It's not really that unusual when sales figures come out for the reaction online to be one breaching on virulent lunacy, as if comic books can be graded on the quality scale by the "popularity index." While there might be some argument to be made for items of cultural interest, like music, film or regular old word-type-books, super-hero comic books are already operating at a handicap: being noted "the best-selling super-hero comic book" only means that Diamond, the company who doles out their sales figures, has sent a whole bunch of copies of a comic book to retailers—it doesn't necessarily mean that those issues did anything when they got there, that they aren't ending up in the "pick ten, give us a nickel" box. They probably aren't—but if you go by anecdotal claims, which is the majority of what you find on the internet anyway, there's about 1,001 comic stores that claim everybody who shops there hates Secret Invasion and can't get enough of Birds of Prey. Whatever the true sell-through figures are, Marvel and DC aren't sharing. The rest of what you see is speculation, pure and simple—speculation that starts from vaguely unreliable data at that. That isn't to dismiss the numbers outright—they can serve, regardless of what certain Vertigo writers might tell you, as a somewhat reliable index when they're viewed over a period of time. Retailers obviously wouldn't try to fill their shops with product they can't sell, and that's why the numbers go down over time—they've figured out how many copies of a comic they can regularly move into shopping bags, and unless they're completely insane, they aren't trying to stock up on something nobody is going to want back issues of next year.

Still, the reaction seems to be that, since Marvel's big event cross-over beat DC's big event cross-over, there is somehow a connection between those pre-sale numbers and whether or not A) big corporate people should lose their jobs, B) Marvel speaks to the people in a way that DC doesn't, or C) any of this really matters, at all. There's something else that occasionally pops up, though-- I'm assuming it isn't as interesting to read or write about, but it's what I'm more interested in this week. And that is that neither of those numbers—the estimated 200,344 copies of Secret Invasion # 2 versus the 159,036 of Final Crisis[1]-- are anything to be really impressed by. Sure, there's a big discrepancy between those two books—but even at the top end of the scale, it's only in comic books that 200,000 of anything is worth getting excited about.

Super-hero comics have played it both ways for years now—both of the major publishers attend all manner of conventions and maintain all kinds of online presences to cater to what their sales figures represent them as—a niche industry with a tiny customer base, which at the same time helps to produce multi-million- (or in some cases, billion-) dollar films, and shepherds an unknown but clearly astronomical merchandising base. At the end of the month, the money made by putting the Incredible Hulk on underwear, rain ponchos and chair pillows probably doesn't exceed the amount a lousy Edward Norton film makes, but it certainly reaches a larger consumer market and brings more eyeballs to Mr. Smash than any of what Jeph Loeb is writing about right now. You can sell a poncho at Wal-Mart—but you can't find them next to stacks of Final Crisis. Merchandising, film, and the maintenance of the brand's "icons" are what pretty much anybody with sense recognizes as the core business of a company like Marvel, and what matters most to DC's parent corporation, Time Warner.

Look at it this way: if a super-hero comic were a movie, and a movie came out all across the country and had only 200,000 people show up, that movie would make around two million dollars. If that amount, two million dollars, was attached to a big Hollywood production, with some stars and garters included, that movie would be a miserable flop. If it were attached to a tiny art-house release that played in one or two theaters in New York and Los Angeles, it might be something different—but DC and Marvel aren't in the art-house business. Or at least, they aren't supposed to be. They're supposed to be, according to a lot of smart people who should know better, the "shepherds of America's mythological icons." They're supposed to be in the business of providing huge scale entertainment that breeds new readers with all the gargantuan stories of spandex-clad justice. They're supposed to be producing the type of stories that make for water-cooler conversations on Thursday mornings. They're supposed to provide an item that can sell well throughout the US to more than just an infinitesimal portion of the population—which is what 200,000 is.

Instead, they publish comic books that can't appeal to a consumer base enough for a bunch of stores to order more than those 200,000 copies. The blame for that can't all be laid at the feet of some writers and corporate higher-ups. It can't be laid on the doorstep of Viz media, or Bittorent, or Tivo. In fact, if you really want to get honest about it—it can't be blamed on anything. It can only be dealt with in one sad, but ultimately true, observation:

Nothing lasts forever.