I did experience a new emotion while reading this installment of the sales analysis though, beyond the usual shades of the gray and blue rainbow of sadness I generally get from the chart—shock.There are indeed, but he hasn't mentioned any of them, so I'll have to take that task myself. It's not merely the price that's the problem. With all due respect to Mr. Mozzoco, does he know anything at all about the verses in the Koran? Always something important to cite in cases like these, IMO, and that includes Sura 2:223, for example:
Specifically, I’m shocked at how poorly JLA/The 99 seems to be selling in the direct market.
Many of you don’t sift through Google News alerts about comics on a daily basis as part of a “job” like I do, and thus you may not have read the same 10,000 or so mainstream news articles I did about The 99.
If not, they’re a superhero team created by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, founder of Teshkeel Media Group. The characters come from all over the world, although they are based in Islamic culture and religion, and gain powers through magical Noor stones. Their name comes from the 99 attributes of Allah.
They received about as much press coverage as any comic book characters could hope to. In the six-issue miniseries JLA/The 99, the new heroes team up with The Justice League of America, the DC super-team (usually) composed of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the most popular and well-known superheroes who aren’t owned by Marvel. [...]
It started off selling pretty poorly, and, in just four issues, is selling half as many copies.
Why I find that so surprising is that while I haven’t been reading the book either (I wanted to, but DC priced it at the ridiculous 22/$3.99 price point), I have been flipping through the issues when I see them in the shop, and the JLA line-up they’re using consists of Superman, Batman Bruce Wayne, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern John Stewart, The Flash, Hawkman, The Atom and Firestorm. And those are just the one’s I’ve noticed.
That’s not quite the most popular, Big Seven version, but it is the Big Five, with some other perennially popular Leaugers in for Aquaman and Martian Manhunter.
It’s worth noting that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, (a) Flash and (a) Green Lantern haven’t been in the official Justice League in approximately forever now, so JLA/The 99 has been offering the “real” (and/or popular) version of the Justice League for a few months now, while the official Justice League of America title has, in that same time, featured a team consisting of Batman Dick Grayson, Supergirl, Jade, Jesse Quick, Donna Troy, Congorilla and Starman Mikaal Tomas (If you don't read DC super-comics on a regular basis, I imagine at least half of those names are completely unknown to you).
In that time, however, the Justice League of America comic with the oddball cast was selling between 59,686 to 47,093; much, much, much, much better than JLA/The 99.
I find that curious.
There are a lot of plausible explanations for why that might be, of course.
"Your women are your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like"And there's even Sura 8:12 (via Faith Freedom):
"I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them"And, lest we forget, there's also Mohammed's marriage to the 9-year-old Ayesha to consider.
Finally, I suppose there’s the possibility that DC didn’t promote it as well as they could have. I know no one sent me any review copies, and, now that I stop and think about it, I don’t remember seeing any reviews of any issue of it anywhere, although I’m sure Newsarama and Comic Book Resources at least must have reviewed at least the first issue.Not mine. I've provided just a few clues why this book would be undeserving of an audience regardless of sales. And I think a reasonable argument can be made that, in the end, DC Comics, bad as their writing's become today, and even the comics store managers and customers alike, realized that, with the USA's growing understanding of why the Religion of Peace is a bad influence, there was little chance it would find an audience, and that's why they abandoned all attempts to promote this insult to the intellect. As for al-Mutawa, he can dream all he likes, but he will not be able to fool everyone into thinking that the religion, in and of itself, is "peaceful". Certainly not when even now, there's plenty proving otherwise.
[...]in the meantime, my mind is thoroughly boggled by the fact that it’s been selling sooooo much worse than Justice League of America.