Tilting at Windmills is back, and it takes on Marvel's no-overprint policy by comparing the 2000 circulation numbers to those in 2003. The numbers do clearly show a downturn, but they don't clearly indicate that Marvel's policy isn't working. First, there is no data to comparison - is the slide just Marvel's, or does it represent a general decline in circulation numbers? We'd need to look at similar titles from D.C. to tell. Also, the numbers completely ignore the effect of the collected volumes of these issues that Marvel has made available. It would be nice to have access to single issue plus collected volume numbers to compare.

Of course, Mr. Hibbs does include most of these disclaimers in his column, and his point does make logical sense. It all further reinforces the difficulty the comics industry faces from a lack of good sales data to use for analysis.