Even though 52 was a SUPER HYPER MEGA EVENT series, which some fans are sick and tired of, it was still well written and a good read each week.  As Civil War started getting more and more boring 52 was always there for me if I wanted mindless reading.  But there has been a bit of griping about DC putting out Countdown immediately after 52.  If you are wondering why, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

05/2006: 52 Week 1 — 140,971 [143,611]

05/2006: 52 Week 2 — 128,393 (- 8.9%) [130,704]

05/2006: 52 Week 3 — 123,982 (- 3.4%) [126,913]

05/2006: 52 Week 4 — 121,440 (- 2.1%) [125,297]

06/2006: 52 Week 5 — 111,895 (- 7.9%)

06/2006: 52 Week 6 — 110,028 (- 1.7%) [111,732]

06/2006: 52 Week 7 — 110,188 (+ 0.2%) [112,618]

06/2006: 52 Week 8 — 105,107 (- 4.6%) [108,775]

07/2006: 52 Week 9 — 102,142 (- 2.8%)

07/2006: 52 Week 10 — 100,779 (- 1.3%)

07/2006: 52 Week 11 — 122,016 (+21.1%) [123,724]

07/2006: 52 Week 12 — 98,667 (-19.1%) [102,362]

08/2006: 52 Week 13 — 119,507 (+21.1%)

08/2006: 52 Week 14 — 118,259 (- 1.4%)

08/2006: 52 Week 15 — 119,411 (+ 1.0%)

08/2006: 52 Week 16 — 117,472 (- 1.6%) [118,624]

08/2006: 52 Week 17 — 116,637 (- 0.7%) [118,775]

09/2006: 52 Week 18 — 111,830 (- 4.1%)

09/2006: 52 Week 19 — 111,611 (- 0.2%)

09/2006: 52 Week 20 — 111,099 (- 0.5%)

09/2006: 52 Week 21 — 110,350 (- 0.7%) [111,986]

10/2006: 52 Week 22 — 108,624 (- 1.6%)

10/2006: 52 Week 23 — 107,962 (- 0.6%)

10/2006: 52 Week 24 — 107,413 (- 0.5%)

10/2006: 52 Week 25 — 106,332 (- 1.0%)

11/2006: 52 Week 26 — 104,614 (- 1.6%)

11/2006: 52 Week 27 — 104,265 (- 0.3%)

11/2006: 52 Week 28 — 103,529 (- 0.7%)

11/2006: 52 Week 29 — 102,699 (- 0.8%)

11/2006: 52 Week 30 — 102,576 (- 0.1%)

12/2006: 52 Week 31 — 100,596 (- 1.9%)

12/2006: 52 Week 32 — 99,634 (- 1.0%)

12/2006: 52 Week 33 — 99,441 (- 0.2%)

12/2006: 52 Week 34 — 98,379 (- 1.1%)

01/2007: 52 Week 35 — 105,095 (+ 6.8%)

01/2007: 52 Week 36 — 96,815 (- 7.9%)

01/2007: 52 Week 37 — 96,612 (- 0.2%)

01/2007: 52 Week 38 — 95,945 (- 6.9%)

01/2007: 52 Week 39 — 94,865 (- 1.1%) [ 96,545]

02/2007: 52 Week 40 — 94,694 (- 0.2%)

02/2007: 52 Week 41 — 94,486 (- 0.2%)

02/2007: 52 Week 42 — 94,220 (- 0.3%)

02/2007: 52 Week 43 — 93,505 (- 0.8%)

03/2007: 52 Week 44 — 94,246 (+ 0.8%)

03/2007: 52 Week 45 — 94,085 (- 0.2%)

03/2007: 52 Week 46 — 93,513 (- 0.6%)

03/2007: 52 Week 47 — 92,676 (- 0.9%) [ 94,151]

04/2007: 52 Week 48 — 94,715 (+ 2.2%)

04/2007: 52 Week 49 — 94,681 (- 0.0%)

04/2007: 52 Week 50 — 97,073 (+ 2.5%)

04/2007: 52 Week 51 — 94,934 (- 2.2%)

Source.

Yeah, 52 sold assloads, every week.  The only other series that seems to be doing astonishingly better than the rest of what DC has to offer is Justice League.  This raises the question: why are so many people against maxi-events when people are obviously buying them?  DC is just looking at the numbers and saying “We sold almost 400K issues of 52 this month, we need another weekly maxi-event”… and you can’t really fault them for it.