Have you heard the good news about comics? All the talk at the retailer programming at NYCC was about how comics sales are actually UP in comics shops, due to an influx new new young readers, drawn by DC’s Absolute line, Marvel’s Ultimate line, The Energon Universe and, really, all the great and amazing comics that are being produced today.
This was reported on a panel of retailers sponsored by ComicsPRO where all were upbeat and optimistic about getting new customers – one said they’d never had more 15-24 year olds in their shop. It was also echoed in conversations I had with retailers. Milton Griepp reported that comics sales in comics shops are up 27% for 2025, based on reporting by ComicHub, a POS system that serves between 100-200 comics shops.
And now, even MORE corroboration from a different angle. On the Prana DM Comic Industry Insiders podcast, Atom Freeman and Brian Garside of Manage Comics, another POS system used by more than 100 shops, announced that their data shows that sales are up 18% in 2025. I didn’t transcribe it, but the YouTube transcript goes something like this:
Freeman: Comics retailers are up 18% from 2024. That’s on average. That’s in a very large cohort average. What that means is that for some they’re probably only going to be up 2 or 3%, but some are going to be up 30-40%. We’ve talked to I’ve talked to retailers who have been around for 40 plus years who had legitimately a 40% increase over last year. The idea that you can do that in year 40, 45, whatever it was they were, like that’s mind-boggling.
You can watch the whole thing below.
I’m not sure how many shops use Manage Comics but it’s another solid metric – the POS system measures actual sales so I’d say it’s pretty reliable. Of course it’s only a slice, but it’s a very positive slice.
As I mentioned in my own report for Publishers Weekly, this good news comes at a time when most of the news is bad, or at least troubling, and economic uncertainty is everywhere. To my mind it echoes something that was said on a 2022 Post-Covid panel by (I think – it was a while ago) Kevin Hamric (then at Viz but since departed): looking at the boom in comics sales during lockdown, it was very gratifying to know that in the darkest times, people turned to comics stories for comfort and entertainment.
And really, this should come as no surprise: more good to great comics are in print and available than ever before, in a variety of formats. And in a world where I just paid $8 for a cup of coffee (never again) maybe the humble $4-5 comics pamphlet is actually….a bargain?
Certainly the “compact” $10-15 dollar format – no more costly than a single manga tankoubon – is a tempting entry point for new readers who have heard the buzz and want to see what the fuss is about. Libraries are doing their part despite efforts to shut them down, and digital is heating up again. Comics crowdfunding campaigns are making upwards of $500,000 regularly. Collectors have lots of expensive beautiful things to spend money on. And for all the gamblers out there, blind bags can scratch that itch. And yes, I know the latter is a fad and that bubble will pop soon, but there’s so much else gong on that it shouldn’t cause more than a ripple.
Maybe these good times are the bright light we’ll look back on when global recession hits…comics shops are still closing, and it’s still a complicated business.
That sales should be up in a year when the distributor who dominated the industry for decades collapsed into a messy bankruptcy is all the more remarkable. Go team comics!
Thank you for not lying in your journalistic piece. Refreshing.
These cohorts are so small that they beg a lot of questions to put these numbers into context. What are the average transactions at these stores? Are they seeing more transactions? Higher dollars spent per transaction? What is being sold in these transactions – single issues? Trades of US comics? Manga collections?
It’s possible these details are shared in the reports.
I’m not trying to be doom and gloom; I’m very interested in where the success is coming from. Clearly the stores in these cohorts are doing something right and I’m very hopeful the success can be shared.
A quick correction for you. Manage Comics currently has 336 stores using our software, they represent approximately 58,000 customers, who collectively spend $5.65 million per month in subscriptions.
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