Sales Charts

Now before we get deep into the numbers, I want to point out a trend that I’ve been noticing, and would love to hear your thoughts on in the comments below. So there are two types of All-New Marvel Now #1s. The first is something like Black Widow or She-Hulk, where the new #1 is a new series featuring a new or returning character and a new creative team, so basically a new book. The other is what I call the soft relaunch. They take an ongoing series with falling sales and they give it a new #1, but not much else changes, same creative team or if maybe the artists changes, the writer stays, and maybe a slight tweak on the storyline or premise. Examples of this are Secret Avengers or X-Factor.


Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. DC take the top four spots on the Diamond sales charts, as all four of their bestselling titles (Batman, Forever Evil, Sandman Overture and Superman Unchained) actually shipped in the same month! Despite that, DC still fell short of their top competitor Marvel by about 9% in both dollar and unit share, as Marvel have many more comics that perform in the 50-70K unit space than DC does. And average sales hit the lowest level since the New 52 began. Warning: The commentary below may contain reasoned analysis, speculation (unfounded and otherwise), opinion, and/or snark. Those looking for a more straightforward analysis are directed to John Jackson Miller's excellent Comichron analysis, posted earlier this month right here at The Beat! All of the opinions expressed in this column are my own and do not reflect those of my employers, Heidi McDonald or anyone at The Beat, the Centers for Disease Control, or my neighbors' dog Miles.

ICv2 had the sales numbers the other day and on the blah side, noted that For the third month in a row in March,...

by John Jackson Miller Comics sales months in the mirror may be smaller than they appear. That's one of the lessons of the data released...

So is the great comics boom over? DC's New 52 initiative in September 2011 kicked off a boom in comics sales that has seen...

Comics sales continued to look anemic in March, with sales down  4.40% in dollars and 9.85% in units over a year ago for year...

It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. Once again DC takes the top two slots on the Diamond sales charts. But February is a down month overall for the Diamond NA comics market, and DC follows suit. Forever Evil returns with a new issue in February, but both Sandman Overture and Superman Unchained are still MIA. When retailers tie up their order volume with large orders for comics that don't ship, that means fewer potential sales across the board.

Hello and welcome to an All-New month of Marvel sales numbers NOW! Before we get started let’s look at a breakdown of what we have this month. 69 Marvel comics out this month 8 Titles double-shipped
8 new #1s (I did not count the Annuals) 8 Avengers Titles
6 X-Men Titles (9 if you count X-Force, X-Factor and Marvel Knights X-Men).

This month several titles get relaunches as part of All-New Marvel Now. Some of these are new teams, or characters getting a solo title for the first time in a while. Some are soft relaunches of recently ended titles.

Joining Walking Dead and Saga this month as the best-selling indie titles are a new Serenity book and Rick Remender’s new title, Deadly Class. As with last month, there are a swathe of recent books that are doing well around the top 150, but below that things aren’t looking too healthy. There are very few long running titles (besides Walking Dead of course) that are selling in healthy numbers, and the mini-series as ongoing series model that the likes of BPRD use doesn’t seem to be having any noticeable benefit anymore. Worth keeping an eye on, that.

by John Jackson Miller   February appears to be returning to form. The release ofDiamond Comic Distributors' data for the month was delayed by snow days...

A lot of people pointed out that Marvel and DC failed to chart in ICv2's monthly BookScan chart for February. Instead Image and Manga crushed it with mega franchises The Walking Dead, Saga, Bleach, Naruto and Attack on Titan. Locke and Key and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children also appeared, along with Dark Horse and Boom's perennials, Adventure Time and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

By Jason Enright

Hi everyone! My name is Jason Enright and I am going to be analyzing the Marvel sales charts for you. I have a background as a comic book retailer and now a comic book marketing specialist. As we go along I’ll be adding in my thoughts as to why we may be seeing these numbers and what they tell me as a fan, retailer, and marketing guy. A few things to keep in mind about these charts: 1. The direct market (comic book shops that order through Diamond) does not track sell-through. So these numbers don’t represent what actually sold, but instead represent what retailers ordered. A book can get high orders and sit on the shelf (which often leads to lower orders in later months) and a book can be under-ordered and sell out (see Black Widow further down this chart). These numbers are what retailers estimated would sell in their shops. 2. We currently don’t have any digital sales data so this is only a look at what is selling in stores. Until we somehow convince Marvel and all the other publishers to release their digital sales numbers, we have no clue how well most of these books are really doing, as digital is a very quickly growing marketplace which sees a lot of new first-time comic readers.