The Comichron: The Blog of The Comics Chronicles

July 2010: Comics orders down, trade paperback dollars up

2010-08-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

In 1991, Marvel Comics launched a new "adjectiveless" X-Men title; the original 1963 X-Men series had been known as Uncanny X-Men for several years. That new X-Men issue, with its five covers, released into the superheated speculator market of the early 1990s and became the best-selling comic book of all time, with more than 8 million copies sold — or, at least, bought by retailers. (As such, it's the least scarce issue of all time, to the dismay of any collectors ck then.) That second X-Men series ran parallel to Uncanny for years, morphing later into New X-Men.

July 2010 saw the release of another title known simply as X-Men, again with quite a few variant covers — and while it didn't do anything like those numbers of 19 years ago, it did manage to take the top slot in comics shops for the month according to data released by Diamond Comic Distributors. You can find the July 2010 charts with market shares here.

The year-to-year comparatives were pretty steep this time, as last July featured two of the three best-selling comics of the year: Captain America Reborn #1 and Blackest Night #1. It was also a month with five shipping weeks, versus four this July. The difference was enough to turn the dollar sales for the Top 300 comics back negative for the year to date. On the other hand, retailer orders in advance of the Scott Pilgrim movie helped to bring Diamond’s Top 300 Trade Paperbacks to their highest level since April 2009, the month after Watchmen released in theaters (and the first full month after Diamond’s warehouse move).

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

July 2010: 5.94 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -9%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -1%
YEAR TO DATE: 40.84 million copies, -4% vs. 2009, -5% vs. 2005, unchanged vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

July 2010: $21.27 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -12%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +11%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +24%
YEAR TO DATE: $143.29 million, -1% vs. 2009, +16% vs. 2005, +29% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

July 2010: $7.58 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +3%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +58%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +125%
YEAR TO DATE: $46.44 million, -7% vs. 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

July 2010: $28.85 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -8%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +18%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +31%
YEAR TO DATE: $186.37 million, -2% vs. 2009

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

July 2010: $36.41 million ($40.15 million including UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -12%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +26%
YEAR TO DATE: $238.66 million, -4% vs. 2009, +21% vs. 2005

The average comic book in Diamond’s Top 300 cost $3.59. The average Top 300 comic book that retailers ordered from Diamond cost $3.58, a new record. The median comic book price in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.99, and the most common cover price on Diamond’s list returned to $3.99 after a month back at $2.99.

Looking back at previous July sales charts:

July 2009's top seller was, as mentioned above, Captain America Reborn #1— although by the time the year was out, the #2 comic book of the month, Blackest Night #1, would ultimately sell more copies. Cap sold 193,000 copies in July to Blackest Night's 177,000, but by the end of the year, Blackest Night #1 outsold Cap, 205,500 copies to 199,900. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

July 2005's top-seller was DC's All-Star Batman and Robin #1, with Diamond first-month orders of more than 261,000 copies. Final orders including reorders brought the summer event issue to 276,000 copies, making it the eighth best-selling comic book of the 2000s. (See the whole list here.) Check out the sales chart for June 2005 here.

July 2000's top-seller was Image's Spawn #100, with Diamond preorders of 143,500 copies. It’s of interest that, through July 2010, the Direct Market has ordered almost exactly the same number of comic books that it preordered in the first seven months of 2000. Those comics are selling for 29% more now in dollars due to inflation — and, of course, the real growth in the industry is in the number of trade paperbacks sold, which is dramatically higher than it was a decade ago. Note the July 2010 trade paperback Top 25, which sold more than double the copies (for more than double the money) than the July 2000 Top 25. Check out the sales chart for July 2000 here.

July 1995 is the month where things get really complicated. Marvel stopped distributing its comics through all other distributors but Heroes World Distribution this month, and Heroes World's sales are not publicly known before September 1996. Also starting this month, DC withdrew all its sales from all other distributors except for Diamond — although through a legal settlement, Capital City was allowed to keep selling DC comics through August. So Diamond's Top 300 chart has no Marvels at all; it found Spawn #34 as the top-selling comic book. It's a bizarrely different Top 300 for Diamond, with a lot of independent publishers and titles making the list for the first time: Bru-Hed's Breathtaking Beauties #1 from Mike Pascale's Schism Press placed 283rd. Palliard's Buck Godot #5 closed out the Diamond Top 300.

Capital didn't have Marvels either — but for a time, it polled its accounts to see what quantities of Marvels they were selling. Thus, Capital's sales chart this month reflected its actual sales of DC and other publishers — and estimates of where Marvels would rank. Capital's reports put Marvel's X-Men #44 in first place, projecting Spawn in fifth. Its orders for the previous issue were 90,800 copies, and known average annual sales for the title that year were at nearly 333,000 copies. My own survey of retailers, appearing in Comics Retailer #43, corroborates Capital's ranking; X-Men was almost certainly #1. Capital stopped doing a Top 300 for the first time in years, going out only to 220th place.

Hard times for distributors, but it was also a tough time to be a retailer. "Using three distributors is a lot of extra paperwork," reported Mark Crane of Lee's Comics in San Mateo, California in my survey. "But it's worth it to ensure that our service to our customers remains consistent, and that we have a diverse selection of product on our racks."

The average price of comics in Diamond's Top 300 was $2.62, and the average comic book ordered within Diamond's Top 300 cost $2.57. The most common cost of comics was $2.50. But, again, those figures don't reflect Marvels, which were generally cheaper.

July 1990's top seller at Diamond and Capital City was Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #2. Capital City sold 168,000 copies; overall direct-market sales were 712,300 copies, with another 117,900 copies sold through the newsstand. Final sales, including subscription copies, were at 843,100 copies, less than half what #1 sold.

July 1985's top seller at Capital City was Marvel's Secret Wars II #5. Capital's orders were approximately 59,800 copies, suggesting overall sales in the 300,000-copy range.

X-Men launch, Scott Pilgrim top comics sales in July 2010

2010-08-06T16:12:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

In 1991, Marvel Comics launched a new "adjectiveless" X-Men title; the original 1963 X-Men series had been known as Uncanny X-Men for several years. That new X-Men issue, with its five covers, released into the superheated speculator market of the early 1990s and became the best-selling comic book of all time, with more than 8 million copies sold — or, at least, bought by retailers. (As such, it's the least scarce issue of all time, to the dismay of any collectors back then.) That second X-Men series ran parallel to Uncanny for years, morphing later into New X-Men.

July 2010 saw the release of the third title known simply as X-Men, again with quite a few variant covers — and while it's unlikely to see anything like those numbers of 19 years ago when the final estimates are available, it did manage to take the top slot in comics shops for the month, according to data released today by Diamond Comic Distributors. You can find the July 2010 charts with market shares on Comichron here.

At this hour, Diamond has released the Top 100 trade paperbacks — dominated by Scott Pilgrim, thanks to the movie and the release of Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour — but just the Top 10 comics so far. Full lists and estimates will be along later.

Gaiman, guest author issues gave Spawn a boost in 1993

2010-07-31T18:03:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

On July 29, a Senior U.S. District Judge for the 7th Circuit Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled that writer Neil Gaiman had the right to a share of the profits from comics and merchandise related to three characters from Todd McFarlane's Spawn franchise. Maggie Thompson reports the ruling here, as part of her exhaustive, in-depth coverage of the case; you can read from the first chapter here.

It's the second case spawned (no pun intended) by a comic book that was actually part of a publicity stunt from the first year of McFarlane's title. Back in 1992, McFarlane, who had made a splash both writing and drawing the "adjectiveless" Spider-Man series, which launched 20 years ago last month, took on criticisms of his writing style by hiring four big-name writers to produce issues of Spawn, with terms favorable to them; Alan Moore, Gaiman, Dave Sim, and Frank Miller wrote issues #8-11 respectively. Gaiman later sued for, and in 2002, won a share of the rights to the characters of Count Cogliostro, Medieval Spawn, and warrior angel Angela, from Spawn #9. The judgment was upheld on appeal in 2004.

