We don’t get as many sales charts as we’d like these days, But, thankfully ICv2 is still putting out the numbers for the year past. They just released their 2024 charts, and the state of the industry is good: sales were up 4%, at $1.9 billion, with comics shops driving the growth. That is absolutely and ultimately very good!
“The reversal from last year’s decline is a reassuring sign that the medium can still grow from its current levels, building on the customers that flowed into the business during the pandemic,” ICv2 President Milton Griepp said in a statement accompanying the release of the numbers. “For comic stores, despite all the changes in the past two decades, as go Marvel and DC, the Big Two publishers, so goes the business, and we saw better comics from both in 2024 following a multi-year slump in creativity.”
We’re reprinting the charts accompanying the release with permission from ICv2. And some key points from the report:
- Sales were up 73% from 2019 – that is some solid growth, even allowing for people leaving their houses again after the COVID boom.
- Periodical comics sales hit a 15 year high with $465 million in sales, up 12.2% over 2023. However this was not necessarily because of greater unit sales. I would suggest reading David Harper’s mid-year retailer report: As Everything in the Direct Market Changes, Comic Shops are Thriving, for more insights into this. A sample: “When asked about the year so far, retailers didn’t focus on doom and/or gloom. Instead, they described it as “record-setting” and “spectacular,” amongst a great many other superlatives.”
- Graphic novels were down 1.4% in the book channel – essentially flat – but up 13.3% in the comic store channel.
- Griepp notes that they use ComicHub sales data for the DM, which is a small non random set. However “it’s all we’ve got to go on.” They use Bookscan for bookstore sales.
While Griepp’s report does not include sales over time by format, I’ve been making my own little chart to track comics periodical sales, using the dollar amount reported by ICv2.
While noting that this is in dollars, not units, it does show steady sustained growth, despite what you might be hearing on YouTube. Clearly, the growth in periodicals is due to the return of the Ultimate line from Marvel, and perhaps more crucially, the Absolute line from DC. Both these lines revitalized their respective publishers and gave retailers a lot to be cheerful about.
These numbers reflect the world before the Diamond Disaster, so we’ll probably see some shrinkage in 2025, just because so many comics weren’t available on time or became hard to get. But given the sales trends quoted in Harper’s piece, it might not be a huge decline, if there even is one.
All in all this is a remarkable resiliency for comics. I’m not surprised: it’s a wonderful medium filled with great creators and characters people love, sold by retailers (both in bookstores and comics shops) who love the medium and reading. And of course there are so many readers who want to experience these stories. Comics are okay, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.
And here, with permission, are the ICv2 charts.
That we only have ComicsHub is the downside. Every store I walk into tells me the same thing, they don’t reflect my store. I actually think periodical growth is greater then anyone realizes. The ComicsHub data seems to be seriously flawed. That they have books being cancelled for low sales in the Top 10 weekly chart, and for whatever reason never chart a book more then one week.
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