The Comichron: The Blog of The Comics Chronicles

April 2013 comics sales big, even without blockbusters

2013-05-06T11:50:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Diamond Comic Distributors has released the main wave of comics sales statistics for April 2013 comics sales, and the estimates are now online here at Comichron. Click to see Comichron's estimates for April 2013 comics sales.

As reported here on Friday, North American comics shop retailers ordered just over $41 million worth of comic books and graphic novels in April 2013, an increase of more than 18% over the same month last year. That figure brings the year-to-date total to $163 million, up more than $25 million from 2012 at this point. The market would just top $500 million for the year if the next eight months were completely flat.

Batman #19 from DC led the comics sales list in the month, with first-month orders of more than 132,000 copies. This is, in fact, the lowest figure for a top-seller since May 2011, as we can see from the list of top-sellers by month; it's significant that the month is as far ahead as it is, without having a major blockbuster issue. Marvel placed several Age of Ultron issues in the Top 10.

The Top 300 graphic novels again posted a huge number — up 30% over the same dollar value from last year — but as with last month, there is a significant caution. Marvel offered many hardcovers to the market at a deep discount during the tracking period, contributing to the total value. But Diamond calculates its market shares based on wholesale value — what retailers paid, not the cover prices of the items they bought — so we do not see an outsized influence of those sales on the market shares.

As usual, Diamond also released lists of its Top 50 Small Publisher comics and graphic novels; many of these fell outside the Top 300 lists, and have been added to Comichron's tables. (Don't ask to see the missing entries, because they're from the larger publishers and weren't on the lists Diamond released.) The graphic novel list contains data this month going almost to 500th place, where Diamond was still selling about 300 copies of each title.

You can see what was selling in comparative months of the past in our April Flashbacks column, which is now online. April was the 20th anniversary of the return of Superman from the dead, the top month for comics orders in the history of the Direct Market.

The aggregate sales:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

April 2013: 6.79 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +11%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +1%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +13%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -3%
YEAR TO DATE: 27.72 million copies, +16% vs. 2012, +7% vs. 2008, +20% vs. 2003, unchanged vs. 1998

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
April 2013 versus one year ago this month: +11.71%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.85%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

April 2013: $24.28 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +13%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +45%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +38%
YEAR TO DATE: $99.48 million, +20% vs. 2012, +22% vs. 2008, +54% vs. 2003, +48% vs. 1998

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
April 2013 versus one year ago this month: +13.87%
YEAR TO DATE: +19.44%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2013: $8.77 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +30%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +10%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +10%
YEAR TO DATE: $31.55 million, +27% vs. 2012

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
April 2013 versus one year ago this month: +14.83%
YEAR TO DATE: +15.85%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2013: $33.05 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +18%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +11%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +26%
YEAR TO DATE: $131.02 million, +22% vs. 2012

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
April 2013 versus one year ago this month: +14.18%
YEAR TO DATE: +18.32%

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

April 2013: approximately $41.11 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +12%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +54%
YEAR TO DATE: $163.05 million, +18% vs. 2012

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.55; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $3.58. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.

IDW once again saw its highest dollar market share yet, 7.54%: the update has been made to the list of Diamond Exclusive Era records.

The pages for monthly top sellers and 300th place titles across time have been updated.

Be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook.

Personal plug department: Be sure to check out Overdraft: The Orion Offensive, my new Kindle Serial with 47North. A complete science-fiction novel delivered in eight biweekly episodes, all for only $1.99! Download now and receive all episodes published to date, with automatic delivery of the rest.

April 2013 Comics Flashbacks: Superman returns from the dead, 20 years later

2013-05-03T20:11:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

With April 2013 comics sales data just posted, let's take a look at comics sales in previous Aprils. Again, I've added a snapshot of what one major retailer is charging for the top-sellers; Comichron isn't a price guide site, but it's interesting to see how once-popular titles held up.

As always, this reflects what Diamond Comic Distributors (and, in earlier times, other distributors) sold to retailers, not what the retailers themselves sold. In recent times, retail inventory is much more tightly controlled, so the numbers are more representative of actual sales. In the distant past, not so much.

1 YEAR AGO

April 2012 sales figures were reported the same weekend that the Avengers movie opened to a record $200.3 million in the United States. So there was already a lot of buzz about the good fortunes of the comics industry at the time. Retailer orders for comic books and graphic novels in April 2012 rose 15% in North America versus the year prior, and several titles pushed past the 100,000 copy mark.

Marvel's Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 led the market with orders of nearly 159,000 copies. By the end of the year, those orders were up to 200,300 copies, making it the 5th best-selling title of the year. (Click to see the full list.)

As of this posting, the main version of Avengers vs. X-Men #2 had an aftermarket price of $18 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

Image's Walking Dead trade collections completely dominated their category, giving Image an 8.6% market share, its highest since February 2003.

Click to read the original Comichron analysis for the month. And check out the sales chart for the month here.

5 YEARS AGO

April 2008 saw Marvel’s Secret Invasion #1 leading the pack with 250,000 copies ordered in its initial month to kick off the summer event season. Later orders brought it up to at least 263,000 copies, making it the 12th best-selling comic book of the decade of the 2000s. (See the whole list here.)

As of this posting, the main version of Secret Invasion #1 had an aftermarket price of $2.70 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

The Marvel trade Secret Invasion Infiltration had orders of approximately 7,250 copies in its first month to lead the trade paperbacks list.

Click to read the original Comichron analysis for the month. And check out the sales chart for the month here.

