The comic book sales figures for February 2015 are out now, and Wonder Woman #39 had a decent month. After Wonder Woman #37 dropped 27% from the debut issue of Meredith and David Finch and Wonder Woman #38 fell an additional 8%, sales for Wonder Woman #39 actually rose to 42,634 copies sold, an increase of about 7%. This is a pretty sizeable jump, given how the book was trending, and I think that it had a lot more to do with what was on the outside of the book than what was in it.
Several of DC’s February comics had a Harley Quinn variant cover, and Harley Quinn is ridiculously popular right now. She’s in the middle of an impressive renaissance, with her own title selling gangbusters and a spin-off on the way. While at first glance it might seem like the Finches are catching on with readers and thus sales improved, I think that the Harley Quinn variant cover is a much larger factor, largely because sales went up for most of the titles who were part of the variant line.
Last time we checked the sales of Superman/Wonder Woman, it had dropped 6% and then 11% since the new creative team took over in November. In February, sales of Superman/Wonder Woman #16 rose to 38,550, an increase of 4%. That’s a big jump for a book that was on a steady decline.
Superman/Wonder Woman #16 also had a Harley Quinn variant cover. In fact, when you look at all of the other DC titles in the same range of the sales charts as Wonder Woman and Superman/Wonder Woman, they all sold a few thousand more issues in February and they all had Harley Quinn variant covers too. It’s a very consistent trend, with Harley as the only common denominator for all of the titles.
Sales jumps for both Wonder Woman books due to outside factors makes it hard to ascertain how the titles are going over with readers. Both books were declining, but the February numbers are just a big question mark because we can’t know how big an impact the variant covers had. We’ll have to wait for the March numbers to see where things stand; the movie themed variants DC is putting out this month look cool, but I doubt they’ll have the impact of Harley Quinn and so we’ll likely get more accurate numbers for March’s comics. The only conclusive fact we can pull out of the February numbers is that folks sure do love Harley Quinn.
TIM HANLEY 
I know a lot of you hate the Finchs Wonder Woman. I must say I am enjoying it. It is the first WW story I have liked since issue 600, not to say I haven’t liked some of the stories in Sensation or Justice League. I did not like Azz’s take on Diana nor did I like JMS before him. For the first time in 4 years I actully am looking forward to the next issue. I hope the upswing in sales continues and more people come back to see what the Finchs have in store for our favorite amazon.
It still makes me laugh that DC was convinced that Superman and Wonder Woman dating was going to equal sales gold when the reality is that their first issue couldn’t even hit 100K, sales on the JL book actually ::dropped:: after the stunt of JL 12 and sales across the Superman line continue to be middling.
When you compare this to the huge debut of the Female led Thor book, Spider-Gwen and even the sales of Harley Quinn it’s just more glaring. This book stars two members of the trinity and it can’t even manage to hold above 40K. DC would be much wiser to just outright market an uber feminist focused revamped Wonder Woman title alongside a Brand new Lois Lane detective style book. That seems way more in line with what actually appears to cater to the growing market right now.
A feminist Wonder Woman and a Lois Lane title is all I want for Christmas this year!