Huge sales on Walking Dead 100

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:29 am

From the Image Press Release:

Robert Kirkman's Eisner Award-winning The Walking Dead comic series for Image Comics/Skybound reached its milestone 100th issue and instantly sold out of its 383,612 initial orders on July 11th, the same day it was released, effectively becoming the best-selling comic book in initial orders for any publisher since 1997, when Image Comics/Top Cow's The Darkness #11 was released. The Walking Dead, created and written by Kirkman with art by Charlie Adlard, featuring 13 variant covers for the 100th issue — all sold out — has been the talk of San Diego Comic-Con with a series of events celebrating its release. Kirkman is a partner in Image Comics, the first person invited to join the comic book industry's premier publisher of creator-owned comics since its inception twenty years ago.

"This is a remarkable achievement," said Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson. "It's extremely uncommon, if not flat-out rare, for a comic book to see a sustained increase in sales following its first issue, but The Walking Dead steadily climbed up and up since its launch in 2003, and we couldn't be more proud of Robert, Charlie and the whole Walking Dead team."

However, keep in mind that the book had 8+ covers and a LOT of fans were buying them all. I think the sales are severely inflated by single people buying multiple copies as opposed to this being a huge influx of new readers.

We're going to need to see the sales of the subsequent issues to see how the sales #s stick.

That said, Kirkman had HUGE lines at con all weekend, packed panels, and people were buying anything with "Walking Dead" on it like hotcakes.

There's definitely a buzz.

Gilgabob · Post by **Gilgabob** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:59 am

The fact that the 100th issue also coincided with comicon was a huge boost as well. Those are some big numbers being reported that we really haven't seen in a long time. These numbers are encouraging as it seems the numbers slide almost every month and at a certain point I worry about the viability of comics as a genre, so hooray for Kirkman and Image.

Sell those books boys!

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:17 am

This is a crude way to do it but divide that by 8 and it seems to be a normal month for Walking Dead, right? Well better than normal, but certainly more normal than 40k to 380k.

My only fear is it will influence how many covers there will be for ASM 700.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:24 am

I bought it and have never purchaseda single issue of WD to date. I did notice that prices on the sdcc variant were coming back down. It definitely did not sell out at the con.

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:03 am

Trev wrote:I bought it and have never purchaseda single issue of WD to date. I did notice that prices on the sdcc variant were coming back down. It definitely did not sell out at the con.

Do you read it in trades? Why did you buy this particular issue?

I orginally planned on buying all the covers, two of each actually, and sell one set on ebay to try and pay for my other set. Then I realized prices weren't really going up and just bought one copy. Them introducing new covers at the cons and stuff also turned me off because I wouldn't have a full set anymore anyway.

I'm very happy I only bought one cover. My hype glasses fell off just in time

IanG · Post by **IanG** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:05 am

I'm happy for Image and TWD. My local LCS bought all the covers and they usually only buy limited copies of the comic. When I went on Friday, the LCS still had plenty of issue 100 copies left on the shelf. I wonder if we'll start seeing more alternate and/or variant covers of this comic now. It's only been the one cover in the past.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:17 pm

abysslord wrote:
Trev wrote:I bought it and have never purchaseda single issue of WD to date. I did notice that prices on the sdcc variant were coming back down. It definitely did not sell out at the con.
Do you read it in trades? Why did you buy this particular issue?

I orginally planned on buying all the covers, two of each actually, and sell one set on ebay to try and pay for my other set. Then I realized prices weren't really going up and just bought one copy. Them introducing new covers at the cons and stuff also turned me off because I wouldn't have a full set anymore anyway.

I'm very happy I only bought one cover. My hype glasses fell off just in time

I bought it bec Lenny and bob and Gabe were all freaking out about how awesome it was and the sdcc variant was going up in price do thought I would check it out. I've only ever bought the first trade and didn't continue with it after that.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:18 pm

IanG wrote:My local LCS bought all the covers and they usually only buy limited copies of the comic. When I went on Friday, the LCS still had plenty of issue 100 copies left on the shelf.

Yes. We're back to the "sellout hype machine". A sellout does not mean that copies are not available to buy at stores, just that Diamond sold all their copies (non-returnable) TO the stores.

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:51 pm

Trev wrote: I bought it bec Lenny and bob and Gabe were all freaking out about how awesome it was

I thought it was alright. W/o hype it would have been great, but reading all the hype I thought it was just a normal issue of Walking Dead. He keeps saying "Now the game has changed!" Well we knew that 10+ issues ago, didn't we?

And as far as the gore in it, I think something that happened much earlier on was much more brutal. Plus I read Crossed, so anything's tame compared to that

stardog · Post by **stardog** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:06 pm

abysslord wrote:
Do you read it in trades? Why did you buy this particular issue?

I read it in trades, but I did buy this issue. I guess I just wanted to have one primarily, but I also liked seeing other artists draw the Walking Dead characters. I also found the perfect cover for me, in that Michonne is my favorite TWD character and I love Ryan Ottley's work.

BadDeacon · Post by **BadDeacon** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:58 pm

Walking Dead has huge gains in sales numbers in the last couple months, from in the 30 thousands to in the 50 thousands, if I remember correctly.

Still, there's no sustained jumping from 55k to 380k sales.

Still, that is pretty awesome! That's great for Kirkman, Walking Dead, and Image!

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:44 pm

BadDeacon wrote: Still, that is pretty awesome! That's great for Kirkman, Walking Dead, and Image!

Strike while the iron is hot, Sean!

Sell that "Walking Dead SDCC escape variant" of #100.

How much are those going for?

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 6:08 pm

BobBretall wrote:
BadDeacon wrote: Still, that is pretty awesome! That's great for Kirkman, Walking Dead, and Image!
Strike while the iron is hot, Sean!

Sell that "Walking Dead SDCC escape variant" of #100.

How much are those going for?

About $100 it looks like on ebay.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:02 pm

abysslord wrote: About $100 it looks like on ebay.

Which is the $70 he paid to do the event & $30 on top of it!

BadDeacon · Post by **BadDeacon** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:32 pm

Oh, don't worry, I plan to rake in all I can