Sales Charts

While Walking Dead and Saga lead the chart again, the big story this month is Jonathan Hickman’s East of West, blowing expectations out of the water with a strong debut. There aren’t that many new titles this month, although Image have four strong debuts, headed up by the infuriating Sex (you’ll see). Elsewhere it’s largely a month of consolidation, with many titles holding within a few percentage points of last month’s sales.

Chickens came home to roost in March. With no gimmick-bloated #1 issues, strong crossovers or annuals of high-performing titles driving sales of the company's periodical line, with the Before Watchmen project fading out on a whimper, and despite a deluge of high-selling issues tying in with a recent character death, estimated sales of the average new DC Universe comic book fell to 31,000, the lowest level since the big "New 52" relaunch of September 2011.

The Marvel Now launches rumble on in March, with the first issues of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and the relaunched WOLVERINE, not to mention the long-awaited AGE OF ULTRON event. Meanwhile, as the first wave of Marvel Now launches start to settle into their runs, we're beginning to get a clearer idea of which ones are working. (And which ones, well, not so much.)

Continuing a run of graphic novels on the bestseller charts, Batman Vol. 2: The City of Owls (The New 52) by Scot Snyder,...

Walking Dead continues to dominate, but Star Wars and Saga both go from strength to strength. Strong debuts for Shadow Year One, Legend of the Shadowclan and the new GI Joe book are interspersed with increased sales for My Little Pony, Adventure Time and Hellboy. Elsewhere is the usual clutch of Image debuts, while further down a few series return to the charts after a period away.

As DC keeps clowning around and pushing hard to single-handedly choke the concept of irony to death by summer, the company's average and total sales figures for new comic books performed solidly in the month of February. After hiring Bob Harras, hiring Rob Liefeld, hiring every writer and artist who worked at Marvel in 1999, releasing a Green Lantern title especially for kids, releasing more Watchmen comics several of which written by J. Michael Straczynski, making a habit of hiring, promoting, then firing creative personnel on all kinds of titles every month, releasing Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill, hiring a raging homophobe to write Superman and announcing "WTF month," in February 2013 DC released Justice League of America #1, a new high-profile Geoff Johns vehicle promoted with not one, not three, not 12, but 54 different cover choices, thus making it something like the lynchpin of gimmick-driven market gaming. I mean, the plastic-ring thing from a couple of years back was a fair stab, but this one is bolder.

Marvel Now rolls on into February. This month's major events are the relaunch of UNCANNY X-MEN, the "Point One" prologue issue for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, the return of NOVA with Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, and a new take on SECRET AVENGERS. More generally, the first wave of relaunched titles have now been around long enough that we're starting to get a sense of which ones are already settling down, and which ones aren't. Though DC had the top selling book of the month - JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA - Marvel still had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 38% to 33% in units and 35% to 29% in dollars.

Three pretty interesting posts on book sales and Amazon which, if you triangulate them, give you a good look at where the publishing business stands this Monday morning as Winter turns into Spring 2013:

Between "Death of the Family," "Throne of Atlantis" and "Rise of the Third Army," any DC title selling 60,000 units or more in January took part in one of the three current major crossovers, which means all 10 of the company's Top 25 books. In other words: Scott Snyder and Geoff Johns are running the DC Universe right now -- and not much that's not within their reach is working all that well.

Walking Dead sees a big rise as expected, while Saga and Buffy sandwich the new Star Wars book, and Invincible’s one hundredth issue. Elsewhere, it’s a good month for all-ages comics, and Image have their usual batch of debuts. Dynamite have a poorer month than usual for sales drops, but a round of relaunches are on the horizon.

The February sales estimates are in over at The Comics Chronicles and what a strange February it was. DC papered over a decaying mess at...

By John Jackson Miller via Comichron DC's Justice League of America #1 turned in the strongest single-issue sales performance for a comic book in the month of February...