Sales Charts

It's a rite of autumn —The Walking Dead's new season debuts on AMC, and Walking Dead graphic novels start selling like crack again. Here's the feed from the Amazon graphic novels best seller's list. Note that The Oatmeal has sold a gazillion copies, and Roz Chast is back in the top ten following her National Book Award shortlisting. Per the usual pattern, Walking Dead GN sales will slow when the 8 episode season ends, and pick right back up when it returns next year. I know Robert Kirkman has made a buttload of money from the hit TV series, but he, Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore have also made a buttload from the books alone, given the Image deal. (BTW, for long term Amazon trend analysis I refer you to Beat contributor David Carter's weekly blog on the topic, which someday I will feature here every week. Lots of other interesting things on his site, as well.)

Ever wonder what categories are the most popular in graphic novels? Think it's all manga and superheroes? Well, as you can see on the chart to...

While most comics fans started New York Comic Con on Thursday, the die-hard industry insiders and watchers began their "con crush" on Wednesday. ICV2.com...

It's been a while (5 years) since we looked at Diamond's monthly backlist chart, and now, as then, it reveals a VERY DIFFERENT ranking for publishers. In the backlist, DC is king by a wide margin, with about 30% of the market. Marvel is only a tich above Image in units, while Image books dominate the top ten with Saga, Walking Dead, and Sex Criminals. On the manga side, Attack on Titan rules, no surprise given the way it's single handedly revitalized the category.

DC enjoyed its traditional September sales bump thanks to the "Future's End" lenticular covers event, beating Marvel by 4 points in dollars and 6...

This was a tough month for Marvel. Original Sin is ending and none of their other events have really started yet. They also don’t have any real high profile series launches. So there are no books that really pop. There is a lot of attrition this month. Of the 72 books that also had an issue last month, only 12 saw growth in their numbers. That leaves 60 books that dropped in sales. 39 books dropped more than 5% or what might be considered a standard attrition. Luckily there are several major events coming soon which will drive sales up and a lot of books will be relaunching after these events which always bumps up the numbers at least temporarily. It is worrying however, that there are several series that just relaunched a year or for some 6 months ago and are already in trouble again. Let’s look at a breakdown of what came out this month:

It's month three of DC's new variant cover ordering scheme, where retailers can order as many of the month's themed variant covers as they want at the regular price. As previously suspected, the Selfie variants do not attract as many additional orders as the Bombshell or Batman 75th variants did. It's hard to tell if that is because of a perceived lack of interest in the covers, or an adjustment based on the previous months, or a combination of factors. Next month DC will have round two of the 3D motion covers, hoping to recapture some of the magic of last year's 3D cover stunt. This was a down month for DC. Several of their top sellers did not ship in August: Justice League, Superman Unchained and Sandman Overture. Vertigo sales are particularly moribund: the average Vertigo sales of 9,082 per title is the second lowest since Diamond started reporting actual sales back in 2003. (The lowest month was November 2010, at 9,034.) With The Wake over and Sandman Overture shipping sporadically, Vertigo's top seller this month is short-timer Fables.

By Chris Rice A few interesting new entries this month, headed by, of all things, The Death of Archie! That’s joined by Rick Remender’s new...

ICv2 has released its August sales analysis and only two comics were over 100K, Batman and Amazing Spider-Man, as they should be. I'm quoting...

I'll post John Jackson Miller's analysis when it comes in, but sales for the year inched up, although down from Five Wednesday July. Image...

The column is already running late, so I won't belabor too many points here… July 2014 was a record-setting month in many categories for the Diamond NA-served comics market (see John Jackson Miller's analysis for the full skinny). DC shipped a whopping 83 comics this month (up from 68 in June). As expected, the Batman 75th Anniversary covers don't do as well as the Bombshell covers did last month. Whether this is because retailers (as a group) order-ordered on the Bombshell covers and were correcting, or because there was a perceived lesser demand for the Batman covers it is hard to tell; I suspect a combination of factors. It may be several months before things settle down in the new way of ordering variants.

Lots of new entries this month, including smash-hit new books from Robert Kirkman and Kieron Gillen and a first ever official comic for a cult film favourite. Elsewhere Valiant continue to falter despite the new Armor Hunters crossover, and Zenescope seem to be similarly slipping down and off the sales chart with their numbers dropping to new lows.