Venom and Jack Kirby lead Diamond’s September sales charts

Diamond has released its September sales charts and Marvel dominates, as you might expect. Venom #28 by Donny Cates and Juan Gedeon was the top comics periodical and Marvel had eight titles in the top ten. Image charted at #4 with Todd McFarlane and Jim Muniz’s Spawn #310, ranked #4. The Department of Truth #1, which sold quite a few copies after selling out before hitting the stands, was #7.

Other top sellers from other companies that are not DC: BOOM! Studios’ We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #1 by Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo at #31; Dark Horse Comics’ You Look Like Death: Tales from The Umbrella Academy #1 by Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and I.N.J. Culbard at #52; Dynamite Entertainment’s Vampirella #13 by Christopher Priest, Ergun Gunduz, and Giovanni Timpano, at #77; and IDW Publishing’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #109 by Sophie Campbell and Jodie Nishijima at #85.

The Marvel Legacy of Jack Kirby from Marvel was the top selling GN, and Marvel repeated their eight out of ten performance.

“September was a fantastic close to third quarter sales for the industry and we continue to see a wide spectrum of publishers pick up momentum in the latter part of 2020,” said Tim Lenaghan, Chief Purchasing Officer of Geppi Family Enterprises, the parent company of Diamond Comic Distributors.  “We’ve seen strong sales from Marvel’s X titles and the debut of X of Swords continues that trend. It’s been great to see a long running series like Spawn return to our Top Sellers list as well, proving it’s never too late to recruit new readers!”

Diamond also noted that The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide Volume 50, published by Diamond’s sister company Gemstone, was September’s best-selling book. Its paperback edition topped the chart, its hardcover edition ranked #2, and the oversized Big! Big! edition ranked #4. Fifty years of price guides! And Robert M. Overstreet is still around to byline it.

Diamond included publisher shares once again, along with pie charts, although without DC numbers to compare, it’s still a bit of a head-scratcher.

John Jackson Miller, as always, at Comichron has his own thoughts, and notes:

The September numbers found Marvel leading Image about 5.9-to-1 in units and about 5.2-to-1 in dollars; that sounds like a lot, but that’s actually a lesser margin than Marvel led Image by in March 2020. The difference then was closer to 7.6-to-1 in units and 6.4-to-1 in dollars. That’s likely attributable to Marvel’s slate still being somewhat smaller than usual post-pandemic — it had 76 new comics out in September, as compared to 99 in September 2019. Image’s new comics slate was at 46 issues, up seven both from March and last September. September was a five-week month in terms of New Comic Book Days both for Diamond and for DC’s distributors.

Comichron will has its own integrated sales estimates later this month, with DC added.

TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

 
TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 TOYS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 GAMES BY DOLLARS INVOICED

 
NEW TITLES SHIPPED

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