This month's highest ordered comic in North America is TRANSFORMERS. Further down the Top 10 is GI JOE. In a few months, we can look forward to a MICRONAUTS relaunch. Stock up on tinned food while you still can, the end times are upon us.

It would be tempting to try and portray this as some kind of movement, but in truth, it's probably got more to do with the fact that three licences happened to come on the market at the same time. Marvel was looking at a MICRONAUTS relaunch a couple of years ago, which seemingly fell through because of legal problems. There is no movement, merely a happy coincidence of three similar books happening to hit the market in a row.

Still, the orders on these books do seem extraordinarily high. Once you factor in all the variant covers, TRANSFORMERS #1 outsold the number two book (NEW X-MEN) by a very comfortable margin indeed. That's an impressive debut by any standards. Coming from an indie publisher, it's unprecedented. Even allowing for the nostalgia factor, how on earth are untested books by relatively obscure creative teams getting ordered in numbers like that? Why, they're not even superhero books!

Stupid question, I hear you say. It's the brand name, clearly. There's a built-in market for any competent material with these franchises. Bound to sell.

Well... yes, that was my first thought. But then I skimmed further down the sales charts for April and hit upon STAR WARS EPISODE II #1. That's the movie adaptation. Comes out before the film itself, as I understand it. Now, personally, I hate STAR WARS. Always have. But there's a big hardcore fanbase there. STAR WARS is a huge brand. The comic is bound to be at least competent. It reveals the long-awaited plot of the movie. This, surely, has "huge seller" written all over it.

Coming from an indie publisher, TRANSFORMERS' debut is unprecedented. Not so. Straight in at number 43. Just below IRON MAN, just above a Max imprint miniseries about the Black Widow. These are perfectly acceptable orders, but it's still outsold by TRANSFORMERS by around 3 to 1. No way is TRANSFORMERS three times more popular than the new STAR WARS film. Except, apparently, in the weird world of the direct market.

You could argue that the STAR WARS comics are mere movie spin-offs, but that doesn't get you very far, because the others are toy spin-offs. In fact, they're spin-offs of defunct toy ranges, which you'd think ought to fare worse.

Obviously nostalgia is the deciding factor - STAR WARS never entirely went away, and it isn't purely a nostalgia franchise. Whereas the other comics are truly retro concepts being dusted off after many years of dormancy. Even so, it seems amazing that nostalgia can catapult these comics so far up the charts. I'm not sure whether to marvel at the commercial power of the nostalgia market, or take this as an indication of how sickly the rest of the direct market is. Or do both.

It seems to me that these books have three main factors going for them when it comes to nostalgia purchases. One is straightforward nostalgia for the underlying concept itself. Which, in all fairness, is a perfectly sound concept in all three cases, certainly for children's fiction. And, with the possible exception of GI JOE, they remain fairly distinctive concepts, rather than ones where you can easily pick up twenty pale copies today.

Secondly, the previous comic spin-offs are fondly remembered, and carry some nostalgia content of their own. For some readers, these are the titles that brought them into comics in the first place. (In my case, the UK edition of TRANSFORMERS, since you ask.) GI JOE cemented itself a place in comic book history with the silent issue that people still haven't shut up about - and, overall, it was a pretty good book for what it was. I enjoyed it. I would have been about ten at the time, admittedly, but then that's who it was aimed at.

It seems amazing that nostalgia can catapult these comics so far up the charts. MICRONAUTS still has a fiercely loyal fanbase that keeps demanding the return of the comic (and doesn't greatly care about the actual toys). TRANSFORMERS... mm, well. Marvel UK's version of that comic was surprisingly good, for what it was. The US comic, on the other hand, was largely uninspired. But it still ran for 80 issues, which is enough to give it some kind of presence in the comics market.

Thirdly, these are properties that have been relatively dormant for ages. Their fanbase has been starved of material, and certainly they haven't been overexposed to the more casual nostalgia readers. These are books that peaked some fifteen to twenty years ago, and have been largely absent from the market for around a decade.

You can't achieve this sort of sales solely from the hardcore fans who've still been sitting around throughout the 1990s debating the creative merits of BEAST WARS. You do it by appealing to a legion of twenty-something comics readers who haven't really given the toys much thought at all in the last decade, but still feel a nice warm glow at seeing them again. Dreamwave had the right idea with its promotional strategy, which revealed almost nothing about the comic other than that the art would be pretty, but did have the effect of reminding all the potential readers that yes, they did want to own just one more TRANSFORMERS story.

But, of course, nostalgia is a short-lived buzz. It will be interesting to see whether any of these books have any serious designs on staying around for more than a year, and if so, how they plan to achieve it. GI JOE might be the easiest to spin as a straight action title shorn of any nostalgia element, since the premise isn't inherently all that dated. Hell, the time might even be right for good old-fashioned all-American heroes fighting nasty evil terrorists who can be merrily blown to smithereens without any of the unfortunate political baggage that would arise if they had a real political agenda.

These are properties that have been relatively dormant for ages. However, the solicitations pitch it pretty clearly as a nostalgia book. "GI Joe protected the freedom of the country all through the 1980s, and now they're back... perfect for fans of the now classic GI Joe comics, cartoons and toys... a great nostalgia kick." There's an attempt to suggest that it might appeal to readers of DANGER GIRL (um, isn't it a bit short on tits?) and, weirdly, "fans of BLACK HAWK DOWN." But the main aim is apparently to get readers who enjoyed the first series. Given that those readers are now at least ten years older, it has to be questionable whether that particular audience is still going to be interested in reading the same sort of material beyond an initial "great nostalgia kick".

The creators of TRANSFORMERS have obviously put some thought into this and recognised that the children who were playing with the toys in 1986 are now grown adults unlikely to appreciate the same sort of story. Hence, what has been described as the "more mature" tone of their first issue. "Mature" in this context does not mean that the book has any pretensions towards being a Serious Work of Art. It simply means that as a grown adult, I require a different brand of story about shape-changing robots from the ones I read when I was ten.

The first issue is reasonably successful in that, but keeps the title characters off panel. All good sound pacing - best to tease the audience in Act One rather than blow it all with twenty pages of big fighting robots straight off the bat. But at some point the title characters are going to have to take the lead, and that'll be a real test. Are characters as garishly ludicrous as the Transformers really compatible with this tone?

MICRONAUTS, I'm least familiar with. My instinct is that it's conceptually the weakest of the three, and the toughest sell beyond a pure nostalgia audience. The solicitation for issue #1 rather cheekily pronounces itself "the return of this comics classic", somewhat overlooking the fact that the "comics classic" was a different book from a different publisher and a different creative team, and even had a different cast. (Marvel created and owns some main characters from that series.) Best of luck to them, but I doubt the Micronauts have the same degree of affection in the wider audience.

Translating the nostalgia buzz into long-term sales before it wears off will not be easy. Dreamwave, at least, seems to hope it can be done. The company has such obvious enthusiasm for the project that I would like to see it rewarded; but that will take something truly special.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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