Sales Charts

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...

by Paul O'Brien INFINITY remained the main feature of Marvel's October schedule. Meanwhile, the X-Men continued their own "Battle of the Atom" crossover, and...

It was kinda a three-way tie in October's sale charts, according to Diamond's just released statistics. THE WALKING DEAD #115 was the best selling...

It’s a very strange month this month. With DC producing two versions of all of their Villains Month books, there are only 109 indie titles charting in the top 300, down on last month’s 153. Lots of titles missed the top 300 this month, but will no doubt return next month. Despite that, they sold an estimated 1,521,695 comics, only 60,000 less than last month’s 1,581,067, on 44 titles less. This was mainly due to a lot of big new titles, seven of the top 14 titles are new entries, selling over 20,000 copies each. It also means that the average sales this month are 13,960, massively up from last month’s 10,333. If it hadn’t been for Villains month, it would have been a big month for indie.

While DC's Villains Month was the main talking point of the direct market in September, Marvel moved into their own event season. September saw the second month of INFINITY, with more tie-in books popping up across the line, while the X-Men titles began their own separate crossover, BATTLE OF THE ATOM. We also have the debut issue of MIGHTY AVENGERS, which launches as part of the big event.

First things first: September 2013 is, by quite a margin, the most successful month ever for DC Comics since Diamond started providing data on actual comic-book sales to retailers in March 2003. In September 2013, DC Comics sold an estimated 4.2 million new comic books to specialty retailers, for a total of $15.3 million in retail sales value. To date, the record was held by October 2011, with 3.8 million new comic books for a total retail sales value of $11.9 million, followed by September 2011, with 3.6 million new comic books for $10.9 million.