10 YEARS AGO

April 2003 was Diamond's third month of reporting final orders rather than preorders, and in that month, Jim Lee’s "Hush" phenomenon continued to roll on. Batman #614 topped the charts with 153,600 copies sold to retailers in its first month; it would continue to pile up reorders afterward. Later orders brought it up to at least 165,200 copies, making it the 66th best-selling comic book of the decade of the 2000s. (See the whole list here.)

It was only one of three titles to sell more than 100,000 copies. The 10,000-copy mark was at 180th place; the 300th place comic sold only 1,600 copies.

At the time of this posting, Batman #614 had an aftermarket price of $2 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

Diamond only published reports for its Top 50 trades in 2003 — so to compare apples to apples, the 2008 numbers have been pared back to the Top 50 to show a clear comparison.

The Batman: Hush hardcover had first-month orders of 7,300 copies, slightly eclipsing the more expensive Orbiter hardcover with its 7,200 ordered copies. A bigger dollar performer than either was the third-place item, the $49.95 Hellboy: Art of Mike Mignola.

Check out the sales chart for the month here.

15 YEARS AGO

The month of April 1998 saw Uncanny X-Men #356 as the market leader at Diamond, topping the charts with 149,500 copies preordered. Eight comics had preorders in the six figures, while the 10,000-copy mark was at 178th place.

At the time of this posting, Uncanny X-Men #258 had an aftermarket price of $3.30 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

Significant for tracking purposes is that April 1998 was the first month in which Diamond reported indexed preorder figures for its Top 25 trade paperbacks, permitting us our first ten-year comparisons this month.

Interestingly, dollar sales for the same grouping of items more than doubled in the following decade — although part of the comparison is skewed because in April 1998, Diamond was still working out what belonged on the trade paperback list and what belonged with the comics. The top item, for example, was the $6.95 Verotik Illustrated #3, with its preorders of 8,600 copies; where the top traditional trade was probably Image’s $9.95 Kabuki: Skin Deep, with preorders of approximately 4,200 copies. Diamond even included a $4 Vampirella ashcan in the April 1998 list. In later tables, Diamond would tend to move such items into the comics listing.

DC bested Marvel 25.25% to 23.31% in dollar shares at Diamond, the second time it had done so since Diamond began its “final order” share reporting in October 1997. DC had 71 comics in the Top 300, to the bankruptcy-limited Marvel’s 51.

Check out the sales chart for the month here.

20 YEARS AGO

Twenty years ago, April 1993 saw the peak of the early 1990s comics boom — and what was likely the single most financially lucrative month in the history of the industry. When Superman “died” in November 1992, the result was a $30 million dollar day in the business — quite comparable to blockbuster movie openings at the time. With Superman set to return in April 1993, retailers ordered big in an attempt not to be caught short of copies.

The result, according to one internal publisher estimate made available to The Comics Chronicles, was direct market preorders of 48.18 million copies. The biggest single month of the 1990s comics boom — and more than 13 million copies more than the totals for the two months on either side of it.

Was April 1993 the biggest month in comics history? Going back to 1952, the peak year in the pre-Silver Age period for the number of copies offered, we find an average of about 250 new comic books coming out each month. Just comparing with that direct-market figure, those 1952 comic books would need to average 180,000 copies to match the April 1993 total. That’s very possible; the average circulation for comic books publishing Statements of Ownership in 1960 was around 315,000 copies. Not all titles had sales like Superman, but it’s a safe bet that, by units sold, quite a number of months in the 1950s would have topped April 1993.

Dollarwise, however, April 1993 is almost certainly the peak — both adjusted for inflation and not. With all the premium covers around, Capital City Distribution found the average cost of the 630 new titles it offered to be $2.65. That figure is certainly higher than the weighted average, but even at that, a direct-market total of $100 million is not out of the realm of possibility for the month. According to one inflation calculator, that equates to $18 million in 1952 dollars — which would require a mind-boggling 180 million 10-cent copies to be sold, or a per-title average of 720,000 copies. While there were likely quite a few titles above that average, there were considerable distribution-related disparities between the performances of publishers in the 1950s that make that average seem high. And, again, we’re not counting the newsstand for April 1993 — or the aftermarket, next to nonexistent so long ago. (On the other hand, we have no way of knowing what sell-through was in 1993, either, so the real dollar total would be lower to some degree.)

Adventures of Superman #500 was the #1 comic book both at Diamond and at Capital City. Capital sold 717,800 copies of the $2.95 collector’s cover and 161,250 copies of the newsstand cover; Diamond also saw the newsstand cover enter the Top 10. One existing calculation suggests a direct-market total of 3.45 million copies for the collector’s version; that’s a huge number, but not out of line with what else was on the charts. Diamond sold 8.6 times as many Adventures #500s as it sold Amazing Spider-Man #378s — a book that had sold 400,000 direct-market copies several times in the previous year.

At the time of this posting, Adventures of Superman #500 had an aftermarket price of $1.10 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

At both publishers, the Superman titles took all five Top 5 spots. That performance helped DC to top the market shares at Diamond for only the second time in the distributor’s history, with 33.07% of dollars preordered; at Capital, where DC generally sold disproportionately fewer copies, the 27.55% share was still enough for first place.

The top trade paperback was likely Image’s WildC.A.T.S. Collection, priced at $9.95.

Check out the sales rankings for the the overall year here.

