Okay whom, a year ago, would have pegged Flash as one of the consistently best-selling titles of the direct market? And you can't totally blame it on the button…

Flash #21 Detective Comics #955 X-Men Gold #2 Justice League of America #5 Action Comics #978 Batman & The Shadow #1 Suicide Squad #16 Mighty Thor #18 Black Panther #13 Star Wars: Darth Maul #3

Thanks to the following retailers,

Who had this to say,

A strong week for DC, who took 7 of our top ten–but for the first time in quite a while, Marvel placed three superhero titles in our store's top ten due to the strong success of their X-Men relaunch. Ben Reilly, Scarlet Spider #1 just barely missed breaking the top ten, coming in at 11th place just two copies behind Batman & The Shadow.

Strong interest in Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, and Infinity back issues.

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Huge week with a ton of great books. Flash took the top spot with Suicide Squad and Batman/Shadow doing much better than expected.All the X-men books did fantastic with plenty of people commenting that they hope they don't screw this up since the books seem to have a lot of potential.

Detective Comics still crushing it on the back-issue front, with X-Men titles close behind. A little action on Aquaman which is nice to see.

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Despite a relatively strong showing this week for Marvel, with 5 titles popping up in our top 10, they still couldn't crack the top spot. Instead, our top two titles were both crime/thriller Image titles. Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker's horror noir Black Monday Murders #5 won the week with its new story arc, but Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Kill or Be Killed #8 wasn't too far behind. Somewhat surprisingly, Flash #21 almost didn't make the top 10, tying for last with Aliens Dead Orbit #1.

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Flash steamrolled the competition and the gulf is huge from #1 to #2. Albatross has a hit with Nam Wolf. Suicide Squad's Bermejo cover, in particular, sold better than the A cover this week and was being requested even after it sold out. X-Men Gold lost some steam from #1 but still sold strong

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Flash #21 was the week's best seller, doubling sales over #2. While I figured a Bat-book would take the 2nd slot, it was actually Doom Patrol! It's great when deserving titles find the audience they deserve. The new X-books dropped as expected without the lure of controversy– they're not bad but they're just kinda humdrum– not good enough to get people excited quite yet. Jason Aaron continues to be Marvel's best-selling writer by an ever-widening margin.

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The Button is pushing other titles out of the way this week as DC dominates the Top Ten at FFF with Batman #21 outselling almost every other new book. The full Top Ten is #1 The Flash, #2 Batman/Shadow, #3 Detective Comics, #4 Batman 21, #5 JLA 5, #6 Action Comics, #7 Redneck 1, #8 Suicide Squad, #9 X-Men Gold, and #10 Teen Titans. Like Batman last week, The Flash sold more copies than the next three bestselling books that followed it. Batman sold more in its second week than any Marvel book. The only indie book to make the Top Ten was Redneck (also in its second week) and it also sold copies than almost every other new book.

Flash and Batman dominating the top spots is a welcome surprise. While most crossovers lose people who don't want to pick up a new book for the sake of the storyline, we've been getting brand new people coming into the store and picking up both issues because they're curious about what they've been hearing. The rest of the Top Twenty is the usual smattering of various Rebirth titles that are still holding strong almost a year into their runs. It's reassuring to see the monthly books continue to sell well despite their price increase. While a some titles have lost a few readers, most people are sticking it out. It further reinforces the idea that people are willing to pay more for better stories.

Marvel's big seller this week was X-Men Gold which made it to 9th place in the Top Ten. X-Men Blue wasn't too far behind at #12, Weapon X made to #15 and Old Man Logan was #16. The X-Men are big sellers and Marvel seems to have suddenly remembered that. Even if the numbers for Gold might be motivated by people looking for hidden messages, the new direction that the books are going in seems to grab some lapsed X-Fans. The only non-X related books to make the Top Twenty were Hulk at #19 and Darth Maul at #20.

On the Indie side of things, Redneck is still going strong into its second week. Kill or be Killed made it just barely at #18. Image and other indie books really rely on word of mouth marketing and promotion to really make it big. Donny Cates is starting to collect a pretty healthy following which is great to see as he seems to have some great stories in him.

DC is getting people in the door. People are hearing about Batman and Flash and Watchmen and they get excited and curious and come in to find out. Not everyone buys the lenticular covers, but they become intrigued by what they read online or hear from a friend and they want to check it out for themselves. That's exactly how comics should work! On the other side of the Big Two coin, Marvel puts out some press releases and hypes up controversy and while it might sell for a hot minute, the months that follow end up with dropped subs and trade waiting.

For back issues, we sold a bit more of Cable and X-Force books than usual. We've also started to sell more Thor from both JMS and Jason Aaron's run as well as early 90s Avengers. As usual, we've sold a healthy number of early Rebirth back issues, especially Titans, Batman, and Flash.

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Marvel makes 7 of the top 10 books this week (no Independent books made the chart) as Marvels things start to slowly turn around for the big publisher.

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Flash 21, of course, was the number one book of the week for us. DC like usual had most of the top ten. The big surprises? Suicide Squad 16 blew out the door very fast even after I thought I had upped the order by plenty. The other surprise was X-O Man O War 2 sold out. People are digging the new series. We didn't receive any X-Men Blue so no idea how well it would have sold.