Beyond The Big Event Series
The big event limited series have certainly provided an enormous lift to Marvel and DC over the last few years. But that's not to say that only the big event books are selling well. Marvel's "New Avengers" and "Astonishing X-Men" performed very well all through 2005 and 2006, and DC's "All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder" and most recently the re-launch of "Justice League of America" boast high sales numbers. As a matter of fact, 2006 marked the sixth year in a row that the industry has experienced growth in both unit sales and dollar sales. In November the sales for the top 300 comics listed by Diamond Comic Distributors were up 23 percent from November of 2005 and were the highest since November of 1997.
Comparatively, all the big name books are seeing increasing sales, however the biggest increase has come from the trade paperback and limited series market. This is where some of the smaller publishers are getting their books seen more and more. While the individual issues may not sell as many copies, the collected arcs in the trade paperback format can sell very well. The odd thing is that the monthly issue sales are not being affected by more trade paperbacks being sold. Everyone is just buying more comics. Trade paperbacks often will offer a bigger size, extra art, interviews, commentary, and higher quality paper, so they do offer content beyond what the monthly issues provided. The publishers hope that they will sell to, not only someone who missed a story arc, but someone who bought all the issues and wants to keep them preserved while having a copy to read. We're talking about collectors here - this is what they do.
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The comics world is vast and with that many issues going out each month, it can be hard to keep up with the top shelf characters (especially since many of them star in multiple books). Say you're a Wolverine fan. If you want to keep tabs on your favorite berserker, you'll need to buy "Astonishing X-Men," "Wolverine," "Wolverine: Origins," "Claws," "Ultimate X-Men," and any number of other comics that Wolverine may be guest-starring in that month. Wolverine is a tier one character for Marvel, and they know that if they put him on the cover of something, sales will go up. Just count the number of times Wizard Magazine has featured Wolverine on their cover. For Marvel, Wolverine and the rest of the mutants are big business. At any given time Marvel can be publishing over ten separate X-Men titles, but with zero continuity between them. What is happening in the regular Wolverine series will not necessarily affect "Wolverine: Origins" or any other X-Men title.
"Astonishing X-Men" written by Joss Whedon with art by John Cassaday is always a top seller because the quality of the stories is so good (Whedon invokes his Buffy-team voices to work for the interpersonal relationships of the mutants). However, "Astonishing" was on hiatus during the entire run of "House of M" (which featured the catastrophic reduction of the total number of mutants from millions to 198). When "Astonishing" returned, it was almost as if "House of M" never happened. Ah, continuity - it's always been a problem for comic books. Whedon wrote a single panel where Wolverine addresses the students and says, "Nothing's changed," at the same time addressing and dismissing the events of "House of M."
It's clear that Whedon wants to write X-Men stories in a pocket of the Marvel universe and let everyone else hash out the ever-looming apocalypses. Who can blame him? With that many mutant-centric books featuring many of the same characters, it would be impossible for any writer to tell their own story without stepping on someone else's. This lack of continuity between the titles is just part of comics.
