Sales Charts

As predicted, THE WALKING DEAD #100 has smashed records, with 383,612 in initial orders. Published with 13 variant covers, this issue of the popular comic is the best selling comic since 1997's THE DARKNESS #11. Details in the PR:

The AVENGERS VS X-MEN crossover continued in May, while NEW MUTANTS and JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY had their own little private event with "Exiled". There's also the launch of the new FURY MAX title, the weekly mini HULK SMASH AVENGERS, more flogging of the undead horse with MARVEL ZOMBIES DESTROY!, and the return of Icon's TAKIO. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, though by a smaller than usual margin - they led DC by 39% to 37% in unit share, and 35% to 33% in dollar terms.

Okay, granted it's kind of a smallish book not a comics periodical...but at 64 pages and $6.99, the latest issue of LEGO® NINJAGO isn't really a full-on trade paperback either. Thus its announced 425,000 copy first printing does put it in kind of a "tween" land as far as sales figures go. And yes it is a licensed product. but anyway you slice it 425K is a LOT of copies—and as the attached pr mentions, it's only up from 200K printings on earlier issues. Because, well, you know, kids love comics...and Legos.

Can you stand one more sales chart? This time it's the ABA's list of The Indie Comics & Graphic Works which is based on "on sales at hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide for the eight-week period ending May 27, 2012." YOu can see the whole list in the link but just the top five will give you an idea that this list is a bit different than the rest.

Speaking of sales charts, Dave Carter has been putting together an Amazon Top 50 snapshot every Friday, Here's a top 20 taster -- but he has the whole list. Of note: the addition of Kindle for DC graphic novels gave them a huge boost this week. (This list includes eBooks, but they are listed separately.)

Once again, I peruse the Barnes & Noble website, taking a look at what is selling. There are quite a few surprises this month, including some kids books!

John Jackson Miller has posted the May sales estimates over at Comic Chronicles and, my but May was a healthy month for comics. Miller reports several records were set in May, at least in terms of Diamond exclusivity era. (This would have been an alarmingly low sales month in 1990.)

A fantastic launch for Dynamite's Shadow relaunch snags them the number one spot for indie books this month, while Walking Dead just pips Saga to the second spot, by less than 50 copies. A little further down Fanboys vs Zombies, Star Wars Boba Fett is Dead and America's Got Powers get off to very strong starts.

 

We had a very interesting comments section last month, with Ed Brubaker and Brian Wood amongst others commenting that the figures reported here are quite far below what the actual sales are. The general consensus seems to be that actual sales are at least 10-20% higher than reported, which makes sense when you account for reorders and foreign sales. I considered adding a percentage to the figures here, but I think that's likely to make these already estimated figures utterly meaningless, so I'll stick with the ICv2 figures for the moment. However, if a creator or publisher would like to contribute completed figures, I'm happy to consider including them, as I'm doing with Fatale #1 this month.

For all you number crunchers, here's Diamond's Top 20 publishers shares for May 2012, as well as links to the other charts for the month.

Diamond has released their preliminary information on May's sales charts, and Marvel is back in units and dollars—both hard won victories—while AVX topped the singles chart and the New 52 trades topped the books charts quite handily.

Comics sales are up 40% from May 2011 —so if you want to know if the New 52 was a sales success, there's you answer right there.

Houston, we're leveled out. It took seven months, but as of April 2012, it looks like DC's superhero line of comics, relaunched under the "New 52" banner in September, have mostly settled into what we love to call "standard attrition." The average "New 52" drop in April was 2.9%, which is a good number, at this stage. Thanks to a number of low-selling titles ending in March, the average sales figures for the publisher's comic books are slightly up on March, even. Overall, this means that the numbers are still significantly up on this time last year. The average DC Universe comic book sold an estimated 35,264 units in April 2012, for instance. The last time DC hit that point prior to September 2011 was in July 2010. Likewise, the total unit sales figures for the DC Universe imprint are the highest since October 2009. Total DC Universe dollar sales are actually lower than they were in August 2011, one month before the relaunch, but back then, the imprint had 80 titles on sale, to be fair -- in April 2012, it was 60.

The crossover season is now firmly underway, with the first proper month of AVENGERS VS X-MEN, and its assorted tie-ins, which are doing pretty well. There's also the Omega Effect crossover between AVENGING SPIDER-MAN, DAREDEVIL and PUNISHER, all of which see big gains as a result. Further down the chart, Mark Millar launches another creator-owned book, SECRET SERVICE, through the Icon imprint; and the all-ages titles get another relaunch. As you might expect, April was a good month for Marvel in terms of their market share. They led DC by 39% to 34% in units, and 35% to 30% in dollars. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.