The relaunches of Superman and Amazing Spider-Man rule the Comixology bestseller chart for the week of 7/11/18.

Comixology Rank Issue Previous Issue Print Sales Est. Previous Issue Diamond Rank
1 Superman (2018-) Issue #1 N/A N/A
2 Amazing Spider-Man (2018-) Issue #1 N/A N/A
3 The Flash (2016-) Issue #50 54,265 24
4 Darth Vader (2017-) Issue #18 50,072 30
5 Detective Comics (2016-) Issue #984 52,016 28
6 Injustice 2 (2017-) Issue #66 Digital First Digital First
7 Titans (2016-) Issue #23 32,702* 54*
8 Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps (2016-) Issue #48 27,825 70
9 Wonder Woman (2016-) Issue #50 34,129 45
10 Hawkman (2018-) Issue #2 42,123 33
11 X-Men Blue (2017-) Issue #31 29,962 60
12 Hunt For Wolverine: Adamantium Agenda (2018) Issue #3 (of 4) 34,564 42
13 X-23 (2018-) Issue #1 N/A N/A
14 Plastic Man (2018-) Issue #2 31,997 52
15 Ms. Marvel (2015-) Issue #32 20,327 103
16 Rat Queens (2017-) Issue #10 8,543 210-May
17 Domino (2018) Issue #4 25,228 85
18 Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016-) Issue #24 19,034 111
19 Star Wars: Thrawn (2018) Issue #6 (of 6) 31,839 55
20 Monstress Issue #18 13,423 152

Seeing Superman #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 at the top of the chart shouldn’t surprise us.  These should have been big launches and were.  It’s just a little hard to know the magnitude of those launches without guidepost titles around them.  The Flash #50 is in the third place slot this week and that’s the only comic here to really give us a clue how the first two are doing.  Flash has been picking up readers in the last few issues and likely got a few more purchases as a fiftieth issue, so we can be assured that Superman and Amazing Spider-Man are likely selling digitally at the print equivalent of  55K+, probably significantly higher.  Again, not really a surprise, but digital sales exclude all the shenanigans with variant covers and discount incentives, so it’s good not to see an unexpectedly low debut from either.

The #4 and #5 slots on the chart are Star Wars: Darth Vader and Detective Comics, respectively.  There are titles that sell relatively close together around 50K, so it could be a natural flip flop between the print and digital sales order that naturally happens, or it’s possible Detective is slipping a little during what has been announced as the first of at least 2 fill-in arcs.  Although, if there’s slippage, it’s not much, because Detective is still above Injustice on the chart.

Below Injustice, things are very scrambled.  Titans had a bump with a Special edition in June what tied into No Justice.  Surprise!  The next issue of Titans seems to be receiving an even bigger bump with a No Justice-related arc.  We’ll have to see is this is a case of Comixology giving us a preview of the print orders or if this is something doing better in digital (possibly because retailers didn’t hike their orders enough).

Hal Jordan continues to show up much higher on the Comixology charts than it does on the Diamond charts.  Might it be gaining a little interest as it approaches its announced wrap-up as people anticipate the relaunch?  Could be, as this does seem like it’s charting a bit higher.

Wonder Woman might be up a little for a fiftieth issue.  Hawkman follows Wonder Woman and it isn’t clear exactly where it fits from a practical level.  Probably not the print equivalent of 42K, which is where the first issue fell, but how much below that figure?  Below Hawkman is X-Men Blue, not a particularly strong performer traditionally (unless there’s an X-wedding surge going on), it’s usually in the vicinity of 30K in print.  Below that is this week’s Hunt for Wolverine mini-series and one of those hitting at around the print equivalent of 30K would be a bit of a triumph, though this one may be charting a bit higher, if indeed that’s where this slot would be.

X-23 is next.  It used to be called All-New Wolverine, but has relaunched under a new title with a new writer as All-Old, er, All-Middle-Aged Wolverine is the subject of those Hunt For titles and shall shortly have his own series.  This probably isn’t a bad launching position for X-23, relative to the previous series.

Plastic Man #2 is next and this is _probably_ about where to expect it in what feels like it’s probably the print equivalent of the upper 20Ks.  Ms. Marvel follows, over-performing in digital as usual.  Then Rat Queens appears, selling with perhaps triple popularity, relative to it’s print position.  Domino follows that and seems like it might be a reasonable guidepost relative to print.

Following Domino is Red Hood and the Outlaws, which doesn’t usually make the Comixology top 20.  We’ll have to see if this is a one-off appearance on the chart.  Below Red Hood is the final issue of Star Wars: Thrawn which never really seemed to hit it off with the Comixology audience.

The top 20 is closed out by Monstress, another Image A-list title selling proportionally better in digital.

Methodology and standard disclaimers:

The initial methodology is to compare the current issue on the Comixology top 20 chart (issues pulled the evening of 7/15) with the last issue we have print sales estimates for from the Comichron June chart, with the exception of Rat Queens, for which the last issue shipped in May.

The conventional wisdom that’s been handed down over the last few years is that he digital audience has more of less the same reading habits as the Direct Market Print audience.  I’ve had multiple publishers tell me that digital sales of new issues are roughly 10-15% of print sales and the titles more or less have the same proportional popularity in digital as in print.  Maybe a couple titles switch places on the sales ranking list, but largely the same.  The bestsellers on the newsstand were not always the same bestsellers as in the Direct Market, so it doesn’t seem like that should necessarily be the case with digital.  There will be a little bit of mismatch because these are more weekly than monthly ranks and it isn’t clear exactly how Comixology defines the reporting periods, but if you look at comics sales, you learn to live with the data available.

Want to learn more about how comics publishing and digital comics work?  Try Todd’s book, Economics of Digital Comics