Do the Legion Archives Really Sell that Well?

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Author	Topic: Do the Legion Archives Really Sell that Well?
Drumore01 Member	posted March 18, 2003 10:56 PM <<The first four LSH ARCHIVES were $39.95 then the jump to $49.95. I am sure I have first printings of all 68 Archives that I currently own. >> Ack! My Bad. You're right Im wrong. I would have sworn Legion 5 was $60. (Maybe it was announced and postponed until the prices dropped to $50 again?) Anyway, 3 and 4 were both published in 1994. <<This made my natural cynicism kick in and wonder if a honcho at DC would fast-track a marginal archive and keep it going just to get it to where he could start receiving roylties from it.>> From all accounts I've heard, not only is Paul not the type to push his own work, he would rather some of his work NOT be collected, so it wouldnt give the appearance he was pushing it. In fact: the point is moot. According to the panel in San Diego, Paul (and probably any other former writer) is not allowed to vote on collections which include his own material. But I still wanna see a Huntress collection! : ) IP: Logged
dylanfan Member	posted March 18, 2003 11:46 PM I forget exactly where I got this info, but I do believe it is accurate. It charts the consecutive release of the Archives. Here's the breakdown on the timetable of Legion Archives (month listed when known): #1- 1991 #2- 1992 #3- 1993 August #4- 1994 December #5- 1995 #6- 1996 November #7- 1997 October #8- 1998 October #9- 1999 October #10- 2000 September #11- 2001 August #12- 2002 April Can anyone fill in the missing months on the ones I don't know? Or correct the ones I have listed here? ------------------ Visit the Marvel Masterworks fansite and Message Board: Go to www.marvelmasterworks.freeservers.com IP: Logged
Carsda Member	posted March 19, 2003 12:25 AM quote: Originally posted by dylanfan: #12- 2002 April well, considering #12 hasn't come out yet...i think you mean april 2003. IP: Logged
dylanfan Member	posted March 19, 2003 12:29 AM grrrrr......pardon the error. If I could edit, I would. Grrrrrrr........... ------------------ Visit the Marvel Masterworks fansite and Message Board: Go to www.marvelmasterworks.freeservers.com IP: Logged
Lee Semmens Member	posted March 19, 2003 04:52 AM If Legion Archives sold particularly well during the 90s it may have had a lot to do with the fact that for much of that time it had very little in the way of competition from other other archive lines, rather than any intrinsic popularity. I doubt that very many people would buy every archive that comes out in a year (whether it be 12 or 14, or whatever), but my guess would be that if significantly fewer volumes were released each year quite a few people would buy an archive that is otherwise low on their list of priorities, but wouldn't buy in other circumstances. I am not suggesting LSH is unpopular by any means (and I have the first ten volumes in this series), but it certainly helps the sales of any particular consumer item if it has little or no competition, even from the same source (in this instance DC), as is the case with the Legion Archives for at least the first several years or so of its publication. IP: Logged
the ? Member	posted March 19, 2003 05:57 AM Wow. I think that's an amazing statement, and I could not disagree with you more. Are comic fans really the kind of people who'll shell out $40-$50 for a book they're not wild about, just because there aren't many other books in the same format? I disagree. The Silver Age Legion has a huge following (I'm not particularly among them, myself). I can't believe that readers would have bought these books in the numbers they did without an interest in the characters. Legion wasn't the first Archives, after all. They outsold Superman, for crying out loud. IP: Logged
Corrosive Kid Member	posted March 19, 2003 06:07 AM DC kept making Legion Archives in the '90s for a very simple reason: there were enough people who continued to buy them. DC didn't make other archive lines during the mid-'90s for a very simple reason: there weren't enough people who wanted to buy them. If there were, they would have made them. Obviously, sales on other lines dipped low enough that DC did not consider them profitable at the time. IP: Logged
quincyjb Member	posted March 19, 2003 09:59 AM I am not that big an LSH fan, but I bought all their archives through #8 because there wasn't much, if any, competition for my dollar, given that I'm a fan of Silver Age superhero material (in color, please.) Of the other Silver Age lines, the only one that seems to have stalled, really, is SA Flash (ironic, no?) IP: Logged
BearPaws Member	posted March 19, 2003 11:10 AM quote: Originally posted by dylanfan: Can anyone fill in the missing months on the ones I don't know? Or correct the ones I have listed here? A while back, I went through my old stack of "DC Releases" (the free leaflet they used to publish) and cross-referenced the "upcoming" list on the back flaps to get the months of release. My list matches yours except: #4- December 93 #5- September 94 I might have the years wrong -- I got an email from someone correcting me a while back and I could swear I updated my spreadsheet but they just don't look right to me now. The months should be correct, though. ------------------ "I knew I wasn't risking my secret identity with you! After all, ��if I can't trust the President of the United States, who can I trust?" � Superman to JFK, Action Comics #309, February 1964 IP: Logged