The current suit involved the ownership of characters that had appeared later over the years in McFarlane's titles, specifically Dark Ages Spawn and warrior angels Tiffany and Domina. During the months of June and July, Gaiman, McFarlane, and Spawn: The Dark Ages writer Brian Holguin appeared before Judge Barbara Crabb to determine whether those later characters were derivative of Gaiman's work; the judge ruled Thursday that they were.

The ruling, which invokes a previous case involving former Beatle George Harrison and the song "He's So Fine," may be the only occasion in which a judge has ever discussed voluptuous warrior angels wearing "ill-fitting armor bras." The whole court record, taken from the beginning, makes for fascinating reading about comics production behind-the-scenes.

The connection with Spawn #9 also provides a connection to the days of blockbuster sales; several times in the past, including during the current case, I have been contacted for historical background and such sales figures as are in my archives. My records are only partial, but I can share a few things here:

In 1992 and 1993, Capital City Distribution, headquartered in Madison, Wis., the same site as the court case, was the second largest distributor of comics to the comics-shop market. For a publisher like Image, whose newsstand distribution was just beginning, Capital would have provided a larger share than usual of overall sales. Capital's first-month preorders on Spawn issues then — including, for comparison, the issues before and after the "guest author" issues, are as follows:

#7 (McFarlane-written): 143,225 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 500,000+
• Rank: #8 at Capital, #9 at Diamond

#8 (Moore): 225,675 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 800,000
• Rank: #2 at Capital, #2 at Diamond

#9 (Gaiman): 204,600 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 700,000+

• Rank: #3 at Capital, #3 at Diamond

#10 (Sim): 210,500 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 700,000+
• Rank: #2 at Capital,

#11 (Miller): 234,150 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 800,000+
• Rank: #3 at Capital, #2 at Diamond

#12 (McFarlane): 225,150 copies at Capital; overall sales, likely 800,000
• Rank: #9 at Capital, #8 at Diamond

Capital's initial orders of Spawn #1, in 1992, had been 204,760, a figure Gaiman's issue nearly matched and which all the other titles beat; since Spawn #1, no issue had broken 200,000 at Capital — until Moore's issue. (Note that since Capital's reports were preorders, reorders would have made the total figures higher than those recorded here. Spawn #1 is widely believed to have broken the million-copy mark, overall.)

Interestingly, Gaiman's issue is the lowest-seller of the guest-author series at Capital; Dave Sim's issue had higher orders in a time in which Sandman was outselling Cerebus seven-to-one. A likely contributor was the fact that Gaiman's issue shipped in January, typically a very weak month for comics orders relative to other months.

The actual figures would, of course, have been made available to the parties involved in the 2002 court case. But we can see that just within the run of the Spawn title at the time, the issues the guest authors were on did sell better than those before. Sales continued to be well above earlier levels even after the "guest author" program: orders at Capital would remain above where they were before the program for most of the rest of 1993, until issue #17. (Don't be misled by the drop in rank for #12: that was April 1993, when Superman returned from the dead and Valiant's Turok launched. Sales in the direct market were never higher before or after that month. )

Sales on many titles were buoyed by the peaking market in this period, but the boost Spawn got starting with #8 was larger than the average increase by far. While the litigants have obviously had their own reasons to look back on this time, from the standpoint of circulation history what we see is a picture of a very successful editorial promotion.

June 2010 Flashbacks: McFarlane Spider-Man #1 at 20

2010-07-13T12:04:00.006-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Following the report on comics orders for June 2010, here's a look back at what was going on in previous years...

June 2009's top seller was DC's Batman and Robin #1, with estimated first-month Diamond orders of 168,500 copies. It would ultimately be the fourth best-selling comic book of 2009, with reorders bringing it to 190,300 copies. June 2009 was notable for increasing prices, which set new records in the month with the average comic book offered in Diamond's top-sellers list selling for $3.50. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

June 2005's top-seller was Marvel's House of M #1, with Diamond first-month orders of over 233,700 copies. Final orders including reorders brought the summer event issue to 248,200 copies, making it the 14th best-selling comic book of the 2000s. (See the whole list here.) Check out the sales chart for June 2005 here.

June 2000's top-seller was Marvel's Uncanny X-Men #383, with Diamond preorders of 120,600 copies, barely making the Top 300 list for the decade; such were the low volumes in 2000 compared to later in the decade. June was X-Men month, with the first movie prompting the release of several prequel issues at Marvel; yet retailer orders remained light following many down years in the direct market. (The coincidence of a popular movie with poor cash flow at retail is one of the case studies examined in this piece relating comics and movie sales.)

Still, overall figures were up, a step in the right direction. Check out the sales chart here.

June 1995's top seller at Diamond was Spawn: Blood Feud #1; at Capital City Distribution, the top-seller was Marvel's X-Men #43. With newsstand and subscription sales, the X-Men issue almost certainly was the better seller overall; Capital's orders were 90,800 copies, with average annual sales for the title that year at nearly 333,000 copies.

It was the last month in the year all distributors would have Marvel and DC comics: on March 3, 1995, the publisher announced it would shift all Marvel's products to its recently purchased Heroes World Distribution company as of July-shipping products. (A not-insignificant detail in all this: Heroes World stopped selling other publishers' products at the same time, cutting out sales from what was then the third-largest distributor.) On April 28, DC announced it was going with Diamond exclusively with its July-shipping products. Dark Horse did the same for November items, and Image for December items. Capital City did get two additional months of DC products by filing a lawsuit against DC and Diamond, but for practical purposes, June 1995 was the end of the multi-distributor direct market the industry had known for more than a decade.

The average price of comics in Diamond's Top 300 was $2.48, and the average comic book ordered within Diamond's Top 300 cost $2.43. The most common cost of comics was $2.50.

June 1990's top seller at Diamond and Capital City was a blockbuster: Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1. The issue went on sale in comics shops June 21, 1990: 1.2 million copies of a silver-ink cover edition and 125,000 copies of a "bagged" silver-ink version. (In theory, removing the bag meant the book was no longer "mint.") There followed 800,000 green unbagged and 125,000 bagged newsstand editions — and several reprints. Golden Apple Comics in California staged a "Midnight Madness" sale for the release, complete with searchlights and radio news crews; hundreds of people showed up, and the chain sold out of its initial shipment of 3,000 copies withing 36 hours, with sales restricted to one per customer after the first day. (I bought my own copy in a comics shop set up in, all places, a doctor's office complex — a sign of how easily shops were opening in the multi-distributor world.)

Reported same-day prices on the bagged silver editions ranged from $15 to $30 in many places, and hit $80 in at least one. It was a watershed moment in the commoditization of new comics, decried by many at the time; Moondog's owner Gary Colabuono, declaring that the bagged editions were "the dumbest thing to come along in some time," announced his stores would no longer carry them. "It serves no purpose but to stimulate greed and speculation."

Indeed, even the former Marvel executive who came up with the idea of the limited-edition Platinum Spider-Man #1 reprint wrote of his second thoughts in Comics Retailer magazine, years later: "I was taking advantage of the desires of the market and fueling speculator greed."

While Spider-Man #1 was not the best-selling comic book of the wave — that would be the following year's adjectiveless X-Men #1, with its five covers — it did have a long-lasting effect in solidifying McFarlane as the most popular creator working in comics. McFarlane would parlay that popularity into the launch of Image Comics. (Readers interested in the inner workings of the publisher should check out Maggie Thompson's in-depth coverage of the 2010 hearings in the McFarlane/Neil Gaiman laswuit.)

June 1985's top seller at Capital City was Marvel's Secret Wars II #4. Capital's orders were approximately 63,200 copies, suggesting overall sales in the 300,000-to-400,000-copy range. A Barry Windsor-Smith issue of Uncanny X-Men, #198, came in second.

Comics sales little changed overall in first half of 2010

2010-07-13T00:07:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Comics shop orders were essentially unchanged overall in June versus the same month last year, producing a similar result for the first half of 2010, according to analysis by The Comics Chronicles of data released by Diamond Comic Distributors. Marvel's New Avengers relaunch led the market, just as the "adjectiveless" Avengers reboot did in May. Click to see the estimates of June 2010 comics orders.

