Tag: Sales Charts

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

On the surface, December 2010 was a great month for DC Comics. The company had a bigger share of the market than its main competitor Marvel, if only in terms of dollar value, and took all of the Top 5 spots on the chart, as well as a total 8 out of the Top 10. That doesn't happen a lot.

Upon closer inspection, though, a less rosy picture emerges: DC's average comic-book sales in the direct market were slightly down from November, average dollar and unit sales were only slightly up. So, despite big releases like the debut of writer/artist David Finch's Batman: The Dark Knight and, over in the "Graphic Novel" section, J. Michael Straczynski's Superman: Earth One book, it turns out December was more or less business as usual, from a commercial vantage point.

Meanwhile, DC's WildStorm imprint, which the company bought from Jim Lee in 1998 and then proceeded to slowly but determinedly squeeze the life out of, ceased publication in December. Average WildStorm sales sagged below the 5K mark, to the lowest number in history.

ICv2 is up with the actual numbers for January and they aren't so hot, as we previously guessed; however, the slow January sales have a number of mitigating factors: * January always sucks * A lot of top books did not ship from DC * The number of products shipped in general was down from December.

It's not a great month for Marvel. In fact, it's one of those rare months when DC had the largest share of the direct market, beating Marvel by 33% to 32% in dollar terms (though if you prefer the unit share, Marvel lead by 39% to 37%). In part, it's because DC's new Batman titles are doing very well - but as we'll see, it's also the case that Marvel just don't have any really big titles out this month. There are a couple of new ongoing series this month - WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS and HEROES FOR HIRE. Following the Shadowland crossover, DAREDEVIL reinvents itself as BLACK PANTHER. And there's just one new miniseries - ULTIMATE COMICS DOOM. And that's it, so far as new books.

Overall, sales were dramatically down in January, with Marvel regaining their top at the spot with FF #587 but Image making their best showing in three years.

As we did yesterday for the print charts, David Brothers data mines comiXology's year end-charts. There isn't that much to go on (only a top 10 in a few categories) but some trends do emerge, including, as with GNs, a preponderance of creator-owned work.

With Diamond's year-end sales charts released, along with year-to-year comparisons, the pundits are out in force, making all kinds of observations and suggestions. We'll try to run them down in an orderly fashion but you might want to get a cuppa...there are a lot of them,. We've bolded things for skimmers, however.

First off, heroic John Jackson Miller has taken all the sales charts and given us the Top 1000 Comics and Top 1000 GNs of 2010. Jackson finds softening in every region of the periodical chart:

The other day ICv2 released their sales estimates for December, and the year ended on a mixed note, as we previously reported: Comics were down 7.5 percent, while graphic novels were up a gaudy...

The "Return of Bruce Wayne" and "Brightest Day" brands continued to be the driving force behind DC's periodical output in October. While most of the Batman books were on hiatus, a bunch of one-shots, collectively titled Bruce Wayne: The Road Home, filled the gap. Other October releases include the low-profile miniseries Knight and Squire and JLA/The 99. Consequently, average sales of the DC Universe line remained relatively flat.

by Paul O'Brien The big event on Marvel's publishing schedule for October was the relaunch of X-FORCE, which restarts from issue #1 and celebrates by taking an adjective. It's also a big month at the...

For your infographic entertainment, we've just posted Diamond's raw info in our popular "Sales Chart" category. We've also posted the top 50 Indies, Top 50 Indie GNs, Top 50 Manga, and Top 25 Small...

Diamond has released their November basic data dump, and no sales rebound sight, with overall sales down 8.28 percent from a year ago and down 6.64 percent from November. However, graphic novel sales surged 14.84 percent since last year, driven by sales of THE WALKING DEAD trade collections. John Jackson Miller already has his preliminary analysis up. Diamond has recently started releasing much more information on comparative sales -- I'm told this is because the partial figures they were releasing were giving rise to inaccurate projections by such folks as Miller. We have a lot more data to go on on how the market changes from year over year; let's be judicious in how we analyze it. Overall, the comics market is down 5.66 percent YTD in dollars and -4.18 percent in units from 2009. While that isn't a great number, considering the economy, it could be worse.

September was a fairly low-profile month for DC's comic-book business. In terms of new releases, there were the debut of the Freedom Fighters series, a Justice Society of America Special and a bunch of one-shots reviving the company's old war titles. Still, thanks to a handful of returning DC Universe and Vertigo books that had missed their release dates in August, average and overall periodical sales slightly recovered, as expected. WildStorm published a few one-shot specials tying in with the Red film and reviving Wetworks, of all things, with less than spectacular results.