25 YEARS AGO

Capital City reported that Uncanny X-Men #232 was its top-selling comic book of April 1988. Marvel sold 420,100 copies of the issue through all channels, including 261,200 direct-market copies and 111,100 newsstand copies, and copies in subscription, foreign, and other special markets sales. Capital preorders for the issue were 66,600 copies, meaning it was responsible for just over a quarter of the issue’s direct market sales.

At the time of this posting, Uncanny X-Men #232 had an aftermarket price of $2.60 in Very Fine at MyComicShop.com.

Marvel led DC in Capital’s dollar market shares, 41.25% to 32.38% — although, again, Capital is believed to have sold disproportionately fewer DC comics relative to Diamond.

The average cost of the 352 items on Capital City’s sales charts was $2.30 — a consequence of the combining of comic books with larger items, like Fantagraphics’ $49 Mars Attacks Mini Comics Box. That said, Marvel had recently gone from 75¢ to $1 on its most popular titles, so if the average comic offered wasn’t above $1 before, it certainly was in 1998.

The top-selling trade paperback item was likely the Crash: Iron Man Graphic Novel, which at $12.95 nonetheless placed 97th among units sold at Capital.

30 YEARS AGO ... and more

We're back before the Direct Market distributor charts — the ones I have from Capital start running data in 1984 — but April 1983's leader was Uncanny X-Men #172. Statements of Ownership put that as the likely top-seller for the month, averaging 336,824 copies across all channels for the year, including newsstand and subs.

At the time of this posting, Uncanny X-Men #172 had an aftermarket price of $4.80 in Very Fine at MyComicShop.com.

Once we get to 35 years ago, the data is spare, and it becomes trickier to judge what items came out in the same month. (I'm not looking at cover dates here, but likely ship dates, to keep things squared up with present practice.) The known information is incomplete enough that most of what follows is conjecture. A good guess for March 1978 would be Marvel's Star Wars #13, which between newsstand and Whitman bagged editions would have likely sold between 350,000 and 400,000 copies. The issue has an aftermarket price of $3.80 in Very Fine- at MyComicShop.com.

Back 40 years ago, the top-selling issue was likely Archie #226. The title's average monthly issue that year sold 345,087 copies.

And again, relying on the Postal Statements, for 45 years ago we're likely looking at Superman #207 (636,000 copies average in the year).

And 50 years ago we don't have DC data, because the publisher didn't publish any. It was a skip month for Superman, so Superboy #105, likely to have shipped that month, would probably have led the market at around 600,000 copies. The issue has an aftermarket price of $48 in Very Fine at MyComicShop.com.

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Strong April keeps comics market on half-billion dollar pace for 2013

2013-05-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

North American comics shop retailers ordered just over $41 million worth of comic books and graphic novels in April 2013, an increase of more than 18% over the same month last year, according to data released today by Diamond Comic Distributors.

That figure brings the year-to-date total to $163 million, up more than $25 million from 2012 at this point. If the later months of the year continue at the same pace, the Direct Market is on track to easily exceed half a billion dollars in orders for the year. In fact, the market would just top $500 million if the next eight months were completely flat. (Last year's total was $475 million.) That's how much ahead things already are.

Batman #19 from DC led the comics sales list in the month, during which IDW once again saw its highest market share yet posted.

The aggregate change figures:

	DOLLARS	UNITS
APRIL 2013 VS. MARCH 2013
Comics	-4.95%	-5.73%
Graphic novels	10.32%	10.11%
Total Comics/Graphic Novels	-0.56%	-4.56%
APRIL 2013 VS. APRIL 2012
Comics	13.87%	11.71%
Graphic novels	14.83%	19.00%
Total Comics/Graphic Novels	14.18%	12.29%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2013 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2012
Comics	19.44%	16.85%
Graphic novels	15.85%	14.15%
Total Comics/Graphic Novels	18.32%	16.64%

Age of Ultron took several spots on the top-sellers list for comics:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	Batman #19	$3.99	DC
2	Thanos Rising #1	$3.99	Marvel
3	Jupiter's Legacy #1	$2.99	Image
4	Age of Ultron #4	$3.99	Marvel
5	Justice League #19	$3.99	DC
6	Age of Ultron #5	$3.99	Marvel
7	Age of Ultron #6	$3.99	Marvel
8	The Walking Dead #10	$2.99	Image
9	Batman and Red Robin #19	$2.99	DC
10	Guardians of the Galaxy #2	$3.99	Marvel

It was a month with roughly equal gains in comics and trades. The perennial best-seller, The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye returned to top of the graphic novel charts:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	The Walking Dead Vol. 1 Days Gone Bye	$14.99	Image
2	The Manhattan Projects Vol. 2	$14.99	Image
3	Happy	$12.99	Image
4	Saga Vol. 1	$9.99	Image
5	Punk Rock Jesus	$16.99	DC
6	Batman Detective Comics Vol. 1 Faces of Death	$16.99	DC
7	Batman Detective Comics Vol. 2 Scare Tactics HC	$29.99	DC
8	Batman Killing Joke Special Edition HC	$17.99	DC
9	Swamp Thing Vol. 2 Family Tree	$14.99	DC
10	Hawkeye Vol. 1 My Life as a Weapon	$16.99	Marvel

As noted above, IDW beat its previous market share record, reaching 7.54%. Its previous best mark was in February, 7.09%. The market shares:

Publisher	Dollar Share	Units Share
Marvel	37.95%	41.78%
DC	25.98%	27.72%
Image	9.04%	9.87%
IDW	7.54%	5.59%
Dark Horse	4.35%	4.09%
Dynamic Forces	2.98%	2.60%
Boom	1.92%	1.97%
Valiant	1.04%	1.11%
Eaglemoss	0.94%	0.19%
Zenescope	0.80%	0.72%
Other	7.46%	4.37%

So, at least as of the preliminary charts, April looks to have been a month right in line with the gains of the 2012-13 comics recovery. The full charts will be out next week.