Retailers ordered slightly fewer dollars worth of comic books and substantially more dollars worth of trade paperbacks this June versus last June, reversing a trend seen most of this year. The trade paperback list likewise saw heavier volumes distributed further down the chart, with the 100th place trade paperback selling more than 1,250 copies versus 1,000 copies last June, a month that had one less shipping week.

Higher volumes in the midlist and lower-list titles are also noticeable in the comics list. The volume of the 300th place title was the second-highest it's been in a decade, at 4,528 copies. Only December 2008 saw higher sales at the bottom of the list; the full record of 300th-place comics sales can be seen here.

And one of the main reasons is another first: Only 15 publishers had titles in the Top 300, the lowest number in the Diamond Exclusive Era. Add up the Top Seven publishers with the most comics in the Top 300 — Marvel, DC, IDW, Image, Dynamite, Dark Horse, and Boom, in that order — and you've got 277 spots on the list. (The top 10 publishers took 291!)

The result is that many familiar publisher names wound up peaking below 300th place — and Diamond again reported sales for a number of these publishers in a supplementary report: 40 titles, ranging all the way down to 460th place. These can be found at the bottom of the Comichron listing, (although, as usual, our Top 300 market shares take in only the Top 300).

These addditional titles added almost exactly 100,000 copies to the Top 300 comics, bringing total unit sales close to 6.22 million copies. As that 460th place title, the "nude" edition of Cavewoman Prehistoric Pinups #7, had orders of 926 copies — so totaling all the comics Diamond sold at least 1,000 copies of probably yields somewhere around 6.5 million copies. The "next 150" after the Top 300 is thus maybe 5% to 6% of the new-issue market by units.

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

June 2010: 6.11 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -7%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -14%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -1%
Second quarter 2010: 17.84 million copies, -6% vs. 2009
YEAR TO DATE: 35.49 million copies, -2% vs. 2009, -5% vs. 2005, unchanged vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

June 2010: $21.8 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -4%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +23%
Second quarter 2010: $62.67 million, -2% vs. 2009

YEAR TO DATE: $122.02 million, +1% vs. 2009, +16% vs. 2005, +30% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

June 2010: $7.32 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +21%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +21%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +25%
Second quarter 2010: $18.86 million, -9% vs. 2009

YEAR TO DATE: $35.57 million, -9% vs. 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

June 2010: $29.11 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +1%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +7%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +23%
Second quarter 2010: $81.45 million, -4% vs. 2009

YEAR TO DATE: $157.52 million, -1% vs. 2009

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

June 2010: $37.96 million (figure revised)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +3%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +16%
Second quarter 2010: $104.98 million, -9%

YEAR TO DATE: $202.25 million, -2% vs. 2009, +20% vs. 2005

The average comic book in Diamond’s Top 300 cost $3.47 The average Top 300 comic book that retailers ordered from Diamond cost $3.56. The median comic book price in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.50, and the most common cover price on Diamond’s list dropped back to $2.99 after three months at $3.99.

The overall figures for June are subject to change as supplementary data comes in, but the upshot for the first half of 2010 is that comics unit sales are still keeping right around the same 35-40 million copy range they've been in for much of the last 10 years. Unit sales for the first six months are, in fact, identical to those in 2000 — a positive result when one considers that most of the trade paperback business we have now didn't exist then. (The market did grow: it just grew a new sector.) Trade paperbacks, meanwhile, are still struggling versus 2009, although, again, June turned back in the right direction.

It continues to be the expectation of this observer that trade paperbacks are more sensitive to external financial conditions than periodicals, where comics shops are concerned. Ordering non-returnably, comics shops are in a different position from other bookstores; as general economic conditions improve, we would expect to see comics retailers replenishing their graphic novel inventories.

Stay tuned for the June Flashbacks report, appearing here soon.

June 2010: Avengers leads again, Big Two domination in Top 100

2010-07-09T13:21:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

A month after a new Avengers title led the charts, a new New Avengers title led the charts in June, according to reports released today by Diamond Comic Distributors. The Top 100 comics and trade paperbacks ordered by comics shops, as well as market shares, can be found here.

Marvel and DC combined to take the top 49 slots on the comics sales chart, and 96 out of the Top 100. It is the deepest into the chart the Big Two publishers have extended their reach since October 2008, when they took the top 64 slots. What happened? No Buffy the Vampire Slayer issue this month. Marvel and DC's domination of the top of the list is usually broken up by the Dark Horse title, and the months where their reach has gone far into the charts are the rare ones in which the Dark Horse title was not released. In one such month, August 2007, Marvel and DC took the top 84 slots and 98 out of the Top 100 titles.

However, these unbroken chains of entries are generally not meaningful, as we see from the market shares, which were not largely different this month than usual. Much of the other publishers' dollar volume comes from trade paperbacks — a much more integrated list, near the top — and also from relatively larger numbers of titles offered below 100th place. The Batman: Arkham Asylum Madness hardcover was the best-selling trade this month, but the next three titles are from other publishers.

The average cost of the Top 100 comics was $3.57, with the most common price $2.99 and the median price $3.99.

Diamond's full top 300 lists along with estimates should appear next week.

May 2010 comics orders bounce back, but trade orders lag

2010-06-30T18:30:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

New comic-book orders in the direct market increased in both unit and dollar terms in May, but trade paperback weakness continued to keep the overall dollar volume nearly flat, according to estimates by The Comics Chronicles. Click to see estimated comics orders for May 2010. Apologies for the delay in reporting this month: I just finished my first novel (Star Wars: Knight Errant, out next February).

After a couple of months where the calendar and publisher offerings made for year-to-year comparisons that were wildly uneven, this May probably provided a more fair comparison with the previous year. Unit sales for comics were up 9% with dollars up 15% — that latter partially a reflection of the fact that the price of the average comic book retailers ordered has gone from $3.32 to $3.51. May 2009 was regarded as weak at the time, being up against Final Crisis #2 and Secret Invasion #1 the previous year; May 2010 unit sales are up, but still have a ways to go to get back to 2008 levels.

The real difference continues to be in trade paperback orders; retailers ordered half a million dollars more of Diamond’s Top 300 trade paperbacks in May than in April, but the total is still down 15% from May 2009. That weakness appears to be present in the backlist, as we calculate that once all comics and trade paperback orders are accounted for (including those beneath 300th place) overall orders for comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines were down 2%. It appears that retailers ordered at least $2 million more in trade paperbacks below 300th place last May.

My suspicion continues to be that orders for bigger-ticket items have been more likely to be impacted by the general recession; retailers are letting trade paperback inventories fall a bit, even in months in which they’re ordering more comic books (even given the price increases). Running some correlations, I have not been able to draw a direct connection between new comics cover prices and trade paperback sales, although that is something worth revisiting.

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

May 2010: 6.15 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +9%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +2%
YEAR TO DATE: 28.78 million copies, -1% vs. 2009, -2% vs. 2005, unchanged vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

May 2010: $21.56 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +15%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +26%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +33%
YEAR TO DATE: $100.22 million, +3 vs. 2009, +19% vs. 2005, +32% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2010: $6 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -13%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +7%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: -6%
YEAR TO DATE: $28.25 million, -15% vs. 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2010: $27.56 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +8%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +23%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +29%
YEAR TO DATE: $128.41 million, -2% vs. 2009

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

May 2010: $35.05 million ($39 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -2%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +31%
YEAR TO DATE: $164.29 million, -3% vs. 2009, +21% vs. 2005

The average comic book in Diamond’s Top 300 cost $3.49. The average Top 300 comic book that retailers ordered from Diamond cost $3.51. The median comic book price in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.99, and the most common cover price on Diamond’s list remained $3.99 for the third consecutive month.

As June includes Batman #700, I would expect to see the order index number climb dramatically in the June chart; Batman is the title Diamond uses to key its charts.

Here's a look back at what was going on in previous years...

