Marvel's Midnight Universe Tops a Million Orders - But Absolute Batman Still Wins the Month

Marvel's new horror-tinged line has crossed a big number: Midnight Spider-Man #1, Midnight Fantastic Four #1, and Midnight X-Men #1 have combined for more than one million orders since their debut. It's the kind of milestone Marvel likes to trumpet for a brand-new launch, and on its face it looks like a statement against DC's dominant Absolute line.

Except the raw total doesn't tell the whole story. Retail trackers point out that the million-plus figure leans heavily on steep discounts, LED-sign promotional tie-ins, and a wave of exclusive retailer variants - the kind of incentives publishers use to juice a first-issue number. Meanwhile, DC's Absolute Batman is still pulling roughly half a million orders for a single issue on its own, at full price, nearly two years after it first hit shelves.

Taken together, the comparison is less about which publisher "won" September and more about what a launch number actually measures. Three brand-new #1s stacking discounted orders to clear a million is a different achievement than one ongoing title holding half that total on reputation and demand alone - and retailers reordering Absolute Batman two years in is arguably the harder trick to pull off.

Source: Bleeding Cool