outpost2 Member	posted March 19, 2003 11:38 AM dylanfan, I should have complete info on the actual release dates of the Archives on my computer at home. I'll post it for you either tonight or tomorrow. IP: Logged
James Friel Member	posted March 19, 2003 12:14 PM quote: Originally posted by quincyjb: ...Of the other Silver Age lines, the only one that seems to have stalled, really, is SA Flash (ironic, no?) How so? The third volume came out only 13 months ago. Now, I'd love to see this series fasttracked, but I'm not worried about it. IP: Logged
quincyjb Member	posted March 19, 2003 01:48 PM James, you are probably right about SA Flash not stalling. It just seems like it has because I read the previous volume immediately when it came out. Many other volumes sit in my backlog for over a year before I read them. Still, I look forward to the next volume. I would like to believe this is one of the better sellers, given the Flash's steady publishing schedule the past 47 years. IP: Logged
friend Member	posted March 19, 2003 02:08 PM Hope no one throws a hammer at my head but I read somewhere that even back in the old days, Flash ga had a tiny bit more trouble to sell (compared to others) because of the art. I haven't bought Flash archives but I do have about 20 to 40 Flash ga stories (through specials and so on) and I the art is very aggresive... Not my fave... Friend. ------------------ http://www.freewebs.com/salamie63/index.htm IP: Logged
dcexplosion78 Member	posted March 19, 2003 07:34 PM Bob Wayne said at Comicon last year, if fans keep buying Legion Archives, they'll be happy to keep making them. So, in answer to the question, they must be selling. IP: Logged
outpost2 Member	posted March 19, 2003 09:55 PM Legion Of Super-Heroes Archives (actual shipping dates) #1 - 12/05/1991 #2 - 10/22/1992 #3 - 09/08/1993 #4 - 03/30/1994 #5 - 10/05/1994 #6 - 11/20/1996 #7 - 10/29/1997 #8 - 10/28/1998 #9 - 11/10/1999 #10 - 10/11/2000 (corrected #10 - 04/11/2001) #11 - 08/15/2001 #12 - Expected 04/09/2003 IP: Logged
outpost2 Member	posted March 19, 2003 10:06 PM Legion Of Super-Heroes Archives (approximate number of months since previous volume) #1 0 months #2 10.5 months #3 10.5 months #4 6.5 months #5 6 months #6 25.5 months #7 11 months #8 12 months #9 12.5 months #10 11 months #11 10 months #12 20 months IP: Logged
India Ink Member	posted March 19, 2003 11:57 PM Virtually all of the reprinted material in the early LSH archives (about the first 5 volumes) had been reprinted only a scant few years before in digests (and some stories had been reprinted multiple times before that). So the cost of producing those early archives was relatively low, compared with the amount of work it took to restore the art on Batman archives (for example). And there was a devoted following. I don't know what the sales were on LSH archives either, but the profit potential was certainly greater given 1. the archive was cheap to produce & 2. the archive had a built-in market. IP: Logged
Drumore01 Member	posted March 20, 2003 02:02 AM Although the stories ran in Adventure Digest, they were recolored when they went into the Archives. And if you compare pages, they are quite different in some places, both color and positioning of illustration.Nearly an inch of material was selectively trimmed out in the digest, often causing lettering to be redone. (check out "THE JULES VERNE" on page 4 of each). IP: Logged
James Friel Member	posted March 20, 2003 02:16 AM quote: Originally posted by Drumore01: Although the stories ran in Adventure Digest, they were recolored when they went into the Archives. And if you compare pages, they are quite different in some places, both color and positioning of illustration.Nearly an inch of material was selectively trimmed out in the digest, often causing lettering to be redone. (check out "THE JULES VERNE" on page 4 of each). Nevertheless, in order to have the art in condition that made it possible to work on in those ways, they had to have good film or stats in the first place. So while coloring had to be done, there shouldn't have had to be any reconstruction or restoration, which as I understand it is the really expensive process. IP: Logged