May 2009's top seller was Marvel's New Avengers #53, with estimated first-month Diamond orders of over 94,300 copies. As suggested above, New Avengers had about half the orders of May 2008's top seller, Secret Invasion; this month's Avengers relaunch sold nearly 70,000 more copies to retailers. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

May 2005's top-seller was DC's Green Lantern #1, with Diamond first-month orders of more than 168,300 copies. DC titles took several spots in the top five, with the final issues of Green Lantern Rebirth and Villains United taking the third and fifth slots. Check out the sales chart here.

May 2000's top-seller was Image's Uncanny X-Men #382, with estimated Diamond preorders of approximately 114,800 copies. Chris Claremont's return to the series coupled with the upcoming release of the first X-Men movie to bring the title back to Diamond's top spot. Check out the sales chart here.

May 1995's top seller at Diamond and at Capital City Distribution was Image's Spawn #32. Capital reported preorders of approximately 94,600 copies, meaning overall sales were probably closer to 400,000. Marvel moved its distribution to Heroes World in July, effectively ending (for a while) the era in which a single distributor's charts reported sales for all publishers, although Capital did for a time integrate Marvel orders based on retailer reports into its tables.

May 1990's top seller at Capital City was Batman #451, one of two Batman issues in the month. Both Batman issues topped Legends of the Dark Knight #9, finally unseating the title after its long ride at #1. By this point, Batman was almost back at parity with what was then the traditional market leader, Uncanny X-Men. Capital had preorders of 83,350 copies on Batman #451, suggesting overall orders north of 400,000 copies.

The top dollar title for the month was the first Batman Archives, priced at $39.95. Capital had first-month orders of 7,650 copies on the hardcover.

May 1985's top seller at Capital City was Marvel's Secret Wars II #3, the shorter sequel to 1984's best-selling comics series. Capital's orders were approximately 61,900 copies; overall sales would likely have been higher than 300,000.

Avengers returns Marvel to top of comics sales charts

2010-06-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Marvel's latest Avengers relaunch led the charts in May, according to preliminary rankings released by Diamond Comic Distributors. The rankings of the Top 100 comics and trade paperbacks as ordered by comics shops in North America find three Marvel titles in the top four slots, including Siege #4 and Secret Avengers #1.

DC's first issue of Brightest Day (actually its second, after April-leading #0) placed fifth; the publisher's top title was Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1, in third place. DC led the trade paperback sales charts with Ex Machina Vol. 9 Ring Out the Old.

The average comic book ordered in the Top 100 cost $3.49; the median and most common cost of comics in the Top 100 is actually back at $2.99.

At first blush, May's publishing slate appears to be stronger than what we saw in the previous month; Comichron projects sales up somewhat over April's poor showing, although confirmation will have to wait until we see the full figures next week.

April 2010: Flashbacks to the past

2010-05-26T11:41:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

Following the report on comics orders for April 2010, here's a look back at what was going on in previous years...

April 2009's top seller was DC's Detective Comics #853, with estimated first-month Diamond orders of 104,100 copies. The Neil Gaiman issue performed an interesting feat: as Comichron reported, it was the first time an issue of Detective, the longest-running ongoing series in American comics, had ever topped the charts. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

April 2005's top-seller was Marvel's New Avengers #5, with Diamond first-month orders of over 162,300 copies. But DC took the next four of the top five slots in a month where the narrower categories were flat or slightly off year-over-year. Star Wars Episode III helped Dark Horse to one of its higher market shares across history; the movie came out in May, but orders for the adaptation issues and trade were recorded in April. Check out the sales chart here.

April 2000's top-seller was Image's Fathom #12, with estimated Diamond preorders of approximately 124,500 copies. Image topped the charts only twice more in the 2000s, with an anniversary issue of Spawn and Masters of the Universe #1 a couple of years later.

Also in April 2000, Marvel boosted its cover prices from $1.99 to $2.25 for most of its line, helping its market share. Check out the sales chart here.

April 1995's top seller at Diamond and at Capital City Distribution was Marvel's X-Men Omega, the final chapter of the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline. Capital reported preorders of approximately 143,050 copies, placing overall orders north of 400,000 copies. Omega represented something close to an end to the enhanced-cover era; its acetate outer cover makes it one of those issues where online scans look nothing like the comic book!

The book was priced at $3.99 — and the average comic book ordered within Diamond's Top 300 cost $2.39. The most common cost of comics was $2.50, believe it or not: Marvel and DC's lines were scattered across several price points, including $1.50, $1.75, $1.95, and $2.25, whereas Image, Malibu, Dark Horse, and Acclaim had many of their comic books priced at $2.50.

April 1990's top seller at Diamond and Capital City was Legends of the Dark Knight #8, the third issue of Grant Morrison's "Gothic" storyline. Capital City's orders on the issue were 84,950 copies, suggesting that overall sales were closer to half a million copies.

April 1985's top seller at Capital City was Marvel's Secret Wars II #2, the shorter sequel to 1984's best-selling comics series. Capital's orders were approximately 65,000 copies, suggesting overall sales in the 300,000-to-400,000-copy range.

While the identically priced Crisis on Infinite Earths undeniably had a longer-term impact on its publisher's line, Secret Wars II was nearly outselling it two-to-one at Capital in April.

Calendar deals a beating to April 2010 comics sales

2010-05-18T20:06:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

As well as the comic-book direct market performed in the month of March, the industry underperformed in April, with orders for all comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines off nearly $10 million, or 24%. The monthly estimates appear here.

The mention of the previous month is intentional, as March had five weeks versus the previous March’s four, while April had four shipping weeks versus the previous April’s five. According to our recent analysis, the average five-week month since 2004 has seen 11% more sales of Top 300 comics units than the average four-week month. Had March 31st been a Tuesday, it’s clear the relative pictures for March and April would have been much different.

Brightest Day #0 joined with the new Flash title, Green Lantern #53, and Batman and Robin #11 to give DC the top four slots on the chart. Marvel led in both dollar and unit market shares overall, helped by the top-ordered graphic novel, the hardcover Kick-Ass compilation. It was the second month in a row for the title to top the charts; the film based on the comic book released in mid-April. There was no new Siege issue in April (apart from the tie-ins), also impacting overall sales

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
April 2010: 5.57 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -17%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -8%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -4%
YEAR TO DATE: 22.63 million copies, -3% vs. 2009, -4% vs. 2005, unchanged vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

April 2010: $19.31 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -15%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +12%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +25%
YEAR TO DATE: $78.66 million, unchanged vs. 2009, +17% vs. 2005, +32% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2010: $5.54 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -29%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -10%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +65%
YEAR TO DATE: $22.25 million, -15% vs. 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2010: $24.86 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -19%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +8%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +28%
YEAR TO DATE: $100.86 million, -4% vs. 2009

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

April 2010: $31.97 million ($35.44 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -24%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +18%
YEAR TO DATE: $129.24 million, -3% vs. 2009, +19% vs. 2005

The average comic book in Diamond’s Top 300 cost $3.47. The average Top 300 comic book that retailers ordered from Diamond also cost $3.47. The median comic book price in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.50, and the most common cover price on Diamond’s list remained $3.99 for the second consecutive month.

The poor overall showing for the month puts the overall market back into negative territory for the year, with only the Top 300 Comics Dollar Sales category keeping pace with 2009. Trade paperbacks had a rough outing in both the frontlist and backlist — though, again, the extra week is a important determinant of trade sales. Also, it’s believed that April 2009’s charts may have reflected additional sales owing to some deep-discount promotions by publishers, so that also muddies the water for comparison purposes.

The monthly flashback column will be along shortly.

Volatility Primer: Quarterly versus monthly sales figures

2010-05-10T21:14:00.005-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

There's still some data I want to have a look at before posting the April 2010 direct market sales estimates, but from my initial work with the numbers released today by Diamond, it appears that, even against unremarkable 2009 competition, April will be as weak as a month for comics sales as March was a very strong month. As I expect you'll see other estimates online before our work is complete, this is probably a good time to mention again that, increasingly, the monthly totals are considerably more volatile than the quarterly totals. The chart here shows how the monthly "noise" looks like when superimposed over quarterly unit sales.

