Titans Sales Watch: June

DeTroyes from ComicBloc has posted another excellent sales analysis:

June sales estimates have now been posted. Time for the monthly sales analysis.

As always, sales estimates courtesy of ICv2:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15338.html

FORMAT:

TITLE
Issue # / Release Month / Year / # Units Sold / +/- Previous Month

Teen Titans (Ongoing)
#71 May 2009 3,734 n/a (NOTE: REORDERS!!)
#72 June 2009 32,512 -1,598
(see note below concerning these numbers!)

Titans (Ongoing)
#14 June 2009 32,321 -2,022

Tiny Titans (Ongoing)
#17 June 2009 8,640 -204

Superman/Batman (Ongoing)
#61 June 2009 38,228 -1,303 w/The Justice Titans

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Analysis:

Teen Titans: OK, this is going to take some explaining. You may remember that last month the following sales figures were reported for Teen Titans:

Teen Titans (Ongoing) #71 May 2009 30,376 -5,036

Note the 5k drop. That seemed a pretty steep drop-off, far more than the title has been trending for the last few years. A variety of reasons were speculated, but even so, that still seemed like an ominous number. It didn't seem likely that there would be any significant reorders, since none worth recording have ever shown up before. But low and behold, a significant number of re-orders (or more likely, lagging orders that for some reason did not get figured into the original May numbers) did show up in the June numbers. This means that the May numbers for Teen Titans #71 now officially look like this:

Teen Titans (Ongoing):
#71 May 2009 34,110 -1,302
(May - 30,376; June - 3,734)

A much smaller drop-off, and one that fits much more securely in the title's general trend. Still not great, considering where the title was, but at least not as much as was originally feared.

Titans: As I originally predicted a few months ago, Titans has now officially dipped below Teen Titans in sales numbers. This has happened not because of better sales for Teen Titans, but because Titans drop-off numbers have been generally steeper than Teen Titans have been. *sigh* Titans #14 was a "Day in the Life" issue, so the dip was pretty much expected. The real test will be next issue, which will have the return of Tempest and is being billed as a Blackest Night tie-in. Still, the numbers keep going down, which does not bode well.

Tiny Titans: While I don't think its bad news, I would point out that the sales numbers for June were the lowest they've ever been for this title. Still, for a Johnny DC title, those numbers are quite healthy. And the compilations sell very well, so there's no chance this one is going anywhere.

Overall: The sales numbers have resumed their downwards trends. While they haven't reached cancellation levels yet, both titles are starting to run out of room. With permanent writers announced for both titles we can hope that those numbers will stabilize, but if so, it has to happen soon.

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Supplement:

I had at least one request to keep tracking the numbers on Vigilante, so here they are for June:

Vigilante (Ongoing)
#7 June 2009 11,483 -7,394

Wish I had better news to report on this title, but I don't. Vigilante has gone right back to the numbers it had prior to "Deathtrap", and that's a shame.

Cancellation by the end of this year. Sorry, but that's my prediction.