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  • I don't know offhand, but The Beat publishes an analysis of the sales charts every month. Click on "Sales Charts" in the header and you should find the latest one for Marvel fairly quickly.

  • Thanks, I'll pass that along. Nothing worse than thinking a book you love might be canceled.

  • Yeah... though I just checked the figures (which are estimates extrapolated from Diamond's sales charts, btw), and the sales have been dropping...but the most recent issue shows improvement (possibly thanks to some variant covers). There's a crossover coming up that's not reflected in the charts yet -- hopefully that will show some improvement, too. But I hate to say, going purely by numbers, that if the decline resumes it will probably be in cancellation territory soon.  

  • I'm still of the opinion that aside from their biggest sellers, Marvel and DC should just do a whole bunch of mini-series for the characters they're trying to develop.

    They can keep their Spider-Man, Batman, Avengers, JLA and others from their respective "Big Guns," but lesser characters and teams would probably fare better if they were 7-issue series on an as-needed basis. Switch creative teams if need be, just make sure every story counts and they bring something to the character/team

    Moreover, tell the creative teams that if they make their story really work and sell really well, then it can graduate to a full-blown monthly.

  • To add what Rob said, sales for Captain Marvel dropped below 20,000 with issue #8 in December.  Unfortunately, that's cancellation territory - Marvel has cancelled a number of books in that range - Age of Apocalypse, Winter Soldier, Gambit, X-Treme X-Men, Morbius, Red She-Hulk.  In fact, in April, the first three titles outsold Captain Marvel, which is not a great sign.

    I think a lot of things worked against this title.  To be fair, Marvel did give this a lot of promotion when it launched.  It paled in comparison to the promotion of Marvel Now, which happened a few months after CM debuted, and maybe if it had been part of that it might have helped.  But the biggest thing, in my opinion, that works against a title like this is double shipping so many titles.  Most readers have a budget, which means they can only afford a certain number of titles each month; something has to get the axe.  This tends to work against titles that are seen as not being on the A-list.

    And I have to say it, in this particular case, the art on Captain Marvel 1 kept me from buying it.  It just didn't appeal to me at all.

     

     

  • I'd like to see more anthologies -- books that headline a popular character, with shorts for some of the B and C list heroes. There's no reason why Hawkman has to shoulder his own $3 book... but he could carry the weight of part of a $5 book, if Batman, Blue Beetle, and Black Canary carried the rest.

  • Me, too. I basically buy *one* Marvel book (Daredevil), but when Captain Marvel came out, I was all set to give it a chance. Everything I'd seen about the book interested me... the new costume, the emphasis on her military connections, that bright McKelvie cover...

    ...and then I opened the book. And the painted art inside looked like gloomy mud. And ultimately, I decided to leave it on the shelf.

    I've heard the art has improved since then. Not sure if it's a new artist, or if the original one became better at his craft. But by then it didn't matter. Marvel very nearly had made me a regular customer for the book, but they didn't stick the landing.


    John Dunbar (the mod of maple) said:

    And I have to say it, in this particular case, the art on Captain Marvel 1 kept me from buying it.  It just didn't appeal to me at all.

     

     

  • I had my problems with the character of course, but I didn't like the name change or the costume change either.  But it was really was the art that convinced me not to give it a try as well.  For all its pushing Marvel has not given the right artist to this title in my opinion.  If they had someone like Amanda Conner onboard from the start things might have been better.

  • Yeah, the Dexter Soy art was definitely a turn-off, but I stuck with it because I liked what Kelly Sue DeConnick was bringing to the character, and I (more or less) like the costume redesign.

    Soy was only on the book for the first four issues, with a brief return in 7 & 8 (Emma Rios did 5 and half of 6, with Alvaro Lopez doing the other half). His art did get a little better (or at least, I got more acclimated to it), but what really pleased me was when Filipe Andrade came on the art with issue 9. His style is so fresh and energetic, with a very European, Heavy Metal feel to it, that it took the book to new heights, such that it's now one of my favorite titles.

    Seriously, if anyone's been curious, go out and look at the last three issues. You'll know real quick if it's to your liking. I strongly recommend this book.

  • Isn't it cancelled, though? :(
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