Fanboy Rampage: Rob Liefeld, Sales Charts And Snake-Oil Salesmen

Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: bestseller, marketshare, Prana, prana dm, rob liefeld, top ten image

Fanboy Rampage: Rob Liefeld, Sales Charts And Snake-Oil Salesmen

Fanboy Rampage: Rob Liefeld, Sales Charts And Snake-Oil Salesmen, time for everyone to dive in on this one...

Published Tue, 29 Sep 2026 07:58:12 -0500
by Rich Johnston
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Article Summary

• Rob Liefeld says comic sales charts are unofficial, unreliable estimates, and calls chart promoters snake-oil salesmen.
• Comic bestseller charts track real store sell-through, not just retailer orders, offering a strong snapshot of reader demand.
• Prana DM says its Rob Liefeld and sales charts data comes from 600+ stores and 80,000+ consumers, not guesswork.
• Atom Freeman publicly challenges Rob Liefeld after the charts clash, accusing him of blocking replies instead of debating.

The other week, comic book creator Rob Liefeld posted to social media about comic book bestseller charts. He said;

"FYI – anyone telling you there are sales charts are full of crap. There aren't any. Nothing official. From any publisher. There are wishful thinking estimates from a hundred or a hundred of stores in conjunction with rando web sites, but they are not reliable, as there are 3000 retail accounts. Image Comics releases its top 10, and they are the only company I'm aware of that releases such intel. Again, there are no official charts and there haven't been in over 6 years. If they actually released the numbers outside of the top, it would be all the industry talked about – along the lines of "how is this comic selling this low". That's the truth. That's why the numbers are not released."

I publish a number of Bestseller, Marketshare and Anticipated Sales charts on Bleeding Cool from various sources, including the Image Comics charts. But here's the thing, there have never been any official sales charts. No publisher has released full sales numbers since the days of US Postal subscription demands, and those were highly suspect anyway. Diamond Comics released comparative charts, never sales figures, and when they were the monopoly direct market distributor, those worked for what they were, but they only measured sales to stores, not to people buying them off the shelf. They also didn't include bookstore, subscription or digital sales. And even those results were heavily disputed at the time, with comic executives at Marvel and DC ringing up Diamond trying to tweak them one way or another. The current charts that Rob Liefeld complains about are those that record actual sales of comics in stores to customers during a specific time period, and for that, the amount of store sales recorded, whether 100-150 from ComicHub or 600+ from Prana DM, is a much higher sample size than any industry would be happy to get. With around 2,000 direct-market comic stores, that's the equivalent of a political poll sampling over 100 million Americans, rather than the usual thousand. Rob Liefeld continued,

"I see Image partners/publishers liking this post. For a reason. They know I speak 💯 truth. The snake oil salesman want to grift you and convince you that they have access to information that they do not possess. It's agenda-driven; this bubble continues to be popped repeatedly." No Midtown. No Third Eye. The nation's top chains do not share their data. Again, it's a couple of platforms needing to create news and storylines, and they do it by culling 1/4 of retail accounts to create lists and rankings that do not reflect actual sales."

That's the thing: they reflect actual sales to readers within a specific time frame, rather than sales to retailers over a longer period. It is notable that the retailer-exclusive cover has skewed figures, but that's only to orders, as certain shops get in a thousand copies of an exclusive cover which they might sell over a year. The Image Comics chart will reflect that on the day of distribution, the Bestseller Charts, if that retailer is even part of them, will only reflect sales to customers. Indeed, they are less likely to be in those charts at all, as the Bestseller Charts shops are less likely to order such covers, which helps avoid that particular outlier skew, and something I just had to explain to a major comics publisher executive last week as well. But that's my take. Prana: Direct Market Solutions founder and former comic book retailer and comic publisher marketer, Atom! Freeman had a more fun way to clap back, posting;

"Hey Rob! I think you might be talking about us. Our Bestseller List at Prana: Direct Market Solutions is sourced from data provided by Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant and other retailers who provide data from outside those systems. This gives us preorder and sales data for 600+ stores and 80,000+ consumers. Currently, we provide a free Top 400 list both Weekly and Monthly through our newsletter along with a marketshare report based on those sales… We've compared those rankings with the largest retailers we talk to and they seem to hold up with few exceptions. We are working on estimated sales numbers but, to date, we haven't released any. Those numbers would only be extrapolations, though representing sell-thru numbers in the shops. But, yes, at the end of the day, because there is no single source for the data, no estimate will be 100% accurate. But, the Diamond numbers were never 100% either."

A few days later, things had moved on, and Atom added…

"Apparently, Rob Liefeld is feeling fragile today because it looks as though he blocked me. Rob, I have no problem being called out. I'm happy to discuss why we are confident in the Prana Bestseller List. When you are ready."

Then on their Comic Industry Insiders livestream, Atom Freeman and co-host Brian Garside of Manage Comics discussed the drama. Atom stated, "Calling somebody a snake oil salesman and then blocking your comments so that nobody can even have a conversation with you, that's not cool". And then added that they were to put out their own Snake-Oil branded merchandise to mock Rob Liefeld's comments about them…

Though if Rob Liefeld has blocked them (and me) he might not see these comments. He does occasionally read Bleeding Cool, though, so maybe we might get a subpost somewhere…

Fanboy Rampage was a blog by Graeme "Graham" McMillan dedicated to the funniest, most ludicrous and most inappropriate comic book back-and-forths online. McMillan then moved on, becoming a proper journalist for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter and Wired, before returning as one of us at Popverse, but he gave Bleeding Cool permission to revive his great creation.

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