David F Walker Discusses The Cancellation Of Nighthawk And Marvel Comics

At some point it just becomes counter productive to let the direct market dictate the entire output when they already have books they know thrive as trade sales and die as single issues

it's not counter productive: Firstly because the quantity over quality market Marvel currently has going rapidly wears down readers, by flooding the market with subpar single issue material.

As for the trade market, the trade market cannot sustain an ongoing title that is failing in single issues. Even back in the day when books like Runaways were allegedly selling well enough in trade, they tried to keep the single issues going based on those numbers & found they couldn't.

Since then the market has got more competitive, not less competitive.

Axel saying trade waiters are the reason books get cancelled

Axel is an idiot. Books get cancelled because people don't purchase them. Trades pull on average only about 2,000 units sold thru the direct market. A trade costs usually less than it does to collect those same issues in single issue format. The minimum sales for Marvels cancellation is roughly 20,000 units thru the direct market.

So those 2,000 sales at a lower cost weren't going to be the deciding factor in the books cancellation in the direct market.

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