Iron Man 3 is now in wide release: click to check out our historic sales data on the main title. And, of course, Saturday is also Free Comic Book Day: click to read Comichron's history of the genesis of the event. I will be signing my own comics works at Galaxy Comics in Stevens Point, Wis., from 1-4; click here to find out where the events are in your area. And check out Hugh Jackman's video greeting, here!

Be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook.

Personal plug department: Be sure to check out Overdraft: The Orion Offensive, my new Kindle Serial with 47North. A complete science-fiction novel delivered in eight biweekly episodes, all for only $1.99!

Iron Man comics sales history updated, 1968-present

2013-05-02T16:01:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

With the release of the third Iron Man film, I've updated one of the features here on the site: postal statement sales figures for the main series. The main Iron Man series, as Marvel numbers the issues, unifies several distinct runs going all the way back to the first Iron Man title in 1968.

When Marvel renegotiated its restrictive agreement with its distributor that year, it was suddenly able to increase 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 (and began a run that, later on, included my own year on the title). The Warren Ellis Volume 4 reboot in 2004 similarly gave a big boost to sales.

That title was officially renamed Invincible Iron Man in the indicia with #17 in 2007 and then Iron Man Director of SHIELD with #29 in 2008. That title ran until #35, but a concurrent Invincible Iron Man series had already started from #1 earlier that summer. It was that title that, after Invincible Iron Man #33, assumed the numbering from all the earlier series and continued with #500 in 2011.

(Which complicates matters even further, since all those comics added up to 503 issues. The rationale — further described here — was that the last three issues of Director of SHIELD had War Machine on their logos. That's so, but the indicias never changed, and in fact, the Iron Man Director of SHIELD Statement of Ownership ran in that third "War Machine issue." But if it's weird to not count Director of SHIELD #33-35, it's odd to count #29-32, as well, as those issues were coming out concomitant with the series that numerically would have followed. Ah, renumberings!)

Sales reports on individual issues can be found in the monthly reports. And there are many other Title Spotlights here as well.

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75 years of Superman -- and a whole mountain of comics sold

2013-04-18T14:30:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Today is being celebrated as the 75th anniversary of Superman's first appearance, so I thought I would update one of the resources on the site. I now have the information from every single circulation form with sales data ever published in the main Superman title; I had been missing a few of the details when I first posted this material four years ago here, but now it is all online. (I've got everything for Action, too — that post is coming soon.)

Sales data begins in Superman in 1960 and runs until DC stopped publishing postal statements in 1987. By that time, the series had transformed into Adventures of Superman; it may appear to be information for two titles, but as far as the Postal Service regulations were concerned, it's all one series. (It later changed back to Superman with #650.)

Superman, we see in the yearly tables, was the #1 title for several years in the 1960s — and probably in 1963-64 as well, years in which DC published Statements with no sales figures.

While the Statement of Ownership period at DC is only a chunk of the title's long history, I include a little bit about estimated sales before 1960 and after 1987. Everything from 1996 to present can be found in the monthly sales charts here on site; that gives us about 44 years of data.

The main title alone has had total all-time sales in the nine figures, just in North America.

I also have a post from a few years ago getting into how many copies of Action #1 were initially printed and sold.

Be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook.

March 2013 comics sales estimates now online

2013-04-09T00:54:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

As noted here last week, sales in the Direct Market were up considerably in March, according to data released by Diamond Comic Distributors. Comics shops in North America ordered $41.3 million worth of comics and graphic novels in March, beating the previous year's total by nearly 23%.

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 led the market, with orders topping 200,000 copies. Click to see the estimated sales for comics for March 2013.

The Top 300 graphic novels posted nearly $9 million in sales, the highest figure for that category ever. However, the figures this month were distorted considerably by heavy discounting. Marvel sold several million dollars worth of hardcovers to retailers in a sale, inflating the total retail value of books sold.

We can partially see this by adding up everything that sold in the Top 300 Comics and Top 300 Graphic Novels categories: if all books were counted at full retail, Marvel's share of those sales would have topped 50% this month. But Marvel's overall dollar share was reported as 40% by Diamond, which makes its calculations based on wholesale dollars. So while Marvel did move more dollars worth of material (unadjusted for inflation) into shops in March than in any month in the last 17 years, an asterisk is probably in order.

It's still a blockbuster month for this time of year, no matter what. The aggregate sales:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

March 2013: 7.2 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +20%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +18%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +29%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +1%
YEAR TO DATE: 20.93 million copies, +17% vs. 2012, +10% vs. 2008, +23% vs. 2003, +1% vs. 1998

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
March 2013 versus one year ago this month: +21.43%
YEAR TO DATE: +18.62%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

March 2013: $25.93 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +25%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +35%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +65%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +48%
YEAR TO DATE: $75.2 million, +22% vs. 2012, +26% vs. 2008, +57% vs. 2003, +51% vs. 1998

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
March 2013 versus one year ago this month: +26.28%
YEAR TO DATE: +21.38%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2013: $8.97 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +39%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +25%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +44
YEAR TO DATE: $22.78 million, +26% vs. 2012

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
March 2013 versus one year ago this month: +14.33%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.22%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2013: $34.89 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +28%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +34%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +62%
YEAR TO DATE: $97.97 million, +23% vs. 2012

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
March 2013 versus one year ago this month: +22.59%
YEAR TO DATE: +19.78%

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

March 2013: approximately $41.33 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +23%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +32%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +69%
YEAR TO DATE: $121.94 million, +20% vs. 2012

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.59; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $3.60. The median price for comics offered was $3.97, and the most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.