Lee Semmens Member	posted March 20, 2003 06:17 AM quote: Originally posted by the ?: Wow. I think that's an amazing statement, and I could not disagree with you more. Are comic fans really the kind of people who'll shell out $40-$50 for a book they're not wild about, just because there aren't many other books in the same format? I disagree. The Silver Age Legion has a huge following (I'm not particularly among them, myself). I can't believe that readers would have bought these books in the numbers they did without an interest in the characters. Legion wasn't the first Archives, after all. They outsold Superman, for crying out loud. I never said LSH wasn't popular. What I said was that it is a lot easier for something to sell well when it has little or no competition, which was the case with the Legion archives for much of the 90s. Most comic book/TPB/hardback purchasers would, I am sure, have a limited budget for this sort of thing, and even if they wanted to get every archive can't afford too, so therefore many comic buffs may simply not buy a particular archive/s which is lower down their list of priorities. Personally, I have over 60 archives, but even so I only have one Wonder Woman Archive (#2 - which I only picked up as it was marked down by over $20), because I can't afford to get all the archives and WW is fairly low on my list of priorities - even so, I would still like to get them all. Perhaps in a fallow period (in my opinion) archive-wise. I am not at all suggesting people would "shell out $40-$50" for a book (in this case Legion Archives) that they aren't very keen on, what I am saying is that if they came out in the same year as, say, eleven other archives sales on this particular archive would perhaps drop significantly because of the reasons cited above, not because people disliked or loathed LSH. I have the first ten Legion archives, most of them purchased before the archive line greatly expanded, and even though I wouldn't give them up or sell them I have serious doubts whether I would buy them all (or any) now, as they would be competing against 11-13 other archives per year. The point is, that now, for me and many other people, much as we would like to buy just about every archive the budget can only stretch so far. I am no great lover of Sgt. Rock for instance, but if, say, eight of his archives had come out in the 90s I probably would have bought them all - mainly because there would have been only one or two other archives coming out in that same year. But there is no way known I would buy an annual, or bi-annual Sgt. Rock under the current fairly hectic publishing schedule. I reckon if DC had put out several Silver Age Superman archives in the 90s sales would have been very high, with very few other archives competing for customers' dollars. Who said LSH outsold (GA) Superman? I have never seen total sales figures for DC archives. IP: Logged
TTOMLINS99 New Member	posted March 20, 2003 10:32 AM Don't know if you guys know about this but Heres the sales rank from Amazon for LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES ARCHIVES VOL. 1 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 70,671 SUPERMAN ACTION COMICS ARCHIVES VOL.1 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 156,724 SUPERMAN ARCHIVES VOL.1 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 113,706 SUPERMAN ARCHIVES VOL.2 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 205,218 But this will suprise you maybe New Teen Titans ARCHIVES VOL.1 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 50,414 The most popular GREEN LANTERN ARCHIVES VOL.1(silver age) Amazon.com Sales Rank: 32,599 GREEN LANTERN ARCHIVES VOL.2(silver age) Amazon.com Sales Rank: 68,400 The Doom Patrol Archives Amazon.com Sales Rank: 52,625 The Flash Archives, Vol. 2 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 76,294 IP: Logged
doesitmatter Member	posted March 20, 2003 01:07 PM Interesting. I wonder where the batmans fall on that list? People like Hal. I finally buckled down and bought Emerald dawn 1 & 2 tpbs and the SA DCD Hal figure even though I had the earlier HTH figure. He's just a really likeable character, which is I guess why some people hate Kyle so much. I just hate his Jim Lee outfit. IP: Logged
TTOMLINS99 New Member	posted March 20, 2003 01:15 PM heres the latest batman figure One thing I noticed for diamond sales and amazon sales are very different diamond sales for THUNDER AGENTS ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC $49.95 DC 2,533 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 14,501 diamond sales for BATMAN WORLD'S FINEST ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC $49.95 DC 2,873 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 435,493 diamond sales Batman: The Dynamic Duo Archives VOL 1 HC $49.95 DC 2,680 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 45,378 IP: Logged
James Friel Member	posted March 20, 2003 01:25 PM I find it hard to believe that THUNDER Agents did that well for Amazon. It wasn't that well known even in the '60s! IP: Logged
India Ink Member	posted March 20, 2003 03:58 PM quote: Originally posted by James Friel: Nevertheless, in order to have the art in condition that made it possible to work on in those ways, they had to have good film or stats in the first place. So while coloring had to be done, there shouldn't have had to be any reconstruction or restoration, which as I understand it is the really expensive process. I had considered mentioning in my earlier post the qualifying statement that some stories had been cut n pasted to fill the whole digest page. But I decided this was superfluous to my post. Obviously if the pages had been worked on, there were usable pages to work on in the first place, so the point stands. I figured others would hash over the fine points of this, without me wasting time posting on the subject--and I was right. IP: Logged

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