CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
DC's Absolute Universe and Marvel's Ultimate Universe have been routinely setting new sales records for their respective companies, and now it is IDW Publishing's chance to get in on that Absolute and Ultimate sales action with its brand-new series, Star Trek: The Last Starship, which IDW describes as the Star Trek version of the Absolute and Ultimate Universe (so "Absolute Star Trek"), having a major moment with regards to its sales.
The series about the period following "The Burn," where the Federation mostly fell apart for a century before things came back together in the 32nd Century (as shown on the last three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, and the upcoming new TV series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy), is clearly hot, as the first issue has sold out and gone to a second printing, and now IDW has announced that the final order cutoff orders for Star Trek: The Last Starship #3 have actually increased over its orders for Star Trek: The Last Starship #2, which is highly unusual in the comic book industry.
What do the writers of Star Trek: The Last Starship have to say about the news?
Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, the writers of Star Trek: The Last Starship, took to social media to celebrate the news. They noted, "GREAT NEWS EVERYONE! Star Trek: The Last Starship #3 orders are up from issue #2! That never happens! Thank you everyone that made this possible!!!"
They also shared some scenes from the third issue. Heather Antos, the editor on the series, showed up in their comments to add, "HELL YEAH!"
Why is it so unusual for a comic book to go up in sales on the third issue?
Typically speaking, comic book stores make their "final order" for a series about three weeks before the next issue comes out, but sometimes, the release schedule doesn't work out that way, and retailers will have to make their orders for, say, issue #3 before issue #2 is out. That was the case for Star Trek: The Last Starship. The second issue of the series is out on November 19th, but the final order cutoff date for the third issue (that's the last day before the comic book company locks in its print run for a comic book. Before that point, retailers can pretty much guarantee that they can get however many copies they order. After that point, they just have to hope that the company made a large enough printing that they can get reorders) was this past Monday, November 3rd.
Therefore, comic book retailers have to guess how well the third issue will sell based only on sales from the first issue. Typically, then, retailers will order less to be safe, as they truly don't know how well the second issue will sell until it comes out. In this case, though, retailers have obviously seen enough from the first issue, sales-wise, and preorders of the second issue, that retailers have INCREASED their order of #3. That's surprising, and very impressive.
Source: IDW Publishing
English (US) · 