Oh, and a quickly calculation (done with my understanding of the system, accuracy not guaranteed) tells me that amounts to about 40.000 copies of Serenity #1 sold to retailers. Something more reliable should go up on www.comicbookresources.com soon.

Niels | August 12, 21:03 CET

40000... is that good or something? It sounds low to me...

Djungelurban | August 12, 21:11 CET

That's very good for a non DC or Marvel comic book. I'm impressed. Though I wonder how much it would have sold had Dark Horse not done the three covers for issue one.

Simon | August 12, 21:15 CET

Well, they are no Serenity but I recently picked up Neverwhere (because I loved the novel) and Runaways (I think I saw an ad for it and it just sounded kind of cool) and enjoyed them alot. They placed 78th and 88th, respectively. But that those types of storylines appeal to me more than the totally well known superheroes. As far as Runaways goes, my comic book shop guy said he thought it was pretty good and relatively popular. So maybe 49th ain't so bad. But hey, no kind of comic expert here.

ETA: Who's to say some lesser known and lesser circulated comics won't be considered a little more precious when down the road something like a BDM is created? :)

[ edited by April on 2005-08-12 19:21 ]

April | August 12, 21:18 CET

I was surprised to venture to my local shop the other day and try to find a #2. "Those Serenitys are all sold out, man, can't keep them in stock," said the clerk. Which is surprising, because to my knowledge, there aren't many Browncoats around where I live. I can't wait to see the numbers for #2 and #3. I bet they go up, as shop owners get wise to the fact that this is a popular book, and stock more.

And BTW, 40,000 is pretty amazing for the first issue of an indie book.

Dizzy | August 12, 21:21 CET

My local store still actually has copies of two of the covers for the first two books. Yesterday, I bought some more copies of the comic as gifts for people. But when I was shopping at Golden Apple comics, they had a sign up that said one per customer and that was only the day after the second comic had come out. A better question might be, how well would the comic have done if Dark Horse had shipped enough comics to meet the large demand?

SteveHolt! | August 12, 21:45 CET

That's not really up to Dark Horse--these numbers reflect the number of copies ordered by the stores (and I'm not sure how much of the re-orders after the initial sell-outs are included here).

Unfortunately, traditionally there is always a sharp drop in orders for the second issue, since first issues have added collectable value. It'll be interesting to see if that happens as strongly on a series that is only three issues anyway.

Niels | August 12, 22:23 CET

40,000 is a solid number by today's standards. There are some pretty big titles that Serenity beat, and it has been awhile since Dark Horse has had a comic sell that well. 49th place is also extremely respectable, no series from the Big 2 would ever be in danger of cancellation if it was consistently around that number.

rockchalkwatcher | August 12, 22:28 CET

I don't know much about comic sales but that sounds good to me!

Oh and if this is anything to go by then the Spike and Angel books will be in stores next week.

eddy | August 12, 22:35 CET