The Flashback column for Marches past is also online here at Comichron: click to read about the best-sellers from March five, ten, 25, and even 50 years ago.

Be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook.

March 2013 comics sales: The beats go on

2013-04-05T11:09:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Spring arrived in the comics industry with sales up considerably in the Direct Market, according to preliminary data released by Diamond Comic Distributors. Comics shops in North America appear to have ordered $41.3 million worth of comics and graphic novels in March, beating the previous year's total by nearly 23%.

The first quarter of the year wasn't able to top the last quarter of 2012 — that would have been extremely difficult — but it made a good run at it, coming in at around $122 million versus $128 million for the fourth quarter. And it beat the first quarter of 2012 handily, by nearly 20%, or $20 million. That's one of the bigger year-to-year quarterly increases we've seen.

And whereas the first quarter of 2012 had 13 shipping weeks, the first quarter of 2013 only had 12, because the comics that shipped first week of January were invoiced to retailers in December and not counted with this year.

The aggregate sales figures:

	DOLLARS	UNITS
MARCH 2013 VS. FEBRUARY 2013
COMICS	3.05%	2.78%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	7.77%	17.00%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	4.36%	3.71%
MARCH 2013 VS. MARCH 2012
COMICS	26.28%	21.43%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	14.33%	7.78%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	22.59%	20.31%
FIRST QUARTER 2013 VS. FOURTH QUARTER 2012
COMICS	-4.13%	-3.62%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-6.00%	-2.09%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-4.70%	-3.51%
FIRST QUARTER 2013 VS. FIRST QUARTER 2012
COMICS	21.38%	18.62%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	16.22%	12.38%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	19.78%	18.15%

Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven's Guardians of the Galaxy #1 was the top-ordered book by retailers. Every title in the Top 10 had a cover price of $3.99.
(The Flashback column for Marches past is now online here at Comichron: click to read about the best-sellers from March five, ten, 25, and even 50 years ago.)

The top comics:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	Guardians of the Galaxy #1	$3.99	Marvel
2	Age of Ultron #1	$3.99	Marvel
3	Batman #18	$3.99	DC
4	Wolverine #1	$3.99	Marvel
5	Age of Ultron #2	$3.99	Marvel
6	Justice League #18	$3.99	DC
7	Age of Ultron #3	$3.99	Marvel
8	Superior Spider-Man #5	$3.99	Marvel
9	Justice League of America #2	$3.99	DC
10	All New X-Men #8	$3.99	Marvel

The Batman Vol. 2 City of Owls hardcover topped the graphic novel charts for the month. The top graphic novels:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	Batman HC Vol. 2 The City of Owls	$24.99	DC
2	Batman SC Vol. 1 The Court of Owls	$16.99	DC
3	Hawkeye SC Vol. 1 My Life as Weapon Now	$16.99	Marvel
4	Avatar Last Airbender SC Vol. 4 Search Part 1	$10.99	Dark Horse
5	Walking Dead SC Vol. 1 Days Gone Bye	$14.99	Image
6	Avengers Vs. X-Men SC	$34.99	Marvel
7	Kick-Ass 2 SC	$19.99	Marvel
8	Kick-Ass 2 Prelude Hit-Girl Prem HC	$24.99	Marvel
9	Saga SC Vol. 1	$9.99	Image
10	Earth 2 HC Vol 1 The Gathering	$22.99	DC

The market shares:

PUBLISHER	DOLLAR SHARE	UNIT SHARE
MARVEL COMICS	39.96%	43.78%
DC COMICS	27.09%	29.88%
IMAGE COMICS	8.01%	7.88%
IDW PUBLISHING	6.34%	5.24%
DARK HORSE COMICS	4.72%	4.16%
DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT	2.16%	1.87%
BOOM! STUDIOS	1.68%	1.49%
EAGLEMOSS PUBLICATIONS LTD	0.97%	0.20%
VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC	0.86%	0.84%
AVATAR PRESS INC	0.83%	0.60%
OTHER NON-TOP 10	7.38%	4.06%

It would appear that every publisher in the top three is up in sales over a year ago. Image's March sales are up 47% in dollar terms; Marvel's, up 35%. DC's are up 7.3%. Other publishers have been catching up to DC's blazing pace from late 2011 and early 2012, but DC's sales are, in fact, ahead for 2013 overall.

The full estimates will be along next week.

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March 2013 Comics Flashbacks: Maxx launches, and Rogue Joins the X-Men

2013-04-04T12:13:00.002-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

With March 2013 comics sales data soon to be reported (update: they're here), let's take a look at comics sales in previous Marches. Again, I've added a snapshot of what one major retailer is charging for the top-sellers; Comichron isn't a price guide site, but it's interesting to see how once-popular titles held up.

As always, this reflects what Diamond Comic Distributors (and, in earlier times, other distributors) sold to retailers, not what the retailers themselves sold. In recent times, retail inventory is much more tightly controlled, so the numbers are more representative of actual sales. In the distant past, not so much.

