July.

The Beat must have been playing catch-up because these have been coming in quick succession. We're also at a weird time because of Secret Wars, so as i scroll through the list the majority of the titles aren't recognizable to me.

I've noticed -- and I'm sure Marvel know this but don't care anyway -- that there are big sales in issue ones before sales drop from issue two onwards.

Fnord, are Marvel printing issues for a year before starting over with another issue one of the same book? Also, what's the longest running book since Marvel adopted the issue one policy?

Thank you.

The sales in these charts is from Marvel to dealers. We don't see the sell through rates to readers. Marvel provides incentives (mainly variant covers) to dealers for ordering larger amounts of #1s, with the idea that there will be more first issues of a new series available for people that didn't pre-order. In reality that usually doesn't pan out, which is why dealers dial back their orders for issue #2 and beyond, and it's to the point now where the person doing the sales analysis for the Beat now does sales comparisons for later issues to #2 instead of #1.

Based on comments from Tom Brevoort, it seems Marvel is coming around to an approach to comics similar to a television series, with a new #1 ever so often. But right now it's still more haphazard than doing a renumbering every 12 issues. It seems to happen when the creative team changes or when sales get too low.

It's hard to tell right now because of the Secret Wars situation, but i wouldn't be surprised if the highest running title right now was something like All New X-Men (the teens from the past series), which was in the #40s pre-Secret Wars.

I know I've said this in the past but having a no.1 issue every year makes it hard for me to invest in a comic knowing that it'll, a) be cancelled after a year or, b) restarted after a year. New Warriors was the one book I picked up, skimmed through and thought: "Hey, this is like the comics I used to pick up when I was a kid". I didn't buy it as I knew it would be cancelled, which it was.

How are you finding Secret Wars? It looks too complicated for me to follow but that could be because I haven't invested in the time to actually see if it is or not.

I am not getting Secret Wars. I was originally thinking about just getting it but like you there were too many books for me to figure out what was important or not.

I understand. Thanks for your replies.