Sometimes you check in on one of your favourite web comics to see if they’ve done an update, and they ask you to explain all of Marvel’s crazy numbering practices, and you accidentally write an article on their comment page.

Sometimes you take that article and pull it into your site content with some minor tweaks, because… you did the work, right? And who is really reading this anyway, right?

Marvel numbers and markets the way they do because they are selling to retailers, and not to readers. Comics purchased by retailers are, by and large, non-returnable, which means that Marvel and DC’s actual customers, are retailers. After they’ve parted with their money, the transaction is done, and they go onto the next batch of comics to promote.

Now, as for why all the big new number ones? I wrote a more in depth piece about this for Comics Alliance, but the short version is this: each month, I have to go through an order book that’s over 500 pages long, and determine what things I want to by (and in what quantity) for over 2500 separate order codes. Even the laziest of all retailers, when they see a big number one in their order information, is going to stop ordering on auto-pilot, and consider what they want for shelf. That’s what Marvel is going for here. Smarter retailers are going to see marketing potential in a company like Marvel clearly marking good jumping on points for their customers. And hey, if they slap on a free digital collection of 5-6 comics? For $4? On top of the REGULAR free digital download? That’s even better.

As for the .NOW business, minus IRON MAN #20 and IRON MAN #20.INH, each of the recent .NOW and .INH books have actually just been the regular issue with a suffix attached. This demarkation is actually less for the retailer and more for the retailer. Retailers have been seeing these suffixes for YEARS on their books, as they make said items infinitely easier to search when someone wanders up and asks for, say, every book in the FOREVER EVIL crossover. In the Diamond system (if a company is doing their job correctly… I’m looking at YOU, DC. Make with the tags for your stupid BLIGHT crossover in FOREVER EVIL), you’ll be able to pull up every book that’s part of a certain inititive just by typing in that initiative’s suffix. In the case of INHUMANITY, it’s INH. In the case of FOREVER EVIL, it’s EVIL. It allows for even the dummest of dummies working a comic shop able to get you what you want, in terms of crossover. And in terms of the Marvel.Now initiative, (which this round, is being labelled ANMN), it allows a retailer to pull out exactly where all the great starting points are for people asking what a good place to start reading CAPTAIN AMERICA or THOR or THE AVENGERS would be. That short hand saves a retailer a TON of time, which they can then use to… well, get their orders done properly.

art by Alex Ross

Finally: as for the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1.1-5 thing - if a retailer tells you they don’t like the numbering, tell them I told you to call them a dummy. For the low, low cost of having to explain why a book is numbered that way, they are going to sell twice as much of this mini-series than they would have had the book been cast out on it’s lonesome - IF they are selling the series properly. Case in point, Marvel solicited an anthology Spider-Man series for December, in which 5 issues shipped in over the course of thee weeks, and numbered it ASM #700.1-5. They also had a title called MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN coming out at roughly the same time. All things considered equal, if the Spider-Man anthology had just been called something random, shipping the way it did with unconnected stories, it would have sold less than MKSM. As it stands, ASM #700.1-5 sold an estimated 59-65,000 copies per issue, and MKSM launched at an estimated 38,000 and was down to a little less than 23,000 by it’s third issue. Marvel and retailers know that names and numbers have power. And smart retailers know that ASM #1.1 or 700.1 are going to be filed in with the regular series, instead of off to the side in a “misc Spidey” section where they will sell for less – if they sell at all. The book would be the same REGARDLESS of the numbering, but the effects would be night and day.

At the end of the day, Marvel is doing this because it sells comics, and keeps them in business. It’s rare for a comic to increase in sales after a launch, so it’s in their best interest to start as strong as possible, and plot out when a relaunch or marketing push will be needed to maintain or increase sales. This, unfortunately, is the way things are, and it’s the reason why comics aren’t doing as poorly as the magazine industry as a whole right now. So, complain away, but there ARE reasons for this, the best being “everyone keeps publishing comics”.