1 YEAR AGO

March 2012 was a big month concluding a first quarter that topped $100 million in the Direct Market. Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 was the market leader, even though it didn't go on sale until April. According to Diamond at the time, Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 was shipped to retailers a week before its on-sale date and invoiced to retailers in March 2012 to facilitate pre-launch parties for the book. Diamond Comic Distributors' sales figures are factored on the books invoiced to retailers during the calendar month, not on the book's on-sale date.

So the title topped the charts, with sales of more than 203,000 copies; it would end the year at nearly 265,100 copies, making it the third best-seller for 2012. Avengers Vs. X-Men #0 would have been the month's top-seller, otherwise.

The top-selling trade paperback or graphic novel was Walking Dead Vol. 1, with 5,880 copies. It ended the year with 74,700 copies sold in the Direct Market, topping the list for the year.

Click to read the original Comichron analysis for the month. And check out the sales chart for the month here.

5 YEARS AGO

March 2008's top seller was was the Marvel's Dark Tower: Long Road Home #1, with first-month orders of approximately 123,800 copies. Later orders brought it up to at least 126,700 copies, making it the 128th best-selling comic book of the decade of the 2000s. (See the whole list here.) The first quarter ended slightly off from the first quarter of 2007, presaging the end-of-decade slump.

As of the time of this posting, the main version of the Long Road Home #1 had an aftermarket price of $1.30 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

On the graphic novel front, the Batman: The Killing Joke hardcover topped the list, with nearly10,600 copies ordered.

Click to read the original Comichron analysis for the month. And check out the sales chart for the month here.

10 YEARS AGO

March 2003 continued to find Jim Lee’s “Hush” topping the sales charts, with Batman #613 selling at least 133,600 copies to retailers in the month. Reorders in later months would take the issue to at least 146,200 copies, making it the 126th best-selling comic book of the decade.
Four titles topped the 100,000-copy mark, all the other three being Marvel “Ultimate” series.

At the time of this posting, Batman #613 had an aftermarket price of $10 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

On the graphic novel side, the top seller was Kia Asamiya and Max Allan Collins’ Batman: Child of Dreams hardcover with orders of 9,100 copies in its initial month.

The strong Batman performance resulted in a close month within overall dollar market shares, with Marvel at 31.86% and DC at 29.45%. The month would also result in the second-highest market share ever for CrossGen ever; its 4.48% dollar market share earned it fifth place among publishers, the highest ranking it would ever reach.

Check out the sales chart for the month here.

15 YEARS AGO

The month of March 1998 closed out a “dead quarter” in comics that was truly deserving of the term. Unit preorders for the Top 300 comics were down 18% in both units and dollars — nearly three times worse than Q1 2008. Every quarter of 1998 was off by double digits (though none so bad as the first quarter). The market wouldn’t find a bottom for another couple of years, but the winter of 1998 was one of its periods of steepest decline.

The leading comic book for March 1998 was Marvel’s X-Men Vol. 2 #75, an anniversary issue with a cover price a dollar higher than usual. The issue had preorders of 146,000 copies, one of eight titles to top the 100,000 mark.

At the time of this posting, X-Men Vol. 2 #75 had an aftermarket price of $1.30 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

March 1998 was only the second month Diamond reported indexed sales figures for trade paperbacks — again in a catchall category called “books.” Diamond was still sorting out its standards for inclusion as the rankings included a number of what most might otherwise consider giant-sized comic books, such as Uncle Scrooge #309 and Walt Disney Comics #624, or the top two entrants on the list, Marvel’s six-dollar 2099 Manifest Destiny or Image’s five-dollar Witchblade Collected Edition #7. The leading trade paperback with heft would have been Tears of Dawn Vol. 2 from Sirius, which had preorders of 5,000 copies. This was the final month with rankings for only 10 books; in April 1998, Diamond went up to reporting the Top 25.

While Marvel took 17 out of the Top 25 slots in March 1998’s Top 300 list, trade paperbacks and a disproportionate number of releases helped DC almost completely close the market share gap. In the widest category, final orders for publishers, Marvel led DC in overall dollars 27.17% to 26.47%. Marvel fielded only 54 comic-book titles in the month, to DC’s 76.

Check out the sales chart for the month here.

20 YEARS AGO

March 1993 was the month before Superman returned from the dead, the all-time peak for the comics market in dollar terms. Nearly a dozen different distributors sold comics in the direct market, making overall calculations based on individual distributor figures more difficult. Publishers were able to look at their own sales and make market estimates based on those: One internal publisher report made available to Comichron estimates overall direct sales to distributors of 31.7 million copies. (Readers are cautioned that while the estimate tracks with the source publisher’s own recorded sales, it is unknown how the publisher derived sales for its competitors.)

Capital City Distribution reported that the average cost of its top 630 comic books for the month was $2.56. That figure was probably slightly higher than the weighted average, taking account what comics were actually ordered. If applied to the above estimate, that overall direct market dollar sales would have been in the $70-80 million range.

March 1993 was the first month that Image was on its own, recorded apart from Malibu — and it was an Image title, Maxx #1, that led Capital’s list. Internal Capital City documents detail initial orders of 295,400 copies of the issue, meaning that one point on the March 1993 Capital chart equals 2173 copies sold by Capital. That does not include Diamond or other distributors, however; the order index number at Diamond would be different, and adding sales for any title at both would still not result in total direct market orders.

What was Maxx’s total sale? Comparing the issue’s ranking with known direct-market sales for another publisher’s titles during the month, the issue appears to have sold in the 1 million to 1.1 million-copy range. But that estimate presumes that Capital’s share of sales was the same for both companies — an unlikely situation, as publishers saw some variation in their performance between distributors.

