A look at Spawn’s sales

Spawn #300 was September’s best-selling comic, but how is Spawn doing number-wise? Why is Spawn constantly making it in the hot lists? Is it wise to invest in Spawn comics?

To try to get an answer to all these questions, I thought I would take a look to Spawn order numbers according to Comichron. As always, there are people who will not agree with the way those numbers are calculated, but I think we can all agree that, even if they are not 100% accurate, those numbers give us enough information to calculate trends.

For the sake of having an uninterrupted and clear series, I focused on issues 75 to 301 and added all versions (Nth printings) of the same issue together, and here’s what I got:

The first thing  that jumps to the eye is that Spawn has been selling less than 50K a month since around issue #115, which is not bad at all for an indie comic. The problem is that after that the numbers (as they do) kept decreasing, reaching the 10K-20K copies per month area and staying there for almost 10 years. Again, not completely horrible numbers for an indie comic.

I also find the graph reflects my own Spawn experience perfectly. I would check in for the anniversary issues, then check out immediately. A focus on issues #117 to #297 makes this abundantly clear:

The spikes for issues #150, #200 and #250 are followed by an immediate decrease to levels very similar to the previous ones. The only run that grabbed me for more than a couple of issues was David Hine’s almost Vertigo-esque take on the character (#151-184), but it apparently didn’t do a lot of good to the sales (sales went down from 28,860 to 18,021).

The return of McFarlane (writing) with Portacio on art (and a few variants) managed to bring the title over 20K again (26,772 for issue #185), but not for long, as they went under 20K by #191. Issue #200 sold over three times what the series was selling, only to fall back below 20K with #201 (which must have been tough). The 220s bring us the McFarlane cover homages, which brought a few sales over, but the title seemed to hit some sort of depression right after, giving us the lowest printed Spawn issues to date (of which we will talk below).

Issue #250, Spawn Resurrection with Paul Jenkins and Jonboy Meyers, Erik Larsen and the new normal of having 3 covers per issue (“No more variants”, right), seem to have put a little fire in the title in the 250-270s. Convention variants and Francesco Mattina seem to have helped a bit, together with having a regular art style in the tremendous Jason Shawn Alexander.

It makes sense that approaching #300 McFarlane would try to give an additional push to the series. An over-sized anniversary special with art by Alexander, Scott Campbell, Capullo, Opeña and McFarlane himself, September’s best seller (and its build-up with the Amazing Spider-Man #298-300 covers) has effectively taken the industry’s attention and made everyone take a look. Is this a trend they can keep?

#301’s fall is not as steep as the fall from previous anniversary issues, but how long will McFarlane be able to contribute art and capture people’s imagination? I guess we will have to wait and see!

As I mentioned above, let’s take a look at the issues with the lowest numbers and what they go for:

Spawn #243

Print run: 11,714

Cheapest copy on ebay at the moment: $38

Highest Sale (from covrprice.com): $69.99

I could have put any issue between 238 and 248, those are the lowest printed, but this one seems to have the lowest orders in that run.

Spawn #216

This one has a sketch variant!

Print run: 12,671

Cheapest copy on ebay at the moment: $128 (reg) / $45 (sketch)

Highest Sale (from covrprice.com): $84.32 (reg) / $60.99 (sketch)

Likewise for this one: anything between 201-219 is around the same numbers.

So, would I invest in Spawn? Not in anniversary issues, that’s for sure, but if you find any of the low print issues in a back issue bin for cheap, you could do worse than grabbing them and putting them on sale as they seem to be easy money. As for the rest, I believe there will be an article about the hottest Spawn issues coming soon, so keep an eye on the site for more Spawn goodnes!!!