The horse race has taken over.

I don’t mean a literal horse race, of course.

I’m referring to how box office performance and sales and ratings and streams and other metrics of that sort have become the focus in the entertainment world, with the emphasis of those often supplanting the quality of a given work in the broader conversation about art. When a new movie or show hits, many turn to its opening weekend earnings — both domestic and international, of course — or ratings/streams as the determinant of how well something worked rather than, you know, its artistic merits or whether we enjoyed it. Those are secondary considerations, with actual qualitative measures now seemingly being defined by what is fundamentally quantitative data.

More than that, this kind of information has become essential to the core identity of fandoms. A movie tanks? That’s because it was a bad direction, one that should be forgotten forever. It puts up big numbers? Of course it did, with its boffo sales acting as proof that it was the only way forward, and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand how things work. Numbers are now cudgels used to rationalize this point or that, with many fans tethering their feelings to how much something makes or sells or earns, letting those metrics shape or simply reinforce their belief, or lack thereof, in a certain project. And we see it everywhere, especially as flagship franchises have shifted from focused narratives to sprawling empires.

The rise of the horse race brings to mind a saying I’ve carried with me for a while now, one that I believe explains a lot about where things have gone overall and with this subject in specific.

“Everything is sports.”

The idea is simple. Sports are competitive by nature. There can only be one winner, and everyone that didn’t is the loser. That’s the way it is. There are no little victories. You either get the ring or try again next year. Those were once sports-centric ideals. But now we discuss everything as the sports world long has, with objectively not competitive things somehow becoming fiercely so and vying for the top spot now being viewed as essential even if it’s largely meaningless in entertainment.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand why corporations look at it like that. They’re money-making machines, built to emphasize the bottom line at the expense of everything else. But why we as people, as viewers, as fans do is beyond me. It’s a completely reductive way to look at subjects where there can be multiple winners at any given moment rather than just one.

This focus flattens everything out, creating a situation where the only answer that matters is how much money something made, which ensures its superiority if only because it outearned its competitors. While the horse race has been around for a while, it’s only become more prolific and widespread with the passage of time. And it’s arguably easiest to find on YouTube, where hosts of varying channels have become miniature Stephen A. Smiths, 21 leading their own versions of ESPN’s First Take where if you’re not first, you might as well be last.

It’s a strange thing.

And it might be even stranger in comics, where the horse race isn’t even possible anymore. That’s because the comics industry no longer has the data necessary to power it. Real sales charts — or order charts, as they really were — have been effectively non-existent in the direct market 22 since the splintering of single-issue comic distribution happened, as that side of the comic industry went from one distributor that published monthly order rankings to somewhere between two and four that offer zero transparency in the past five years. 23

Even the last remnant of concrete data is now gone, as Circana Bookscan pulled the plug on retailer Brian Hibbs’ long run of features for The Beat that used book market sales data to share how that side of the industry performed in the previous year and who/what led the way. While there are still charts, 24 it’s just not the same. The comic industry has become a black box that no one truly has a comprehensive and concrete view of even though we all feel like we have some sense as to what’s going on.

The subject of the lack of sales charts in comics is a polarizing one. Depending on who you ask, it’s either an immensely consequential problem or a non-factor. Take retailers as an example. Single-issue order charts were designed for them, as they were meant to act as a guide for future orders. And yet, most folks at comic shops I’ve talked to don’t really care that they’re gone. That’s because the primary determinant for a shop’s orders is actually its own sales to customers, not orders from other retailers altogether. Per the folks I talked to, there’s little concern about the absence of these charts because they weren’t used to begin with.

Some people at publishers have expressed frustration at the lack of public data. Its erasure limits the visibility of success stories, ensuring that they are now reliant on internal marketing and public relations efforts — which leadership may not even allow, in some cases — rather than charts published by an unaffiliated third party. 25 And people in my space, the pundits of the world, are usually disgruntled by it, as is often the case when information is limited. It eliminates the stories that naturally come from these charts, as the horse race offers some of the easiest content one could ask for.

You’re probably wondering at this point, “Where does David stand?” That’s a good question, and it’s kind of the point here, really. This piece is ostensibly about my own thoughts and feelings about sales charts. But the funny thing is I don’t really have a hot take about this, or at least nothing like my peers. That’s because I don’t believe the lack of sales charts is as simple and clean as just a “good” or “bad” thing.

In fact, as I was putting this together, I created a pros and cons list about the subject which I then ran by some folks in the industry, just to get other perspectives on it. 26 And the truth is, the cons related to the lack of sales charts greatly outnumbered the pros.

That makes for a clear-cut case in favor of the return of sales charts, right? Maybe. Or maybe not! Before we make any bold statements, let’s go through this pros and cons exercise anyways, if only because I already went through the trouble of creating that list. And because it leans so heavily in this direction, we’ll start with that laundry list of reasons it’s a bummer sales charts are gone.