At the time of this posting, Maxx #1 had an aftermarket price of $2 in Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

The top-selling trade volume for the month appears to have been the Spider-Man: Venom Returns trade paperback.

Check out the sales rankings for the the overall year here.

25 YEARS AGO

Uncanny X-Men #231, mentioned here last month as a February item, appears to have shipped the third week of March — in which case it would be the likely leader for the month. Capital City was running rankings in 1988, although as it was running lists of preorder data, there are some questions as to whether issues shipped in the months it ranked them.

Marvel sold 260,800 copies of the issue to direct market distributors. Initial orders from Capital City Distribution are known to have been 67,200 copies, or 25.8% of the total direct market orders. The direct market accounted for 64% of Marvel’s sales of the issue, which had final newsstand sales of 99,800 copies of the issue and 48,900 copies in subscription, foreign, and other special markets sales. The total sales for the issue, 409,500 copies, was very close to the average of 408,925 copies Marvel reported to the Postal Service for all Uncanny X-Men issues in 1988. Average print runs for the title for the year were 633,760 copies, suggesting that wastage for Uncanny X-Men #231 in the newsstand market was on the order of 69%. Marvel printed approximately three copies to sell one.

Marvel had just gone from 75¢ to $1 on its most popular titles, so if the average comic offered wasn’t above $1 before, it certainly was in 1998.

At the time of this posting, Uncanny X-Men #231 had an aftermarket price of $1.60 in Very Fine at MyComicShop.com.

30 YEARS AGO ... and more

We're back before the Direct Market distributor charts — the ones I have from Capital start running data in 1984 — but March 1983's leader was Uncanny X-Men #171, in which Rogue joins the X-Men. It is definitely known to have shipped in March 1983 — I have this from my own purchasing records, having picked it up at the comics shop on April 1, 1983. (Who thought I wouldn’t have records?) Statements of Ownership put that as the likely top-seller for the month, averaging 336,824 copies across all channels for the year, including newsstand and subs.

At the time of this posting, Uncanny X-Men #171 had an aftermarket price of $22 in Very Fine/Near Mint at MyComicShop.com.

Once we get to 35 years ago, the data is spare, and it becomes trickier to judge what items came out in the same month. (I'm not looking at cover dates here, but likely ship dates, to keep things squared up with present practice.) The known information is incomplete enough that most of what follows is conjecture. A good guess for March 1978 would be Marvel's Star Wars #12, which between newsstand and Whitman bagged editions would have likely sold between 350,000 and 400,000 copies. The issue has an aftermarket price of $4.80 in Very Fine at MyComicShop.com.

Back 40 years ago, there was no issue of industry-leading Archie in March. That'd likely put Superman #264, whose average annual sales were 309,318 copies per issue, on top.

And again, relying on the Postal Statements, for 45 years ago we're likely looking at Superman #206 (636,000 copies average in the year). The issue has an aftermarket price of $6 in Very Good at MyComicShop.com.

And 50 years ago we don't have Superman data, because DC didn't publish any. But Superman #161, likely to have been the issue that shipped that month, would have led the market at around 640,000 copies.

To demonstrate that people have been talking about comics sales figures for years, March 2013 also marks the 45-year anniversary of the fanzine Newfangles #8, in which Don and Maggie Thompson reported sales figures for dozens of titles and some of the speculation surrounding them. The entire fanzine is republished as it appeared, here. (All the 1967 data it lists already appears here.)

In the issue, reader Andy Zerbe points to the average 1967 sales of one title at 115,040 copies and wonders how low sales can sink before its publisher has to kill it. Which just goes to show — Internet or not, some debates in comics have been going on for a very long time!

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Flags waving: Justice League of America #1 sets new high marks

2013-03-11T12:01:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

DC's Justice League of America #1 turned in the strongest single-issue sales performance for a comic book in the month of February since at least 1996 — and the biggest single-month number for a DC title since that time, as well. That's based on Comichron's estimates of retailer orders from Diamond Comic Distributors. Click to see the complete estimates for comics sales in February 2013.

Released with more than 50 variant covers featuring flags of the individual U.S. states, Justice League of America #1 had orders of nearly 308,000 copies. That's more than 100,000 copies more than any DC relaunch issue reached in North America in a single month — and enough to rank it seventh on the list of top-selling comics of the 21st Century. (It could still go higher, with reorders.) The issue outranks any DC title in the Diamond Exclusive Era, including Superman: The Wedding Album back in November 1996.

The quantity is also higher than any February release since at least Marvel Vs. DC #3 in February 1996. We don't know the actual sales for that issue, as it came during the Distribution Wars period when Marvel was self-distributing, but I would guess that its sales were likely competitive with the February 2013 release. Click to see my column on past best-sellers for the month.

Another interesting cross-time comparison: with the top 300 comics selling just over 7 million copies in February, the figure beats not just the five- and 10-year comparisons, but also the 15-year comparative, as well. Retailers ordered 6.6 million copies in February 1998. By 1998, however, we're getting to the point where a 15-year beat isn't as impressive — the February 1997 figure was 8 million copies.

Graphic novel sales were slightly off from a year ago — by less than 1% overall — although when you drill down to just the Top 300 graphic novels, sales were actually up 14% in both dollars and units. That would require, if the figure is correct, for the backlist titles in the "long tail" to have significantly underperformed. It's within the range of differences we've seen between frontlist and backlist figures before. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's Nemo: Heart of Ice hardcover from Top Shelf was the best-selling graphic novel.

