Baseless Speculation For Fun and…

UPDATE 10/12/2011: The September sales numbers have been released, and OMAC #1 actually sold 33,581 copies. So let’s make that purely speculative magic cancellation number a little closer to 15,000 copies. 

Last week Diamond, the company that distributes comics to retailers like my local comic store owner (Who knows me by name and asks me if I would please stop asking to use his bathroom right after buying tentacle hentai), announced the preliminary wholesale sales numbers for September, which include all of the DC New 52 books except for the first print of Justice League #1, which came out in August. There are no specific copies-sold numbers yet, but OMAC came in at number 82, behind all the other New 52 books… including Justice League #1, which came out in… fucking August.

Which is a bummer to hear, since clearly OMAC is growing on us here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives… and even more of a bummer when Bleeding Cool reported last week that it was already in danger of being canceled:

And it’s written by co-publisher [Dan DiDio] and [sic] the man who has been pushing for the relaunch so long. So here’s the thing – will it seem just to anyone if one of the other 52 is cancelled [sic] due to lower sales and the publisher’s own comic, O.M.A.C., survives? I doubt it. Dan DiDio may be forced to sacrifice one of his own…

Wow. That’s depressing. Guess I’d better yank the title off my subscription pull list. At the very least, it’ll be another three bucks toward tentacle porn, or at least two bucks with another buck toward the sock cleaning bill. I guess when God closes a door, he opens a – what’s that, OMAC inker Scott Koblish?

O.M.A.C is not in danger of being cancelled.

GO ON…

First off let me assure fans and retailers especially, because I know a lot of retailers peruse these boards, O.M.A.C is not in any danger of being cancelled. O.M.A.C. is not on the “Chopping Block.” There are always various reasons to cancel something and O.M.A.C. does not meet those criteria.

Wow, that’s great news! But wait… OMAC is DC’s lowest-selling book! Who (or how badly) does a book have to suck to get canceled around here? Tell me the truth, Dan Didio!

[OMAC] and all of the New 52 are in no danger of cancellation any time soon. When we first established the New 52 we set a cancellation threshold that was higher than what we had in the past to insure that we did not get back into the habit of carrying a large amount of low selling books.

And I’m happy to announce that in the case of OMAC, even if it lost over 50% of the first issue audience, it still would not hit that number.

Okay, so I’m glad we were able to put that wild and baseless speculation to bed… because it’s time to engage in some wild and baseless speculation of our own!

So the biggest-selling book of September was Batman #1. And we don’t know yet how many copies were sold, but we know from DC itself that Batman was “exceeding 200,000 copies”. So let’s be optimistic and split the difference at 250,000 copies. OMAC sold 17.82% the number of copies of Batman… which would put it around 44,550 copies.

So if we believe DiDio’s assertion that OMAC could lose “over 50%” of its numbers before being canceled, well, 50% is around 22,250 copies, so let’s call it here: the first DC New 52 book to drop below 20,000 copies will be the first to die. And by the way, in August, Gotham City Sirens – a book about Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy featuring a great deal of empty cheesecake – sold 20,216 copies. So I’m guessing OMAC won’t be the first book to wind up in trouble.

But the most important part of this kerfuffle between Bleeding Cool and Scott Koblish was this:

My line of recourse would surely not include responding to Rich’s ridiculous headline with news that I overheard the other day: I heard that Bleeding Cool is in danger of shutting down it’s site because Rich can’t pay his employees. I certainly can’t prove it, i just heard it the other day from a buddy of mine, an unnamed source…

But, see, even writing that has made me feel dirty and vile. Perhaps Rich is used to thinking this way. But I’m not.

Good Lord… people get PAID for doing this shit?