
It’s a real shame that, in contrast to DC, where some of the audience seems to understand that the editors are ripping them off, the readership at Marvel still hasn’t learned that, if they do want to improve the situation, they can bring about repairs much more easily by shunning books as bad as CW and not putting their money into Marvel’s pockets.