X-Lapsed, Episode 148 – Hellions #8 (2021)
Hellions #8 (March, 2021)
“The Grinning Neonate”
Writer – Zeb Wells
Art – Stephen Segovia
Colors – David Curiel
Letters – VC’s Ariana Maher
Design – Tom Muller
Head of X – Hickman
Edits – Amaro, Basso, White, Cebulski
Cover Price: $3.99
On-Sale: January 6, 2021
No A.I. may be allowed to flourish…
Today’s issue of Hellions is quite a challenging one, as it gives us a lot to chew on regarding morality, mortality… and probably a few other “-alities” to boot. Another wonderful chapter of this wonderful book. If you’re not reading Hellions… you should be!
Also – Great Mailbag… and a missive that actually inspired a brand-new segment for the show, wherein I take a look at the most recent Sales Charts (October, 2020). We’ll keep doing this as new sales/shipping data becomes available! Lemme know what you think!
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@acecomics / @cosmictmill / weirdcomicshistory@gmail.com
Hi Chris, I've fallen a bit behind because of various real life stuff. I hope this finds you well. I'm continuing to respond slightly out of order as Marvel Unlimited seems to have slowed down releasing the X-books but I'll always be able to respond to Hellions because that one gets my actual money.
Of course responding to Hellions is very difficult. How many ways can I say that I love this comic? It's wonderful and I can't wait to see what happens next.
Some very interesting stuff in the feedback section of this episode. Every single thing you said about creators on social media made sense. It could harm sales to pre-block someone who likes your work through a block chain but still I can't fault creators for using them. Social media is very intimate. It follows you through every single part of your life. A personal account far exceeds your working life and therefore I think it exceeds the demands of your professionalism. I think it could be psychologically damaging to read certain kinds of responses online. Blockchains seem like a reasonable protection to me.
You specifically mention following EVS as the kind of thing that might get someone blocked and I think it's important to note how racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic his Twitter is. At the point when people were using block chains against his followers they would have been fully aware that he was leading hate campaigns against other creators and editors. You were not accidentally following a racist homophobe as he was open about his hatred.
No matter how public a figure you are you have a right to protect yourself from seeing hate speak.
Onto your analysis of the sales figures. I was a little surprised by some of the figures. I expected X-Men to be at the top. It's the lead book even if it's not the best book but I was shocked by how high Wolverine was placed. It genuinely is consistently the weakest X-book but still is the second highest ordered. I wonder how much of that is Comic Shop Owners ordering based on pre-existing biases and how much reflects customer demand. I suppose it could also be down to Adam Kubert being the only actual superstar artist working on the X-line. Maybe they think they can sell it to the people who are nostalgic for the 90s.
I was completely surprised that Cable was at the bottom of the orders. Not just because it's a good book but because I would've expected it to be a more sellable property than New Mutants or Hellions. When I heard it was getting cancelled I presumed it was due to the end of the storyline not because of low sales.
Of course we do have to take all sales figures with a pinch of salt. As you repeatedly said these are the shipped numbers. Plenty of comics end up unsold on retailers shelves.
We also have to consider digital sales. Books that are low sellers in comic shops can sometimes sell exceptionally well digitally. I know that was said of Squirrel Girl for example. And, of course, the publishers make more profit on digital sales as they don't have the costs of printing and distribution to cover. It's quite difficult to see where the line is as we're not given details but it is entirely possible that Marvel could generate more income on 500 digital sales than on 1000 physical sales. You mentioned the old 100,000 cancellation figure that used to get bandied about but the financial model has completely changed since the 80s.
There is a part of me that wishes we got more information because as someone who works in retail I love digging into the figures and working out what makes what but it's probably a good thing that things are a little more opaque. We know that people stop buying books that they know are going to be cancelled so it's probably best that we don't know when things are on the verge. The down side is that people look at newly announced books with the expectation that they will probably get cancelled and therefore are less likely to invest their time and money.
Ultimately it seems supremely unfair that the best books are not the best sellers but then I suppose we can't all agree on what are the best books.
Anyway until Nanny's robot baby marries the Scarlet Witch, Make Mine X-Lapsed!