That’s interesting. That somewhat refutes the Byrne hypothesis of comics retailing–store owners/managers will order according to personal prejudices rather than (predicted) consumer demand. If reorders were that high, then retailers were clearly sensitive to in-store demand. (Or else it was just the smart retailers who reordered Liefield in such large numbers.)

Well, not for nothing, reaching the Top 300 isn’t THAT impressive of an achievement these days, as I believe reorders were under 2,000 copies, which is just enough to reach the bottom edges of the Top 300.

And one could make the argument that fans bought so much of the first issue to make reorders needed, but most of them disliked it, leading to the low sales on the second issue.

However, applying the Venom Discretion Test to retailers is a brilliant concept, David. Good call.

That’s an interesting point to consider in conjunction with the Venom Discretion Test: does it apply on the retail end? Brian Hibbs says no, if I’m interpreting his columns correctly; Byrne, of course, says yes.

I think it definitely does – just not to all retailers, I guess.

4- If the criticism is well constructed, has merit, and it can stand on its own; then it shouldn’t matter who said it, or where it came from.

True, but I believe Larsen’s position is that trolls specifically do NOT give well-constructed criticism that have merit.

1- Any “editing” that a fan does is mostly “absorbed” by retailers and probably has to filter down through various months of purchases before it’s felt by the companies.

2- When Stan Lee (or whomever made those remarks) said that the Fans were the real Editors, comic books were still returnable. So if fans hated an issue of Spiderman, not only did Marvel find out real fast; but it had an immediate economic impact on them.

3- The fans have been leaving the market in droves. Sure, sales are up, but if you did an actual head count, you’d see that the total number of fans and comics sold is in decline. So fans have been trying to edit the books with their wallets but the industry continues to turn a deaf ear and reposition themselves in order to maximize profits any which way they can. Ergo, all the Infinite Crossovers! I mean, they know that comic book fans are notorious completists, so how do they keep their audience captive? Well, with a never ending cross-over.

DC’s been the worst since their own cross-overs and mini-series didn’t even end. They just dovetailed into another never ending miniseries and special.

And with regards to Internet Trolls:

4- If the criticism is well constructed, has merit, and it can stand on its own; then it shouldn’t matter who said it, or where it came from.

Whether he heard it from an internet troll or an industry head; by now he should know how to discern between good and bad criticism. After all, he is a professional.

And, really, its all about thinking long-term rather than short term (something that a lot of folks in all industries neglect at their peril). Sure in the short term a Venom book would have done well, but I’m sure that the folks at Marvel saw the long-term damage that had been done to the Punisher by moving him from a conflicted anti-hero/vigilante villain to the star of his own books. It took a long time, and Garth Ennis, to rehabilitate him for the masses. When Venom was hitting his stride as a popular villian, Punisher was really, really in the doldrums, and almost useless as a villain, while simultaneously boring as a “hero”. Venom could have easily spiralled the same way (though, I think that the series-of-mini-series did as much damage to the character as an ongoing would have, but then I think Venom is kind of a weak character to begin with, so my bias may be showing).

Sometimes the long-term thinking is good, sometimes its bad. It seems like Marvel’s longer-term thinking with Spider-girl must be paying off, and I hope that DC can do something similar but different with Manhunter to keep that book going. Time will tell, I suppose.

That’s an interesting point to consider in conjunction with the Venom Discretion Test: does it apply on the retail end? Brian Hibbs says no, if I’m interpreting his columns correctly; Byrne, of course, says yes.

But yes, it’s a valuable point to note that these rankings are only what stores ordered, not what they actually sold to customers.

See Civil War #5,6 and 7 for some GREAT examples of this deal.

Same thing with the sales of lower-tier Marvel/DC or independent books–low sales don’t necessarily reflect unsold copies, but they do reflect retailers’ confidence in being able to sell copies. I would guess that the ratio of orders to copies sold is much better on the smaller titles than the big ones at most stores, simply because many stores only order enough of the smaller titles for their pull-list customers. I had trouble buying an issue of Fables (hardly an obscure comic, really) when I was visiting my brother in South Carolina last Christmas, because the store only ordered enough copies for subscribers. And this was a pretty decent store! (In the end, the guy sold me his subscriber’s copy, reasoning that he’d be able to re-order before the customer came in to pick up his books.)

I don’t really have a point I’m trying to argue here, other than reminding everyone that you have to factor in the retailer when discussing sales. Most surviving retailers do a pretty good job of predicting what their customers will buy, but there are occasional miscalculations.

To boost sales, you have to do grass roots campaigning. That means fans have to actually get away from their computers and promote the books they like at their local comic shops / haunts. You can gripe and groan about comics you don’t like all you want, and you can stop buying them, too. That isn’t going to get others to stop buying those books, if that’s what they think they want.

But it’s a whole lot more effective when you’re at a shop and you see someone complaining about the latest “A2Z” book and you tell them to put it back on the shelf and find something else to read, and then get them potentially interested in what you’re reading.

The only problem is, the retailers don’t like it when you do that, because it flies against the marketing practices of the publishers. You get a reader of X-Books, you potentially lose that reader from what, seven to ten titles? Are you replacing the same sales with seven to ten other books? More importantly, is the retailer intelligent enough to have that much alternative stock in their store? (ANSWER: For you, maybe. For the retailers- Hell, no.)

According to Liefeld*, sales were higher than on prior, non-tie-in issues.

Usually I just call this sort of thing editorial bias, but Venom Discretion Test certainly sounds better. The Justice Society instance mentioned in a prior Urban Legends column is another good example of this sort of thing and there are a couple of other characters who I’m fairly certain have been “victims” of it as well (in DC’s case most of these were created after 1975 or so). On the one hand, it seems rather unprofessional, but on the other mainstream comicdom is basically run by fans, and all fans, even professional fans, have biases.

*Source being Liefeld’s journal found here:
http://www.robliefeld.net/journal_insert.htm

Well I had good things & suggestions as well.
They even printed a few.

Wow. Sounded a tad bitter, didn’t I?

Readers could be given more feedback into the creative process at the Big Two, and I personally think doing this would boost circulation signifcantly. The status quo for the moment, though, seems to be the editorial staff of the Big Two enforcing their Fanboy Priorities into continuity first and foremost. Selling books seems to come second to that, and then telling good stories / printing good art comes a sometimes-distant third.
And all of this stuff is strictly secondary to marketing demands to keep major characters available for licensing into films, books, merchandise, etc.