Sales Charts

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.

Man the barricades! Release the militia! Marc-Oliver Frisch, the controversial number cruncher for DC comics, has taken a detailed look at DC periodical sales for the last 110 months. And he's armed with numerous charts and graphs, such as the above showing average monthly sales for DC and it's imprints going back to 2003. His takeaway? As you might have guessed, that the New 52 sales surge has resulted in only a modest increase in monthly sales.

Gentleman, start your crunchers! It's a big change at Publishers Weekly this week, as they initiate a new way of running the bestsellers lists. As Sr. Editor Digital Media Jonathan Segura explains:

Diamond released their comparative numbers for the first quarter vs last year, and it was all good. Total sales were up 7.3% in Q1 2012 vs Q1 2011, led by comics (up +14.8%) and graphic novels (+6%).

Brandon Graham's KING CITY is something of a poster child for the fusion comics generation—begun as a "OEL manga" it was rescued from contract limbo and returned to lead the vanguard of Image's newly invigorated and eclectic line. But it's more than just a symbol—people actually seem to be buying it.

Although DC's "New 52" relaunch was well past its prime in February, sales were still good enough for the publisher to take the Top 10 slots on the Diamond Top 300 chart again, for the second month in a row. The average "New 52" title dropped by 7.6% in February, which is in line with January's 7.4% drop and suggests that, while the bigger drops seem behind us, the numbers haven't quite found their level yet, either. The average DC Universe title now sells fewer copies again than it did two years ago (34,456 vs. 35,895), but then again, the company's main imprint had 20 more titles on sale this time around: In February 2010, it was 47; in February 2012, it's 67. On balance, consequently, DC is still selling a lot more superhero comics than it has in most months in the last 10 years. In the 108 months since March 2003 we have comparable data on, February 2012 is only No. 71 in terms of average DC Universe sales, but it's still No. 17 in total DC Universe unit sales (2.3 million) and No. 20 in total DC Universe dollar sales ($7.3 million). Looking at the individual "New 52" books, meanwhile, we're once again getting a mixed picture. The top-selling books mostly continue to be very stable, but the farther down the chart you go, the steeper the decline. There were 14 "New 52" books selling below 20K in February (up from 10 in January) and 21 selling below 25K (up from 19).

Here’s the drill: Diamond has released the top 100 graphic novels and relative rankings for the monthly comics for March 2012. Since Walking Dead is usually a fairly consistently selling title, I’m going to plug last month’s Walking Deadnumbers ( Comichron had January’sWalking Dead estimated at 32,361) into Diamond’s rankings. That should get us relatively close to the formal estimates that should be out soon. If Walking Dead had a good month, the numbers should be higher. If Walking Dead had a bad month, the numbers will be lower. History suggests this will be within +/- 5%, if not +/- 1%, praise to Great Kirkman.

Indie seems to be having something of a renaissance at the moment, with a lot of books selling out and going to second print. Walking Dead and Buffy top the chart once more this month, with the new Magic The Gathering and Conan titles taking the next two spots, Fatale holding strong and the new Star Wars book, Dawn of The Jedi, looks to be a genuine hit. Rob Kirkman’s new book Thief of Thieves and a new Stephen King adaptation also score high, with kids comic Adventure Time also launching very well.

134 indie books charted this month, 2 down on last month. The bottom book sold 4,270, over 1,500 up on last month. In total those books sold approximately 1,257,329, well up on last month’s 1,052,459 with fewer titles. Average sales are 9,389 per book, also up on last month’s 7,739. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.

This month IDW were the number three publisher, thanks to the first two issues of Magic the Gathering, with 6.66% dollar share and a 5.62 market share, followed by Image with 5.53% dollar share and 4.88% market share, Dark Horse with a 4.98% dollar share and a 4.06% market share, Dynamite with a 4.20% dollar share and a 3.82% market share and Boom with 1.61% dollar share and 1.40% market share. Everyone but Boom was up for the month.

If you watch the cable newsers these days, you know that instant analysis and punditocracy of the kind once confined to sports is now the only way to analyze anything of import. Sound bites, gotchas, double backs, keeping em honest...analyzing what people are saying about what people are saying is way more productive than actually identifying and solving problems...so everyone does it. And while it isn't quite as entertaining as 2011's Republican primary debate analysis, say, comics have developed their own "Counterpoint Arena" in the last few months, as executives from DC and Marvel come out and give their play-by-play on the just released sales charts.

Here’s the drill: Diamond has released the top 100 titles and relative rankings for the monthly comics for March 2012. Since Walking Dead is usually a fairly consistently selling title, I’m going to plug last month’s Walking Deadnumbers ( Comichron had January’sWalking Dead estimated at 32,361) into Diamond’s rankings. That should get us relatively close to the formal estimates that should be out soon. If Walking Dead had a good month, the numbers should be higher. If Walking Dead had a bad month, the numbers will be lower. History suggests this will be within +/- 5%, if not +/- 1%, praise to Great Kirkman.

Yesterday's initial sales charts left no doubt that so far 2012 has been a strong year for comics sales, but the numbers were also flat from last March -- five Wednesdays in 2011 vs four in 2012, perhaps? The numbers prompted a vague shadow of worry to cloud the brow of Milton Griepp at ICv2: