Sales Charts

January was the cruelest month for comics sales, as the ICv2 headline starkly puts it: Only One Comic Above 100K. The one book was...

After an unusual couple of months things are pretty much back to normal this month, with the usual suspects of Walking Dead, Saga, Star Wars and My Little Pony joined by a few new Image titles and Valiant’s best-seller yet. At the bottom end of the charts we finally see a few titles returning, although possibly quite briefly in some cases.

150 indie titles charted in the top 300, up on last month’s 135. The indie chart sold approximately 1,820,321 comics, a bit down on last month’s 2,031,509. That’s all due to the increased numbers that Walking Dead added last month. It also means that the average sales this month are 12,153, down on last month’s 15,048. Out of the 150 books, only 20 went up in sales and 112 went down, with the rest made up of one-shots and debuts.

UPDATE: Folks I have a bunch of fantastic candidates for this position, so no more resumes please.

November was more of the same for DC, basically, with the "Forever Evil" and "Zero Year" crossovers rolling on, along with a couple of smaller ones. Oh, and Harley Quinn debuted.

Everyone knows you can check out a "rolling" best-seller list on Amazon in any category—including comics and graphic novels— any time you want. But...

It's a new year, and what better time to take a look back at what happened in 2013? Regular readers of The Beat know me...

Event season rolled on in November, as INFINITY reached its climax, while the Ultimate imprint's CATACLYSM got under way. Meanwhile, ASTONISHING X-MEN was relaunched as AMAZING X-MEN, and the MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN and LONGSHOT SAVES THE MARVEL UNIVERSE minis kick off. Though DC had four books in the top five - BATMAN, HARLEY QUINN, SUPERMAN UNCHAINED and FOREVER EVIL - Marvel still edged them in their share of the North American direct market, leading by 34% to 32% in unit terms, and 30% to 29% in dollars. As has already been pointed out on The Beat, this means Marvel and DC's combined dollar share dips below 60% - something that hasn't happened in a decade.

And here's Diamond's chart of the top 1000 comic books of the year, led by Walking Dead #115—giving Image a 2-for-2 topping the year...

Diamond has released the entire 1000-long list of GNs in 2013, and there is a lot of data mining here...like the fact that Image...

Most significantly, October 2013 was the month after the month in which DC mounted its most aggressive and focussed attempt yet to single-handedly destroy the comics market, by shipping millions of random comics to retailers who had not ordered them. Not surprisingly, sales snapped back to more regular levels as a result.

By Paul Mellerick Far more indie titles this month after DC’s Villains month stunt last month, that added 52 extra DC titles into the chart....

Marvel edged out DC for sales, but DC had a strong 1-2 punch in the top comics for November with Batman and, surprisingly, the...