When Marvel NOW! was first announced, it was hard not to view it as an attempt for Marvel to capture some of the same magic DC had found with their New 52 line wide relaunch. DC’s sales had skyrocketed, despite a questionable focus on quality which had sent their fans into a frenzy. From the outside looking in, Marvel’s approach seemed more deliberate, better planned, and with a higher focus on delivering high quality stories rather than establishing a new cohesive universe. Now that it’s been six months since the first Marvel NOW! title launched, let’s take a look at how a few key titles have performed.

For purposes of this study, we’ve gathered sales numbers from Comichron for Avengers, Captain America, Thor: God of Thunder, and Iron Man. Included are all Marvel NOW! issues, as well as the same number of issues from that series PRIOR to Marvel NOW! So, with Avengers for example, there have been ten Marvel NOW! issues, which means we also pulled the last ten issues from the prior volume of the series.

In using this data, we’re hoping to capture the impact of the Marvel NOW! relaunch in terms of the increase for issue by issue sales by comparing the pre-relaunch numbers for the most recent period to the post-relaunch numbers for the same length of time.

Interestingly enough, the four titles we looked at broke into natural pairs. Let’s start out with Iron Man and Captain America.

With these two series you can see that, following an expected spike with their new #1 issue, as time has passed the number of issues sold has slowly come back in line with the pre-Marvel NOW! levels. In this case, one could argue that the shift in direction has failed to provide Marvel any substantial gain on an issue to issue basis, though it certainly does not appear to have harmed sales. Luckily for Marvel, this trend does not continue with our next two entries, Avengers and Thor: God of Thunder.

In these cases, sales have spiked and consistently delivered a performance above the pre-Marvel NOW! numbers. Here is where it’s easy to see the benefit in reboot efforts like Marvel NOW!, as even without the exaggerated #1 sales, Avengers and Thor: God of Thunder are selling approximately 20,000 more copies per issue.

Following every announcement of a reboot, be it line-wide or for an individual series, there comes a wave of reader complaints. While it is certainly nice to see the pay off of this business practice, it does little to calm the nerves of readers who are faced with new creative teams, a new status quo, and in some cases a completely new universe. Just remember, the next time you find yourself ranting on the internet about a shake up on your favorite title, those changes could very well mean a huge influx of readers – which may be the only thing standing between that title and cancellation.

Filed Under: Features • Op/Ed