The calendar plays a major role. March was a five-ship-week month; April, four. Back in the days when sales charts reported preorders, that fact generally didn't matter that much, because publishers spread their usual monthly offerings out across the entire month (or skipped the final week altogether). But now the charts are reporting comics that actually shipped, meaning that five-week month has one more ship week in which to capture the premiere of a comic book solicited for sale in a previous month but which shipped late. And, of course, it's one more week for shipped reorders to fit into the charts.

Over the last six years, retailers have received 6.29 million Top 300 comic books from Diamond in four-week months — and 6.99 million Top 300 comic books in five-week months. Since 2004, final unit orders for Top 300 comics are 11% higher in five-week months. Why not 25%, given the extra week? That's the effect of the monthly cycle, as mentioned before: All things being equal, most titles are only supposed to have one new issue per month. The extra week is capturing extra reorders and monthly titles which either shipped out of their place in the calendar, or non-monthlies which simply had a greater chance of landing in that month because of the extra week.

So quarterly aggregate totals tend to be considerably less volatile than the monthly totals. But there's another factor: The third month in a quarter tends to have slightly higher sales than the other two quarters. Looking at all the completed quarters since 2003 when Diamond began reporting final orders, average unit sales for the first and second months of each quarter were nearly identical. But third-month orders were nearly 2.5% higher. That's not a lot, and maybe it's not significant; if you close off the sample to very recent years, the first months of quarters tend to do better. But we can imagine why third months might see more orders: Some publishers may have a fiscal incentive for getting a book to market before a quarter ends; there's also the fact that the final months of a quarter are more likely to have a fifth ship week than the middle months of the quarter, where February very rarely gets a fifth week. (Although if Diamond closes between Christmas and New Year's, that may change the calculation some.)

All of this is basically a prescription for looking at wider ranges of time when evaluating market performance. Comics sales charts are monthly for a reason, but sometimes — as I suspect will be the case this month — the longer-term picture will have more to tell us.

Iron Man comic book sales through history

2010-05-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

With the release of the second Iron Man film, we're finally restoring a feature on the site that was first posted when the previous film came out, but was lost in our server crash a ways back: postal statement sales figures for the series, complete for the 20th Century. This version is more detailed, providing print runs, subscription totals, and other information for the core Iron Man title and its immediate descendants.

When Marvel renegotiated its restrictive agreement with its distributor in 1968, it was suddenly able to double its number of offerings. It did so by drawing upon the characters in several of its "double feature" titles. Iron Man and Captain America fissioned from Tales of Suspense, with Captain America continuting the original series' numbering. Iron Man began with a fresh #1, only after a weird one-month gap during which the feature was paired with the Tales to Astonish orphan, Sub-Mariner, in the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner one-shot.

Marvel did not publish sales figures for the title for a very long time, but by the time it did, Iron Man was a mid-range seller along with the other Avengers titles. The series peaked above 200,000 copies in the mid-1980s during David Michelinie and Bob Layton's first run on the title; it approached that level again several times before collapsing during the market recession of the mid-1990s.

Marvel addressed the decline then — and several more times — with the same strategy: restarting the series from a new #1. The "Heroes Reborn" volume 2 and the "Heroes Return" volume 3 resuscitated sales (this run included John's year on the title), as did the Warren Ellis Volume 4 in 2004. But unlike with Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, Marvel has yet to permanently reunify the series into a single numbering. The current flagship Iron Man title, Invincible Iron Man, shipped its 25th issue in April.

It's apparent that the same postal permit was used for the series during its first three volumes; subscribers for the previous series were simply rolled into the next one. However, we don't know if Statements of Ownerships have appeared in the post-2004 versions, so we're reluctant to call the file on the original title closed. If you've spotted Statements in the later runs, please let us know.

Blackest Night #0 leads April 2010 comics sales

2010-05-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

Brightest Day followed Blackest Night into the top slot on the charts, according to preliminary data released for April by Diamond Comic Distributors. The Top 100 Comics and Trade Paperbacks for April as ordered by comics shops in North America, along with market shares and order index numbers, appear on Comichron here.

Brightest Day #0 joined with the new Flash title, Green Lantern #53, and Batman and Robin #11 to give DC the top four slots on the chart. Marvel led in both dollar and unit market shares overall, helped by the top-ordered graphic novel, the hardcover Kick-Ass compilation. It was the second month in a row for the title to top the charts; the film based on the comic book released in mid-April. There's no new Siege issue in April (apart from the tie-ins).

At this stage we can tell that both the median and most common cover prices of comic books in the Top 100 was $3.99, with the weighted average cost being $3.47. March saw the first time the most common price of comics offered reached $3.99; April seems set to repeat that.

Full estimates will be appear here on the site later, after all data has been released; judging from what we've seen so far, it looks like a solid month but perhaps not quite what the five-ship-week March was. On the other hand, April 2009 wasn't that noteworthy, beyond seeing Detective Comics top the charts for what was likely the first time ever. The comparatives aren't that steep.

Free Comic Book Day 2010 is Saturday

2010-04-30T12:06:00.000-05:00

by T.M. Haley

Free Comic Book Day is being held this Saturday for its ninth year. This year publishers and retailers have joined with Diamond Comic Distributors to give away more than 30 unique comic titles, as well as a Marvel HeroClix figurine. You can find the full list of titles here.

Signing schedules can also be found on their website. If your local comic shop is not listed, give them a call for a complete list of events and signings. (And Comichron's John Jackson Miller will be at Galaxy Comics in downtown Stevens Point, Wis., from 1-3. Hope to see you there!)

You can read more about the origins of Free Comic Book Day — as well as its original purpose — here. There's also a handy FAQ page on the official website.

March 2010: Flashbacks to the Past

2010-04-29T10:24:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

Following the report on comics orders for March 2010, here's a look back at what was going on in previous years...

March 2009's top seller was Marvel's Dark Avengers #3, the top seller for 2009 with estimated first-month Diamond orders of 96,532 copies. It was the first month (and, to date, one of only two months) in which the top-selling comic book had fewer than 100,000 copies in first-month orders. Watchmen's film release dominated the month's comics news. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

March 2005's top-seller was DC's Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1, a promotionally priced dollar comic book with Diamond first-month orders of nearly 200,000 copies. Among normally priced comics, New Avengers #4 led the market with nearly 155,000 copies. Check out the sales chart here.

March 2000's top-seller was X-Men #100, with estimated Diamond orders of more than 144,800 copies. X-Men #100 was the start of Marvel's Revolution relaunch to promote the upcoming first X-Men movie release.

It marked the beginning of many changes in the X-Men run, notably new costume designs and a six-month time jump in each issue. The Revolution rebrand would continue until July of 2001, when the series would be once again revamped by a new entourage of authors. Check out the sales chart here.

March 1995's top seller at Diamond and at Capital City Distribution was Marvel's Amazing X-Men #3, continuing the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline. Capital reported preorders of approximately 104,300 copies. After a dip in sales of the second issue in February, the third issue sold even more preorders than the first; this is reflective of the fact that retailers, ordering two months in advance, had by this point seen the initial sales from the first month of the "Age of Apocalypse."

March was otherwise a tumultuous month at the beginning of the Distribution Wars. On March 3, 1995, Marvel announced that beginning with July-shipping product, Heroes World would become the exclusive distributor of Marvel comic books to the direct market. Capital City promptly filed suit under the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law; Capital settled with Marvel later in the month, gaining the right to distribute Marvel comics for a slightly longer time.

In the middle of the month, DC held its fourth annual retailer meeting; attending retailers were given few clues as to DC's ultimate plans. Marvel began meeting with retailers itself on March 24, with the first of its "Marvelution" meetings in New York City to announce trade terms.

And in what remains one of the more puzzling acquisitions of financier Ronald Perelman's shopping spree, Marvel purchased trading-card publisher Skybox for approximately $150 million. Skybox was a relatively recent startup in a field that was already suffering hard times; Marvel consolidated its operations with Fleer, which it had purchased earlier.

March 1990's top seller at Diamond and Capital City was Legends of the Dark Knight #7, the second issue of Grant Morrison's "Gothic" storyline. Capital's orders on the issue were 95,750 copies; overall sales were likely closer to the 400,000- to 500,000-copy range.

