Funny, I thought Ellis founded ENGINE as a site that didn't discuss superhero comics...

It's an interesting point, but it's a creative market. You can't calculate these things scientifically, and for every big sell-out success there's an unsold copy of Civil War: The Return or Flash #1.

daylight | March 17, 05:11 CET

Well, Buffy doesn't wear tights and Warren is friends with Joss, so I can see that he might make a superhero exception in this case.

And the fishbowl aspect is really interesting, Simon. Thanks for the link.

TamaraC | March 17, 05:43 CET

And just a thought - I'd love to see Doktor Ellis writing pre-soul Spike, or Dru. Or ol' Ripper...

Craig Oxbrow | March 17, 05:48 CET

It was interesting to read how the commenters were assessing the market, and also what sales of other Buffy and Angel comic titles had been for them in the past. I was surprised by the stats for Spike Asylum since that's been very well received.

yourlibrarian | March 17, 06:15 CET

Yeah but mainly among Spike/hardcore Buffyverse fans. Brian Lynch's name doesn't draw the kind of attention that Joss' does in the comics world and then given that Asylum, great as I (and most of us) thought it was, isn't canon and isn't set after NFA and that IDW's comics are a dollar dearer than others (including Dark Horse's Buffy) and that IDW, being a much smaller company, can't really afford the same marketing push, it does kind of make sense. And that's a lot of ands ;).

(also, even name characters from the big 2 like Batman or Spider-man have a couple of titles that sometimes only do around the 30k mark so 7-8k from a small publisher isn't all that terrible - and clearly IDW are happy or they wouldn't have another Spike series in the works and more Angel on the way too)

I think it's at least possible the reprint is partly PR driven (in that they maybe didn't order quite as many as they thought they might need) but I also think it's caught DH on the hop to some extent. 100k is a bit of a roaring success for them (their highest selling titles in December '06 and January '07 were around the 28k and 35k mark respectively) so maybe they just didn't see quite the same demand for Buffy as for a property like the X-Men (Astonishing usually sells around 100-120k monthly, or bi-monthly or whatever). O' they of little faith ;).

Man, it's gonna be cool to see Buffy in the charts around the 'Amazing Spider-man' or '52' mark.

Saje | March 17, 06:59 CET

Do comic book authors get paid less after the first run? That's the vibe I get. Otherwise, I don't see the problem.

Whatever happened to "Crunch all you want, we'll make more?"

Succatash | March 17, 11:00 CET

I get the feeling from reading various sites, that the Buffy fans caught a majority of comic book shops on the hop when it came to #1. We're an unknown quantity which is not necessarily a good thing when you're trying to run a business.

Simon | March 17, 12:08 CET

daylight said:



It started off that way, but has since grown. Now there are sections for superhero comics, books, TV, film, music, futurism and more.

betwixt | March 17, 18:56 CET

well i very nearly had a heart attack when i read the title of this thread. i've been so horrifically over-worked lately that i totally forgot about issue #1 coming out this month. luckily it's not sold out where i live, and i just got home with 2 copies of the mainstream cover & 1 variant cover, wheeee! Buffy and Joss have just chased away my southern ontario winter blues, bless them :-)

t r a c y | March 17, 23:59 CET

Both these websites still have pre-order pages up for Buffy and both websites know about Browncoats...so hopefully they ordered enough.

Things from Another World Buffy order page

http://www.poplollies.com/browncoats/

Anonymous1 | March 18, 09:01 CET

There's going to be a little Faith story? Does that mean just a quickie story or that Faith's going to be teeny-tiny, like the Fear demon in Fear Itself? 'Cos y'know with giant Dawn, why not teeny Faith?

Sorry, getting a little punchy here. My local comic book store didn't sell out - even after I was done buying. I figured I needed several extra to have to lend out to people after they finish watching the whole series on dvd.

barboo | March 18, 09:09 CET

Things from Another World also has a subscription service for comics.

My comic book store was sold out of Buffy. Lucky, I had pre-ordered what I wanted there. Could have bought another one though.

[ edited by Anonymous1 on 2007-03-18 06:16 ]

Anonymous1 | March 18, 09:15 CET