October numbers: ICv2 releases its comics sales estimates for October, which means Newsarama should follow suit sometime next week with somewhat higher figures. I don't know why I obsess over the Diamond numbers, but I do. It's just one of my many unhealthy fixations.

In its dry analysis of the Top 300, ICv2 notes, "While no book broke the 200,000-copy barrier like 'Batman' #619 did last month ... sixteen of the top 25 titles went up compared with their sales from the previous month's issue while only four titles declined." The retailer site points out one interesting anomoly, the increase in sales of Neil Gaiman's "Marvel: 1602" #3 over the previous issue.

I'm sure Dirk Deppey or one of the more manga-oriented bloggers will take issue with the relatively anemic figures (sales of "Shonen Jump" are about twice that of top-selling "Avengers/JLA" #2). So, I won't dwell on that.

Instead, I'll look at a couple of things I found interesting:

* "Batman" #620, the first issue of the Azzarello/Risso arc, clocked in at No. 7 (117,213). With the end of the overblown "Hush" storyline, I expected the exodus of Jim Lee fans to push sales further into the Top 20.

* Sales of Marvel's Tsunami titles, at least for the moment, seem to have stabilized. Series like "Runaways," "New Mutants" and "Sentinel" even saw an increase. And even "Venom" appears to have stopped its readership hemorrhage. For now.

* Several of Image's ongoing titles are relegated to the Bottom 50: "Mythstalkers," "Kore," "Hellhounds," "A Distant Soil," "Age of Bronze" and "Paradigm," among them. I wonder how much longer some of these creators can keep afloat ...