Anonymous
asked:
I find it interesting that Brian Bendis is considered such a hot seller, yet him helming X-Men has taken them from a constant Top 5 seller to barely cracking the Top 20. Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men used to be mainstays in the Top 5. Funny how the X-Men endured terrible runs before and still sold but you put a man who "saved the Avengers" and "made Moon Knight sell for once" and he sinks one of the most viable franchises in comics with stupid stories and derailing the characters enormously.

You’re making the classic mistake, in that you’re equating standings with sales. They are not the same thing.

So, for example, you can actually sell more copies in a given month, but see your standings go down if other books happen to increase their sales by even more copies. And vice-versa. This is why standings are only the broadest possible yardstick for how well or how poorly a title is doing.

The only number that counts is the number of copies that you sell.

And in a world where Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men all have multiple titles, and other series such as AVENGERS and GUARDIANS and STAR WARS and JUSTICE LEAGUE and WALKING DEAD and etc, etc have proven popular, it’s going to get crowded up there in the Top-5. You can’t fit more than 5 releases into it in any given month, you know.