March 1985's top seller at Capital City was Marvel's Secret Wars II #1, the shorter sequel to 1984's best-selling comics series. Capital's orders were approximately 85,000 copies, meaning overall sales were probably in the half-million copy neighborhood.

Jim Shooter on Marvel Whitmans, the direct market, and more

2010-04-18T22:52:00.005-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Just back from the inaugural Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, where in promoting my own work I got to meet Jim Shooter, there to promote the new Gold Key heroes line of comics for Dark Horse. Shooter is a key figure in comics history, having tenures in various capacities with DC, Valiant, Defiant, Broadway, and, of course, Marvel, where he was editor-in-chief for much of the 1980s. Needless to say, I'd saved up quite a few questions about past publications — and he was kind (and patient!) enough to answer them. It wasn't in the nature of an interview, but I don't think he'd mind if I shared the following answers here. Some confirmations, some new details:

• The Marvel Whitmans. In my column in Comics Buyer's Guide #1609, I discussed what had been a long-held misunderstanding by many collectors — that the so-called "Whitman" Marvels were all reprints. These were the copies with the issue numbers and prices in "fat diamonds"; Nick Pope's excellent record of them is here. Shooter said the program was developed specifically for Western Publishing and its Whitman bagged edition program, and that they were definitely printed simultaneously with the Curtis newsstand editions. The only reprints are those that are labeled as such, like Star Wars adaptation copies.

When I asked about reports of direct market retailers having bought copies from the Whitman run, Shooter said he did not believe that any dealers received any copies from it. Phil Seuling's direct-market pioneering Seagate was getting Curtis newsstand copies, he said, which was why the move to a special non-newsstand trade dress was eventually made in 1979. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the anecdotal reports: since the logo for that was a squashed diamond shape (and, reportedly, inspiration for the name Diamond Comic Distributors), it's possible some retailers were remembering receiving later issues not from the 1977 to early 1979 Whitman run.

• Star Wars is why there are no other Whitman Marvels cover-dated in early 1978. One reason I'd always believed that the "fat-diamond" copies were not a direct market printing was that there's a three month gap where there are no Marvels at all, except for Star Wars. The timing coincided with the massive, million-copy selling adaptation of the movie, which, he says, saved Marvel when it was in dire straits. My guess in the CBG column was that Whitman had simply chucked its usual printings of Marvel monthlies to do nothing but Star Wars copies; Shooter confirms this was the case. Whitman kept coming back asking for 300,000 more copies — and then more again. I didn't get into specific numbers for each printing, but this does seem to resolve that question. (There are discernable variations between at least two of the reprintings; the interior indicia-only version would seem to be the earliest, with later ones having the word "reprint" on the cover corner box.)

• Dazzler and the direct-only titles. Something Shooter did have an exact number for was the number of copies the first Marvel direct-market only comic book sold: Dazzler #1 had orders of 428,000 copies, he said. It was ironic, he said, because an issue featuring a new, untried character had been deliberately chosen for the test so as not to antagonize Marvel's newsstand accounts. If anything, the enormous orders that the title received only served to underscore even further the enormous potential the emerging comics shop market had.

I also asked about the trio of titles that eventually moved from newsstand exclusively to the direct market — Ka-Zar, Micronauts, and Moon Knight. The selection of the titles was specifically motivated by their relative strength in the comics shops, he said; naturally, Marvel was able to look at numbers from both markets. It's a relatively early case of target marketing using direct-market sales figures as a guide.

• First issues. In the 1950s, we saw that many publishers chose not to begin new series with #1s, completely contrary to today's market logic! Newsstand dealers and readers, the story goes, were reluctant to buy into untried titles — and so we saw titles started at artificially high numbers, or adopting the numbering of other completely unrelated titles. I had asked Paul Levitz about how real this effect was and how long it persisted in comics back in my column in CBG #1623. Part was conventional wisdom and part was rooted in logistics, he said; because there were so many independent distribution agencies to deal with, getting a new title prepared for the market was a complicated, manual process — and up through the 1960s, it was probably easier to change a title's name and content without renumbering than it was to set up a new product in the system.

Shooter said he believed it was probably conventional wisdom that the staff of Atlas — a Marvel precursor — bought into thoroughly, and certainly Atlas had a huge number of comics starting at odd numbers, with titles changing names repeatedly. Whether the bias against first issues was really much in effect on the part of the newsstand distributors — and he was skeptical of that — he figured that it was almost certainly no longer the thinking by the late 1960s, around the time that Marvel's distribution deal changed allowing it to launch several new series, from Iron Man to Sub-Mariner.

Those are just a few of the topics touched on — but they include some things I've wondered about for a long time. I appreciated him taking the time to discuss them!

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March 2010 comics sales jump, quarter finishes up overall

2010-04-14T19:20:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

If it takes a quarter of growth to end a recession, count this one over — at least in comics. While the market notched some positive quarters in the wide overall category last year, those gains weren't always reflected in the narrower categories, like periodical unit sales. This quarter was different. Orders placed for comic books through Diamond Comic Distributors leapt in March — 14% for Top 300 Comics Units, 20% for Top 300 Comics Dollars —resulting in a first quarter that was up in all categories except for the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks grouping. And that category's sales were pumped up by the Watchmen movie. Click to see our March 2010 estimates.

As individual months go, March 2009 didn't put up big numbers to compare against. It was, as reported here, the first month in which the top-selling comic book did not break 100,000 copies in first-month orders through Diamond — and while the market got some mileage out of the Watchmen movie, a lot of those related sales to retailers had already taken place. But apart from the Obama Spider-Man comic book — the best-selling comic book of the 2000s — there wasn't much going on in the rest of the quarter, either. The first quarter of 2010 has had, among other things, Blackest Night, Siege, and, this month, the Twilight manga. Strong quarters in comics tend to require "tentpole" projects of one kind or another, and this quarter had them.

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

March 2010: 6.05 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -10%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +4%
YEAR TO DATE: 17.06 million copies, +3% vs. 2009, -3% vs. 2005, +1% vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

March 2010: $21.29 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +20%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +12%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +39%
YEAR TO DATE: $59.35 million, +6% vs. 2009, +19% vs. 2005, +35% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2010: $6.36 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -10%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -9%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +44%
YEAR TO DATE: $16.71 million; -9% versus 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2010: $27.65 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +11%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +8%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +39%
YEAR TO DATE: $76.07 million; -2% vs. 2009

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

March 2010: $35 million ($38.5 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +13%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +11%
YEAR TO DATE: $96.99 million, +6% vs. 2009, +19% vs. 2005

As with last month, the overall figure for the month's total comic book, trade paperback, and magazine orders is preliminary and subject to later revision, but it does look to be in positive territory as well.

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.55; the average comic ordered cost $3.52. The median price — the middle price of all 300 comics — was $3.50. $3.99 was the most common price of comics appearing in the Top 300 for the first time ever, as reported here yesterday.

While comics prices have been increasing, probably the easiest way to subtract inflation out is to look at the number of units sold. We know that the Top 300 comics sold more copies in both March and the first quarter, but it also appears that the comics off the chart are doing better, as well. Looking at the 300th place comics shows us that the bottom book on the chart has nearly doubled in unit sales from March 2009 to March 2010, from 1,962 copies to 3,706 copies.

The Flashbacks column will be along later. This weekend, I'll be at C2E2 in Chicago where I'll be appearing at the Dark Horse booth; check here for updated times. (And our thanks to Dark Horse, which mentioned Comichron in a profile appearing in all its April issues!)

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$3.99 now the most common cover price for comic books

2010-04-13T14:14:00.003-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Throughout the last few years, we've been reporting the slow and steady climb of comic-book cover prices — but we've always also been able to say that the most common cover price for comic books offered by Diamond Comic Distributors has remained $2.99, even in months when the average cover price was climbing as much as 55¢ more. No more. In March 2010 — a month that is looking to be a very good month for comics sales, for which our sales estimates will be along soon — the record was broken. More comic books in Diamond's Top 300 were priced at $3.99 than $2.99.