The aggregate sales:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

February 2013: 7.01 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +15%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +12%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +20%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +6%
YEAR TO DATE: 13.73 million copies, +16% vs. 2012, +5% vs. 2008, +20% vs. 2003, +1% vs. 1998

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
February 2013 versus one year ago this month: +14.75%
YEAR TO DATE: +17.20%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

February 2013: $20.8 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +21%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +29%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +53%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +61%
YEAR TO DATE: $61.6 million, +21% vs. 2012, +21% vs. 2008, +54% vs. 2003, +52% vs. 1998

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
February 2013 versus one year ago this month: +15.91%
YEAR TO DATE: +18.95%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2013: $6.5 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +14%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -3%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: unchanged
YEAR TO DATE: $13.81 million, +18% vs. 2012

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
March 2013 versus one year ago this month: -1.47%
YEAR TO DATE: +17.14%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2013: $31.82 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +19%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +29%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +32%
YEAR TO DATE: $63.08 million, +20% vs. 2012

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
February 2013 versus one year ago this month: +10.48%
YEAR TO DATE: +18.39%

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

February 2013: approximately $39.58 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +10%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +22%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +18%
YEAR TO DATE: $80.61 million, +18% vs. 2012

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.62; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $3.61. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.

The pages for monthly top sellers and 300th place titles across time have been updated.

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February 2013 comics sales up, IDW sets new record

2013-03-08T11:43:00.002-06:00

by John Jackson Miller

February 2013 orders for comics and graphic novels continued to outpace sales of a year ago, according to preliminary direct market sales data released today by Diamond Comic Distributors. The 10% increase year-to-year is made more impressive by the fact that the comparison month was a very rare leap year February with five shipping weeks.

(The Flashback column for Februaries past is now online here at Comichron: click to read about the best-sellers from February five, ten, 25, and even 50 years ago.)

Retailers ordered around $39.6 million in comic books and collected editions from Diamond in the month, bringing the year-to-date to nearly $80.7 million. Comics sales — helped by the multiple-cover-and-how Justice League of America #1 release — beat their previous performance handily.

The edition had 53 covers (I think!) depicting state flags in addition to the U.S. flag. Wartime American flag covers from the 1940s are a favorite of Golden Age collectors, and this product continues in that tradition. (It also raises the multiple-cover bar for the next publisher: I think the Northern Mariana Islands territory has a flag!)

Graphic novel sales were down, if only just slightly. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's Nemo: Heart of Ice hardcover from Top Shelf was the best-selling graphic novel.

The aggregate change figures:

	DOLLARS	UNITS
FEBRUARY 2013 VS. JANUARY 2013
COMICS	5.04%	3.73%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-20.37%	-14.28%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-3.53%	2.33%
FEBRUARY 2013 VS. FEBRUARY 2012
COMICS	15.91%	14.75%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-1.47%	0.90%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	10.48%	13.73%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2013 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2012
COMICS	18.95%	17.20%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	17.14%	15.04%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	18.39%	17.05%

The top-selling comics for the month:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	Justice League of America #1	$3.99	DC
2	Uncanny X-Men #1	$3.99	Marvel
3	Batman #17	$3.99	DC
4	Justice League #17	$3.99	DC
5	Superior Spider-Man #3	$3.99	Marvel
6	Superior Spider-Man #4	$3.99	Marvel
7	Uncanny X-Men #2	$3.99	Marvel
8	Uncanny Avengers #4	$3.99	Marvel
9	Detective Comics #17	$3.99	DC
10	Secret Avengers #1	$3.99	Marvel

The top-selling graphic novels for the month:

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	Nemo: Heart of Ice HC	$14.95	Top Shelf
2	Batman: The Night of the Owls HC	$29.99	DC
3	Adventure Time Volume 2	$14.99	Boom
4	The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye	$14.99	Image
5	Saga Volume 1	$9.99	Image
6	Batman: The Black Mirror	$16.99	DC
7	Catwoman Volume 2: Dollhouse	$14.99	DC
8	Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2 Volume 2	$17.99	IDW
9	Batgirl Vol. 1: The Darkest Reflection	$14.99	DC
10	Adventure Time Volume 1	$14.99	Boom

IDW set a record dollar share for itself last February, and it seems to have done so again this February, topping 7% for the first time. Click to see more Diamond-era sales records.

The market shares:

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

PUBLISHER	DOLLAR SHARE	UNIT SHARE
Marvel Comics	34.86%	38.46%
DC Entertainment	29.22%	32.89%
Image Comics	7.76%	7.89%
IDW Publishing	7.09%	6.04%
Dark Horse Comics	4.82%	4.16%
Dynamite Entertainment	2.80%	2.55%
Boom! Studios	1.97%	1.75%
Eaglemoss Publications	1.42%	0.30%
Zenescope Entertainment	0.99%	0.73%
Valiant Entertainment	0.94%	0.98%
Other	8.11%	4.25%

Dark Horse's share of comic book and graphic novel sales, it should be noted, may not be as high as its actual share of Diamond's overall sales: as with last month, its national bestseller Legends of Zelda: Hyrule Historia book was the #1 book sold by Diamond. I do not believe that the "Books" category has historically been part of the market share calculations seen above; I don't know if that's changed. The "Magazines" category is counted, which explains Eaglemoss's presence.

The full report should be along next week. In the meantime, check out the February Flashback column, with its reports on Stormwatch #1's number-one performance 20 years ago last month, among many other historical tidbits.

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