Diamond’s numbers for December of 2002 have been released. The rankings in the U-Decide are, frankly, kind of embarrassing.
I may be off a rank number or two ’cause I don’t have them in front of me, but it was something like CAPTAIN MARVEL coming in at #58, ULTIMATE ADVENTURES at #78, and MARVILLE at…oy…#113. (Update, just double-checked: UA is at #71.)
PAD
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Jeez. What was #114? “Ultimate US-1”?
Congratulations PAD.
As I posted over on Joe’s board, I knew issue #4 was going to be the one to determine the series by, and it clearly came through.
So when are they going to announce it’s ongoing already?
Not to do Jemas any favors but if he wants to save face he could always hire Frank Miller and Frank Quietly to do issue 6 of Marville. That way he won’t have to concede defeat until they get the book done in two or three years.
Don’t forget that Ultimate Adventures #4 is guest starring The Ultimates from the best selling Marvel title and it ties into their first ever big crossover, Ultimate War which came in at the top two spots if I remember correctly. Where would this issue have placed without the crossover? I guess we’ll find out in #5, which won’t be for a while since it was announced to the retailers in Diamond Dateline that Ultimate Adventures goes bimonthly with #3 rescheduled for a January release.
Congratulations, PAD! 🙂
I think Mr. Jema is gonna have to give away more than a hundred large if he wants a chance of catching up now…
Peter David – is this what you where wishing for Christmas?
Just hope people don’t forget to keep buying the series – as the contest isn’t over yet!
But have you looked at the October “actual sales” chart (including reorders and advance reorders/late orders the other chart doesn’t account for)?
Captain Marvel #2 came in at 26 in the quantity column (whereas in the pre-order chart it only came to 50).
Although bizzarely, Ultimate Spider-Man #28 isn’t in the actual sales chart at all…
Strange that Captain Marvel is at 58 in December. Is the two-week delay a blip or has the entire schedule of the book gone to pot now?
Richard Franklin notes that Ult. Adv. goes bi-monthly. It had to, even if the issues are ready to print. Ultimates #8 has been re-solicited in the latest Previews and #s 9 & 10 are cancelled, to be re-solicited at a future date. Therefore, the crossover would have been mis-timed had UA been published on time.
Alan
You mean someone is still buying Marville ? Who’s that sucker ?
PAD, you mentioned that the numbers were embarassing. Did you mean embarassing as a whole, or mainly for your competitors? I for one could bare to see CM up in the top 25 espescially considering it gets consistently better reviews than just about any other comic out there.
If any other Marvel comic had the sales trend of Marville, wouldn’t Jemas have announced it’s cancellation by now?
I meant for my competitors, yes. I feel kind of bad for Jemas, believe it or not. I know he did it to himself, but no one deserves to be trounced *that* badly.
PAD
Now let’s see if they’ll stick by it and not find some technicality or whatever…
Good luck, hope you are ongoing as I love the title. Hëll if they don’t stick to the agreement go and do Superman (assuming DC’ll let you of course) I’d love to see your take on the big blue boyscout.
Alan Donald
Question for Alan – stick by what exactly? The whole “best title continues others are cancelled” idea was taken off the table by Mr. Jemas before the thing even got started. If I remember correctly, U-decide means that at a con next year (not sure which but pretty certain it wasn’t SDCC) Mr. Jemas will get in a dunk tank if Marville doesn’t win, Mr. Quesada will allow pies to be tossed at him if Ultimate Adventures doesn’t win, and PAD wisely said he wasn’t interested in being part of such theatrics.
There are already rumors that Mr. Jemas has guaranteed Marville will continue past #6, altho with a different writer. As for Captain Marvel, if it maintains the over 30k orders each of the first 4 issues received it’s hard to think Marvel would cancel the title. Unless it’s not really all about business decisions as the Marvel brass likes to constantly claim.