It's still close: 130 comic books were priced at $3.99, with 124 priced at $2.99. The intermediary step, $3.50, continues to be bypassed with only 16 comics at that level.

It is mainly a psychological barrier, as the average price of comic books offered was $3.55 — and the average price of all comics retailers ordered was $3.52. The average price will not be $3.99 until a lot more comics are priced higher still — and that does not look likely any time soon. Only eight comics were priced at $4.99 in the March Top 300. It's also possible the most common price might drop back to $2.99 in some later month. But it is a noteworthy moment, right back with the first time most comics were priced at 15¢, 50¢ or a dollar. Four bucks is the new four bits, kids...

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March 2010 top-sellers: Blackest Night finishes on top

2010-04-08T16:12:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

DC's raise-the-dead event comic book Blackest Night shipped in the last week of March, but interest in the Geoff Johns series was enough to make it the top comic book ordered by comics shops in the month, according to top-sellers lists released by Diamond Comic Distributors. The top-sellers lists, along with a first look at market shares, can be found here.

All eight issues of Blackest Night took the top spot; only the skip month of January prevented the series from racking up those months consecutively. It worked the same way for Secret Invasion's eight issues in 2008. Will the string of #1s continue? The first issue of the follow-on-series, Brightest Day #0 is slotted for April release — and while many #0 issues are promotional editions priced too low to be counter in Diamond's rankings, the book is a 56-page issue at $3.99, so it definitely will be in the mix.

The hardcover for Kick-Ass took the top spot in the bound-edition list, in advance of the movie. The Twilight manga from Yen Press came in tenth. The first comics adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's novel series generated significant interest in the mass market, and the amount of direct-market retailer demand was subject to much speculation. How well retailers gauged demand for this crossover project will become more apparent when April reorders appear.

Analysis of the full Diamond charts will appear here after they are released.

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February 2010: Flashbacks to the Past

2010-03-29T16:09:00.003-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

Following the report on comics orders for February 2010, here's a look back at what was going on in previous years...

February 2009's top seller was once again Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man #583, the top seller for 2009 with estimated Diamond year-end orders of 530,500 copies. Sales for the issue were estimated at 148,778 copies for the month. Check out the detailed analysis of the month's sales here — and sales chart here.

February 2005's top-seller was Marvel's New Avengers #3 with Diamond first-month orders of approximately 149,000 copies. This marked the third consecutive month that New Avengers was at the top of the rankings. Check out the sales chart here.

February 2000's top-seller was Uncanny X-Men #379, with estimated Diamond orders of more than 108,400 copies. Marvel's Punisher relaunch proved one of the better sellers in what was, overall, a down month near the very bottom of the industry's post-1993 recession. Check out the sales chart here.

February 1995's top seller at Diamond and at Capital City Distribution was Marvel's Amazing X-Men #2, continuing the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline. Capital reported preorders of 89,775 copies. The parent title's Statement of Ownership reports monthly sales averaging at 332,889 copies; this one issue was likely higher.

February 1990's top seller at Diamond and Capital City was Legends of the Dark Knight #6, beginning Grant Morrison's "Gothic" storyline. Capital's orders on the issue were 106,650 copies; overall, sales were likely in the 400,000- to 500,000-copy range. The novelty "compuer-generated" graphic novel Batman: Digital Justice was the top-selling trade at Capital City, with orders of 32,500 copies.

Capital City reported sales for 308 comic books and 35 trade paperbacks in the month. The average cover price for new comics was $2.04, and the average comic book actually ordered cost $1.54. All told, Capital reported selling 2.85 million comic books for $4.38 million. Trade sales totaled $1.17 million, mostly copies of Digital Justice.

February 1985's top seller at Capital City was Uncanny X-Men #194, which sold about 6% more copies at Capital City than the slightly more expensive Crisis on Infinite Earths #3.

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Dueling auctions continue: Action #1 goes for $1.5 million

2010-03-29T14:57:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley

Before last month, no comic book had sold for more than $1 million. Since then, there have been three. ComicConnect, which kicked off things last month with a $1 million sale of Action Comics #1 (the first appearance of Superman) announced today that it has sold a higher-graded copy for $1.5 million.

Last month's copy was graded 8.0 (Very Fine) by Comics Guaranty; this copy was graded 8.5 (VF+). That's an incredibly subtle difference in condition, one most civilians (and many people in the business!) wouldn't be able to see. According to the CGC Census, this copy is the highest rated unrestored copy of the book in existence; there is a restored 9.0, but many collectors do not find restored copies as desirable.

This beats the $1,075,500 record set a little over one month ago (and only three days after the first Action #1 sale) by Heritage Comic Auctions for an 8.0 copy of Detective Comics #27, the first appearance of Batman.

According to ComicConnect, for 50 years, the comic book was buried in a stack of old movie magazines from the 1930s. “Because it was tucked inside a magazine, it was well protected all those years,” said Stephen Fishler, company founder. “That’s why it’s in such remarkable condition.”

While The Comics Chronicles is not an aftermarket site (although John is an Overstreet advisor), these moments are notable reminders of how the comics of the past continue to attract interest in the present. We are talking, again, of an appreciation rate of more than 1 billion percent over cover price. Not many collectibles have that kind of return on investment after 70 years!

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February 2010 comics orders show little movement

2010-03-15T19:10:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Just back from Midsouthcon, where we had some interesting panels on the past, present, and future of comics. So it'll be a bit before I get all the pieces of the February 2010 report online — the Flashbacks section will be on the way in a bit, and the Overall sales estimate will be refined. But for now, you can see the February 2010 estimates for comics ordered by retailers here on the site.

February usually finds comics sales in a deep freeze. This month had at least something going on in that both Marvel and DC's main event titles, Siege and Blackest Night, had new issues out, but in sum it was the weakest month for Top 300 comics unit and dollar orders since last March, and the worst February for unit sales since 2004. And while the Top 300 trade paperbacks actually topped the dollar value reported last February — that even during a huge Watchmen month — that month's sales are suspected to have been underreported due to Diamond's warehouse move.

The full backlist, as with last month, is believed to have pushed Overall Comics, Trade Paperbacks, and Magazine dollar orders into positive territory, but that again is a preliminary figure. I suspect the final total may come in a bit lower, but in any event we're probably looking at another month where the total difference from last year isn't that large. (Update: The final estimates are in, with slight downward revisions as expected — less than 1% difference, overall. The estimates appear below.)

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

February 2010: 5.38 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -4%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -8%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -1%
YEAR TO DATE: 11.01 million copies, -2% vs. 2009, +2% vs. 2005, unchanged vs. 2000

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

February 2010: $18.70 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -3%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +12%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +29%
YEAR TO DATE: $38.06 million, -1% vs. 2009, +24% vs. 2005, +32% vs. 2000

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2010: $5.1 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +1%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -5%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +33%
YEAR TO DATE: $10.35 million; -8% versus 2009

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2010: $23.81 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -2%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +9%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +30%
YEAR TO DATE: $48.42 million; -2% when just comparing just the Top 100 each month

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

February 2010: $29.98 million ($33.16 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +4%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +13%
YEAR TO DATE: $61.99 million, +3% vs. 2009, +24% vs. 2005

The average comic offered in the Top 300 cost $3.54; the average comic ordered cost $3.47. The median price — the middle price of all 300 comics — was $3.50. $2.99 was the most common price of comics appearing in the Top 300.

March holds some added interest in that the first Yen Press Twilight manga is in the mix. It's unclear what the Direct Market impact will be, and at $10, the market will have to move quite a few to move the needle significantly. But March 2009 was, as noted, a lighter month overall, with the top comic book selling under 100,000 copies for the first time in comics history — and there remain issues about how complete the reporting of trades were that month. So there's room for a book making a big splash to make a bigger difference year-to-year.

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Blackest Night #7 tops February 2010 comics charts

2010-03-05T16:39:00.002-06:00

by John Jackson Miller

This time last year, the Obama inaugural issue of Amazing Spider-Man was doing something likely unprecedented for a single issue of a comic book by repeating in the top slot, two months in a row. That didn't happen this time out, but we did have another repeat of sorts: DC's Blackest Night, after a month with no new issue on the racks, retook the top position in February. Click to see the Top 10 comics for February 2010, released today by Diamond.

