Sales Charts

And as the month's charts and solicitations roll out, here's ICv2's analysis for August. It is an unsettled time in the universe with...

Diamond has released the top 300 charts for August, so you can see the total rankings. Once again, individual hits for Dark Horse, Archie...

Marvel still ruled the roost in August, according to figures just released by Diamond, and DC lagged 14 points in units, but gained a...

Yes, that's right: Image. I know I usually do the DC Comics sales summaries here at The Beat, but while Heidi looks for someone to step in and handle the Indy comics chart I volunteered to do a column focusing on Image. With around seventy titles each month they're about as large (titles-wise) as Marvel or DC, so I figure they should have their own column, yes? Warning: The commentary may be even more mis-informed than usual...

The important thing to remember when looking at Image's sales numbers is that they're not really playing the same game as other comics companies. My understanding (and I'm sure you'll all correct me if I'm wrong in the comments below...) is that Image charges a flat fee for producing, listing and distributing comics, so that after that fee and the printing costs, whatever is left over goes directly to whoever supplied the comic. (This may be different for the official Image partners...)

Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. (Warning: This month's column contains a higher amount of ranting than usual...) July was not a good month, sales-wise, for DC Entertainment. Compared to June, the average sales per title dropped by over 8K, and they sold 300K fewer total units in the NA direct market, despite offering nine more titles. Sales were down across the board, in many cases significantly, except for one title: Batgirl. Why did things drop so significantly? Three main reasons:

We've already seen today that just jumping on a new, fresh direction isn't enough to make a sales success, but what about over at Marvel? As I've noted their whopping sales have been led by the astonishing success of their Star Wars comics, but variant covers are also strong in this one. Star Wars #1 had over 100 variants, for instance. The upcoming hip hop variant program wasn't just problematic from a creator standpoint, however, it's also set new levels of frustration for retailers who have to order high on other books just to be able to ORDER copies of the variants, as revealed on Reddit by retailer Calum Johnston and explained at the Outhouse. Apparently a frustrated retailers posted the above annotated order sheet for the variants, showing how high order would have to be.

by Xavier Lancel Welcome to a new analysis of the Marvel sales. Reminder: I'm French, and that's why I'm talking funny. Please address your complaints...

By David Carter Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. With Convergence now in the rearview mirror, the DCU...

by Xavier Lancel

Welcome to a new analysis of the Marvel sales. Reminder: I'm French, that's why I'm talking funny. Please address your complaints to my over-drugged cyclists country.
Reminder: those sales are estimates, sales to comics shops located in North America. American comics do get sold somewhere else in their original floppy edition. Keep also in mind that just because a copy is sold to a shop doesn't mean it's sold to a customer. This would be way too easy. Digital sales are not taken into account.

This month, a horde of mini-series (or ongoing, who knows, Marvel hasn't been very clear on that) is invading the Marvel chart. Only one thing is sure: everything will be relaunched (or should I say renumbered) past Secret Wars (SW). The Last Days banner, supposed to frighten customers ("Oh, look, that's his last adventure in the old MU! "), is working like a charm for titles who were struggling to stay alive.

As always, tons of Star Wars franchise comics are sold, reordered, repackaged. The $5 price tag is less predominant this month but the test worked: customers are ready to pay $5 for, not caviar in a nice box, but paté wrapped in journal paper: you'll have to do your own cover, cut the ads and add the still missing 2 pages that were lost "to keep the prices low "...

You know, maybe the narrative about Dark Horse losing the Star Wars license to Marvel wasn't DH's loss but Marvel's gain: sales of Star Wars...

Welcome to yet another Marvel Sales Analysis. Reminder: I'm French, so that's why I'm talking funny. Please address your complaints to my let's-scare-Courtney-Love-with-our-mean-taxi-drivers country. However, one thing seems sure: following the conclusion of Secret Wars, all titles will be renumbered at #1—even titles that didn’t reach double-digit issue numbers. This includes books like Hawkeye, Howard the Duck and the armada of female spider characters.

Once again, The Beat is looking for a sales chart analyst to take over the monthly Indie Sales charts. Kate Reynolds has done yeoman service but she's moving on to other frontiers and vistas. (Including hopefully some more writing for The Beat.)