DC Domination

We're now five days into DC's first full-week New 52 launch, and the sales results have been overwhelming. I don't have national numbers, but I know that I'm hearing from dozens of my retailer friends who are scrambling to try to find copies of the books, which are selling out everywhere.

At Dr. No's we've sold out of 7 of the first 14 titles (Justice League shipped on 8/31, while the other 13 shipped on 9/7), in spite of the fact that our orders were 350%-600% what the same titles were selling pre-New 52 (when there were prior titles to compare). We ordered the lowest-selling book in quantities greater than what our best-selling pre-New 52 titles were selling, and yet many of those were gone by the weekend.

As early as September 1st, I could see that this was going to be bigger than I had anticipated, so I turned in advance orders for many of those books (although a couple were already sold out by that time) and I began upping my orders for 9/13, 9/20, and 9/27. The vagaries of comic book distribution (you don't want to get me started on that subject!) mean that we won't get most of those reorders until 9/20, however (unless Diamond manages to include reorders in our 9/13 reorder even though we won't be billed until 9/20).

No doubt about it--DC owns September 2011. And, having read all 14 books so far, I think the quality is strong enough that many of those readers will be coming back for the second issues.

(Just think--up until 8/30, we were selling all 52 first issues for a discount. Now, less than two weeks later, people--including fellow retailers--are offering significantly over over price if we can just find a copy of some of these books for them!)