Every issue of the DC series has ranked #1 in comics shops for the month in which it was released. It's not the first time a series has had every issue top the charts with a one-month hiatus in the middle: as we can see here, the first seven issues of Secret Invasion consecutively topped the monthly charts in 2008 only to miss a month before Secret Invasion #8 closed out in the top position.

Marvel's Siege, which topped the charts in January, placed second with its second issue. Four of the top ten comics were priced at $3.99, with the rest at $2.99.

The latest Fables trade paperback by Bill Willingham topped the comics and graphic novels charts. On the market share side of things, the ranking was the same for both unit and dollar sales: Marvel, followed by DC, Dark Horse, Image, and IDW.

Diamond's full Top 300 tables and our estimates should be along in a few days.

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First Batman comic book tops three-day old record with $1,075,500 bid

2010-02-25T17:08:00.002-06:00

by John Jackson Miller

It's a strange week when you can say a million dollars being paid for a comic book isn't unexpected, but that's exactly how it's played out this week. When ComicConnect announced its private sale of Action Comics #1 for $1 million earlier this week, one industry observer I spoke with said it was likely timed to get in front of the scheduled close of an auction today by Heritage Comic Auctions for the first appearance of Batman in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) — which the insider said was expected to become the first million-dollar comic book.

The 8.0 (Very Fine) copy of the first appearance of Superman indeed set the record as the first million-dollar comic book, but the copy of Detective #27 in the same condition now holds the record for highest price paid for a comic book. Today's auction closed for $1,075,500, which includes a 19.5% Buyer's Premium.

It's worth noting that these two sales represent appreciation over the initial 10¢ purchase price of 1 billion percent! There aren't many commodities that have appreciated to such a degree.

Which comic book is more rare today? CGC has graded more copies of Detective #27 — 45 copies, less than half unrestored, versus 42 for Action #1 — although since owners can remove books from their holders and resubmit them, those figures may not be representative of what's out there.

We are able to guess which book may have been more plentiful when it came out. Last year we reported on Audit Bureau of Circulation estimates for the Detective Comics Group for January 1939 — and as I noted, the May cover-dated #27 may well have come out in January. The Detective, More Fun, Adventure, and Action Comics issues for the month all added up to sales of 709,379 copies, so we're on our own to figure out which titles sold more than the others.

There are a few dynamics that we can observe from other titles that may advise us. First, in the 1950s, higher-numbered issues were generally more desirable to retailers, since they connoted longevity and an existing audience — but I'm not sure that dynamic was in effect in the late 1930s, when there weren't so many titles fighting for rack and shelf space yet. We see in Famous Funnies some declines as issue numbers increased, but that may also be attributable to the subject matter and the vagaries of that particular publisher's distribution. So it's not clear how the distributor draws — the number of copies distributors took to ship to newsstands — on a lower-numbered Action would compare to a higher-numbered Detective.

Comparing the numbering of the May cover-dated issues, we see which titles were around the longest:

• More Fun Comics #43

• Adventure Comics #38

• Detective Comics #27

• Action Comics #12

Adventure had begun as New Comics, becoming New Adventure and finally just Adventure as action comics came more into vogue; More Fun, beginning as the oldest DC comic book, New Fun, had dropped humor covers in early 1938. My sense is that probably the twelfth Superman outsold the first Batman despite Action Comics being a relative newcomer — and that the twenty-seventh Detective might have undersold longer-established More Fun and Adventure, meaning it'd have sold fewer than the 177,345 copies that an even four-way split may suggest. That's certainly not reflected in the number of issues found and graded for those books, of course, but nothing nearly as interesting as the debut of Batman went on in those issues of Adventure and More Fun!

It's all guesswork, to a great degree; the Audit Bureau simply didn't break out the individual titles. But there's not really room in the reported aggregate number for any of them to top a quarter-million copies, and my hunch is that 12 months was enough for even the glacially-responding newsstand market to recognize that Superman was a powerful draw. He'd have his own second title (simply called Superman) in a month or so after Batman's debut. So Action #12 very likely outsold Detective #27 — and my hunch is that Action #1 probably did, too. But today, in the aftermarket competition, Detective #27 has taken the prize — for now!

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Million-dollar Action #1 copy was once one-in-200,000

2010-02-22T19:41:00.006-06:00

by John Jackson Miller

I've observed here that the comics industry isn't so much "recession-proof" as it is insulated from external market forces. When things go very right — or very wrong — it's usually been due to internal factors. The reason the "recession-proof" term started to be associated with comics has nothing to do with new comics publishing at all — but, rather, the secondary market for truly scarce comics. And that, as we see with today's announcement of a $1 million private sale for Action Comics #1, seems to be showing its usual vigor in the face of broader economic problems. Where Superman's first appearance is concerned, money remains not much of an object.

The sale, brokered by Stephen Fishler and Vincent Zurzolo's ComicConnect.com (an affiliate of Metropolis Comics), involves a CGC 8.0 (Very Fine) copy of Action #1 that had been in a private collection for 15 years. And while it's probably not, as Zurzolo says, "the single most important event in comic book history” — the actual creation of Action #1 would be on a list of candidates for that — it's still pretty big news. An Action #1 in 6.0 (Fine) went for $317,200 last year; this is more than three times that. It's been known for some time there was a standing $1 million offer for the best-condition copy — and while this isn't quite the best copy, it's awfully close.

How long has a million-dollar offer been around? At least since the summer of 2001, when Richard Evans, owner of Houston's Bedrock City Comics, mentioned it at a forum on the aftermarket that I organized at Comic Con International: San Diego. "At some point," Evans said, "certain comics are going to reach a price ceiling where it they are going to become museum quality items. If the guy who owned the nicest Action #1 put it on the table, well, there’s already an offer of $1 million. I don’t think it would be any stretch of the imagination to believe that that guy’s offer is low." (The forum in its entirety appeared in Comics Buyer's Guide #1451.) Now, there's no telling whether the ComicConnect buyer is the same potential buyer mentioned back then, or someone else — but it's clearly not the first time Action's been picked as the first book to hit the $1 million mark.

The news release states that "only about 100 copies Action Comics #1 remain in existence, and of those 100, only two [including the one sold] have received a grading of 8.0." The CGC Census lists 42 copies of Action #1, including an unrestored 8.5 (VF+) and three restored copies above 8.0 (one 9.0 and one 8.5) — but restored copies are not generally as commercially desireable, and it's unclear whether the population report includes duplication due to comics being removed from their holders. That said, 100 existent copies overall sounds about right to me — my instinct is that even with this kind of high-profile book, probably as many copies are unslabbed and/or undiscovered as are graded by CGC.

How many copies of Action #1 originally existed? According to Audit Bureau of Circulation data detailed here, in January 1939, several months after Action #1 was released, all the issues on sale from the Detective Comics Group had combined sales of 709,379 copies. That group in that month for the ABC included four titles:

• Detective Comics • More Fun Comics • Action Comics • Adventure Comics

...and any issues that shipped that month would combine for the 709,379. Now, we can't really link up specific issue numbers to these titles, because the cover months and the auditing months might not be the same. But we know that at this time, all four books were monthly. So we're looking at a four-way split, and so by January 1939 — when, even with post-dated covers, Action probably would still have been in high single digit issue numbers, the title wasn't likely selling much more than 250,000 copies. Newsstand draws on the first issue likely would probably have been less, probably landing sales closer to 200,000.

This isn't to say that that many four-color lottery tickets are still out there — comics were notoriously disposable in those days, and interceding paper drives did away with many of our pop cultural artifacts. If anything, Action #1 is among the most hunted-for-and-found comics, so if the 100 copies figure is accurate, we're looking at a "survival rate" of 0.05% — and that's of copies in any condition. But there are reasons hunting for old comics remains an important part of our comics-collecting pastime — and stories like this are one of them. Comics are about reading, sure enough — but if you're headed to an estate sale, it doesn't hurt to bring along an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide just in case...

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