[via]

With all the recent series being cancelled over at Marvel, it’s starting to feel like nobody is safe. Just in the past week we’ve learned that X-23 was cancelled and that PunisherMAX and Black Panther would be ending.

I’ve looked through the October 2011 sales information to find out what exactly could be the next series cancelled by Marvel. The highest selling cancelled title was X-23 with over 24,000 units sold in October. The numbers are as follows (not including Icon titles or mini-series):

• X-23 #15 - 24,043
• Thunderbolts #164 - 23,712
• X-Factor #226 - 23,569
• Avengers Academy #20 - 23,412
• Ghost Rider #4 - 21,060
• Daken: Dark Wolverine #15 - 19,759
• Daken: Dark Wolverine #16 - 19,472
• Generation Hope #12 - 18,424
• Black Panther #524 - 18,248
• PunisherMAX #18 - 17,541
• Herc #9 - 13,190

Read on for more thoughts and information.

——

The crossed out series are those already cancelled/ending. I feel like Thunderbolts and X-Factor would be relatively safe since they’re longer running titles, but the others may be in trouble—especially Daken and Generation Hope. The most recent solicitation for Daken states, “issue one of the story the series has been leading up to”, so it seems like that could effectively be the final arc of the book.

Generation Hope, however, seems like it might be in more trouble. The book recently switched authors from Kieron Gillen (Uncanny X-Men) to James Asmus. With a less popular writer on the title, sales are likely to dwindle and Marvel might not hold back on cancelling the auxiliary X-Men book. I’m not sure how safe Avengers Academy is, but it’s under X-23 in sales, and it’s also not a long running title like Thunderbolts and X-Factor. 

It seems like 25,000 is the number Marvel is wanting from all their series, but just in case something above that gets the can, these are all the titles that sold less than 30,000 copies in October of 2011:

• Journey into Mystery #329 - 28,054
• Journey into Mystery #330 - 27,701
• Deadpool #35 - 27,552
• Moon Knight #6 - 27,493
• Hulk #42 - 27,025
• Deadpool #44 - 26,878
• Punisher #4 - 25,847
• Hulk #43 - 25,514
• New Mutants #32 - 25,364

Punisher, Hulk, and New Mutants aren’t too far above the 25,000 mark, and with the sales of Hulk dropping so steeply from #42 to #43, it seems like it could fall farther in the near future. 

Personally, the only titles on these lists that I follow are Thunderbolts, Moon Knight, and Punisher. I hope none of those get cancelled, but all I can do is insist that people keep buying these books if they don’t want to see them cancelled. If one of your favorite titles is falling in sales then recommend it to friends, talk about it on the internet, and do whatever you can to push people to buy the series. 

[sales numbers via]