All the sales charts prove is that there's a new launch, it had a massive spike at the beginning, it's leveled out at over 20K higher than it was before, and is going through standard attrition-- while maintaining the healthiest numbers this book has seen in years.
Paul O'Brien has been doing these breakdowns for The Beat for years. And he has a history of NOT pulling any punches. To try to smear him as a source with bias is... telling.
(One of the things that Paul gets-- that enthusiasts and amateurs at this DON'T-- is that SSM is a twice monthly book, and that means it behaves differently than others. One key way is that retailers order two issues at a time. And, retailers being in a business that has month-to-month attrition, hedge their bets by NOT ordering the two issues equally. With the exception of an issue with a variant cover, a retailer will order more of the 1st issue in the month than the 2nd issue in the month. And this is sight unseen-- before they get ANY feedback from their customers. This means that there is ALWAYS a slight attrition WITHOUT fail between the two issues. NO retailer orders them the same. It's just not done. If someone NEW to this were to make ANY predictions based on that SPECIFIC attrition WITHIN the month-- most people in the industry would roll their eyes at that. It would be silly. Yet I've seen it done. By certain people.)
Paul has a history and a PROVEN track record for doing this. I would hold his analysis in higher regard than an anonymous source who CLAIMED to have run his analysis through 3 or 4 friends. Then CLAIMED that one of those friends owned a comic shop. Then CLAIMED that HE used to own a comic shop. Then CLAIMED that he was a professor in statistics. Then CLAIMED that he actually ran a scientific poll that used 300 hundred points of data. Then CLAIMED it was actually 700 points of data. Then was banned from the message board where he was making those constantly escalating "claims." THEN had someone CLAIMING to be a "friend of his" carrying on his SAME arguments from his SAME IP #. Who was then called out by the moderator of that board for being a sock puppet. Who then would go on to CLAIM to be someone whose moderated boards themselves...
...and on and on it goes.
Oy.
Excuse me if I'd rather accept the analysis of the guy who's actually been doing this for years-- WITH HIS REAL NAME-- on an independent web-site-- and has called it like it is when books have been selling well AND when they've been selling poorly.
Let your common sense be the judge. ;-)
One more time, for the sake of REALITY...
comicsbeat.com/marvel-month-to-month-sal...
This was their full analysis of current SSM sales:
"There’s a very gentle downward trend in evidence, but that’s to be expected with virtually every ongoing series. More significant is that the book is continuing to see real and sustained gains from the current storyline, which is giving it some of its best sales of the last few years, even six months into the arc."
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