That's great news! Well done Buffy and Angelverse fans:)

angeliclestat | December 14, 22:12 CET

Astonishing X-Men #23 is at #2 too!

draculatte | December 14, 22:22 CET

Bollocks, I didn't even notice that *ashamed*. I'll add that to the subject line.

Simon | December 14, 22:54 CET

Why a guess of 90-95,000? October's figures for #7 were about 135,000, IIRC. Granted, Buffy came in 7th that month, but would the drop-off be that strong?

shambleau | December 14, 23:05 CET

I go by what ICV2 say and they estimated Buffy #7 to have shifted around 94,144 copies.

Simon | December 14, 23:10 CET

Not being an enlightened or even possessing-a-single-clue comics industry observer, is this really such good news? Is slippage in the Buffy chart position a normal thing for comics series? Also, is Angel #1 being at 41 considered truly good?

I hope the answers to all above is "yes." I have loved the widely shared narrative that Buffy (and now Angel) have taken the comics world by storm. I don't want to let go of that narrative. Not one little bit.

phlebotinin | December 15, 00:53 CET

Buffy season 8 sales have remained scarily consistently high. And IDW had their best selling comic ever (as far as I can make out) so it's all good really. Basically we won. Which makes a nice change.

Simon | December 15, 02:23 CET

phlebotinin - when buffy and angel were both on the air, neither of them were placed anywhere near this in the top 100 rating television shows. this is the same deal. so it's huge. and just like when they were on tv when they were airing on smaller networks, they are being distributed now by smaller comic companies, so it's a big deal that they're scoring so high.

aapac | December 15, 02:56 CET

Not sold that it's a big deal, not for Angel, at least, aapac. This is a verfy different situation.

TV is a vastly larger medium, with a vastly larger audience, so building niche audiences is much more plausible.

Comics--very different. I'm on this train only because it's Whedonverse TV that's coming down the track. Meaning I'm free money. The 40 ahead of Angel ATF are not losing my money, because they never had a shot at it.

Look, I want both of these comics to succeed, because my thirst for more and more canon Buffy and Angel is unquenchable. But this isn't even apples and moonrocks.

[ edited by Chris inVirginia on 2007-12-15 04:12 ]

Chris inVirginia | December 15, 07:10 CET

Well you have to take into consideration the companies involved. IDW is a much smaller company than Dark Horse and the others. So put it in context. Angel is their biggest seller ever, and there is no other IDW comic in the top 100. So from that point of view it is excellent news for us and for them. If it continues along those lines, then the company will be happy and more comics will be produced.

As you said aapac, if either show were on the 'Big' networks they wouldnt have stood a chance. Possibly the same applies here. Angel is with the best possible company.

angeliclestat | December 15, 16:11 CET

The "Index" column is a measure of how many copies each comic sold relative to that month's issue of BATMAN, so Buffy sold 119.32% of that figure and Angel sold 61.96%. Which means that whichever way you look at it, Angel sold half what Buffy did. Which in some senses is kind of surprising, but IDW is a much smaller publisher than Dark Horse; the price was 33% more; the art team less well-known; and it's not the first Angel comic that Joss has co-written. (I think second and third printings will reach the December chart, though, to make up for it.)

Oh and the number is pretty damn huge for an IDW book by the way. The rarity of Dark Horse books in the top 100 is one thing but I'm not sure it's ever happened before for IDW - so they're doing pretty well really. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think they usually have anything selling above 20,000.)

Although having said that, it's not unprecedented for a small publisher to hit the top of the chart with a licensed property. Dreamwave did it with the first few issues of their Transformers series a few years ago.

[ edited by daylight on 2007-12-15 14:04 ]

daylight | December 15, 17:00 CET