The Comichron: The Blog of The Comics Chronicles

Full April 2012 comics sales estimates online

2012-05-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

With the Avengers movie opening to a record $200.3 million this past weekend in the United States, the good fortunes of the comics industry in 2012 also appeared to continue in April, according to figures released today by Diamond Comic Distributors. Retailer orders for comic books and graphic novels rose 15% in North America versus the year prior, and several titles pushed past the 100,000 copy mark. Click to see the full estimates for April 2012.

Last April was a fairly drab and depressing month — Diamond had to talk about its sales of comics-related merchandise in its release to find a bright spot, something it hasn't had to do again since the DC relaunch at the end of last summer. Only Fear Itself #1 topped 100,000 copies last April, versus four titles this year. Still, the boost for April 2012 means the industry has outperformed the first four months of the year by nearly $17 million when all comics and trades are counted — and this becomes important heading into the second half of the year, when the comparisons will become more difficult.

Marvel's Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 led the market with orders of nearly 159,000 copies, and the preceding issue — which was ranked as a March release even though it came out in April — sold an additional 27,000 copies this past month, bringing its total to around 230,000 copies. If the book had been tabulated with all its copies recorded for April, it would've been the highest one-month total for an issue since January 2009, and the Barack Obama Spider-Man issue. But the accounting can be done a lot of different ways. If you throw August 31 into September, Justice League #1 actually had a 232,400-copy month in North America when it came out, including the Combo Pack edition, so it too would have had a shot at that highest-one-month total figure. See the list of top sellers for each month here.

By the end of the year, Justice League #1 had shipped 231,000 copies to North American retailers; including the Combo Pack version, its sales surpassed 255,000 copies. So with more months of reorders for AVX, these two releases may wind up in the same general neighborhood. The early Civil War issues topped 300,000 copies in 2006, a year that likely had more stores.

Image's Walking Dead trade collections completely dominate their category, giving Image an 8.6% market share, its highest since February 2003. Graphic novels are now up nearly 10% for the year; the slowest category thus far, trade paperbacks may be poised to break into double-digits as the DC relaunch trades enter the mix.

Partially because of Image's strength, Marvel and DC only combined for 64.76% of the market this month — their lowest combined market share since March 2004. Contrast the current figure with October's 81.26%, during the early weeks of the DC relaunch.

The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

April 2012: 6.1 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -14%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +7%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -35%
YEAR TO DATE: 23.99 million copies, +15% vs. 2011, -13% vs. 2007, +10% vs. 2002, -31% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
April 2012 versus one year ago this month: +16.11%
YEAR TO DATE: +15.12%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

April 2012: $21.34 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +12%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -2%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +31%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +3%
YEAR TO DATE: $82.94 million, +14% vs. 2011, -4% vs. 2007, +34% vs. 2002, +2% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
April 2012 versus one year ago this month: +16.30%
YEAR TO DATE: +15.94%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2012: $6.76 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +27%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -15%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +52%
YEAR TO DATE: $24.89 million, +23% vs. 2011

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
April 2012 versus one year ago this month: +12.56%
YEAR TO DATE: +9.47%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

April 2012: $28.1 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +16%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: -5%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +15%
YEAR TO DATE: $107.83 million, +16% vs. 2011

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
April 2012 versus one year ago this month: +15.09%
YEAR TO DATE: +13.84%

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

April 2012: approximately $36 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +15%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +3%
YEAR TO DATE: $137.81 million, +14% vs. 2011, +2% vs. 2007
The average price of comics in Diamond's Top 300 was $3.53, with the average comic book retailers ordered costing an average of $3.50. $3.50 was also the median price of all comics offered in the Top 300, while the most common price remained $2.99.

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Comics sales strong in April, highest Image share since 2003

2012-05-04T11:55:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

It's an incredibly busy day in the comics world. The Avengers movie is releasing; see our post on Avengers sales history. It's the day before Free Comic Book Day; see our post on its history. And it's also May-the-Fourth-Be-With-You Star Wars Day (and USA Today just announced my new Star Wars comics series minutes ago). So it happens that the monthly preliminary release of comics sales figures comes on a day when many are paying attention to pop culture — and the news is just the kind you want to see on such a day. Click to see the preliminary comics sales charts for April 2012.

Diamond Comic Distributors reports that comics shops in North America ordered nearly 14% more dollars worth of comics and graphic novels than last April; The Comics Chronicles has a preliminary projection of $36 million for sales for the month. The performance in all categories is slightly better than the performance for the first quarter, and as this is our first really clean month-to-month comparison of the year, it indicates that what we were seeing in previous months wasn't a fluke.

With Marvel's Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 leading the market and DC's relaunch titles continuing, new comics orders continued to be up double digits — and the Image's Walking Dead trades continued to dominate their category. Graphic novels are now up nearly 10% for the year; the laggard category, thus far, trade paperbacks may be poised to break into double-digits as the DC relaunch trades enter the mix.

The aggregate change figures:

COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

	DOLLARS	UNITS
APRIL 2012 VS. MARCH 2012
COMICS	5.40%	2.47%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	9.84%	-0.28%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	6.77%	2.25%
APRIL 2012 VS. APRIL 2011
COMICS	16.30%	16.11%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	12.56%	15.32%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	15.09%	16.04%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2012 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2011
COMICS	15.94%	15.12%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	9.47%	9.29%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	13.84%	14.65%

Last month was the first month in the Diamond Exclusive Era that five publishers had topped 5% in dollar market share. That didn't happen this month, but an interesting thing appears in the distribution of shares. We had six publishers with 3% market share or more, something that has happened frequently lately. But that's usually been associated with those six publishers combining to sell more than 90% of the material in the market by dollars. This time, it was down under 87% — and we see that we're very close to having 10 publishers with a dollar market share of 1%.

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

PUBLISHER	DOLLAR SHARE	UNIT SHARE
MARVEL COMICS	34.64%	39.07%
DC COMICS	30.12%	34.06%
IMAGE COMICS	8.60%	6.61%
DARK HORSE COMICS	5.37%	4.64%
IDW PUBLISHING	4.22%	3.40%
DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT	3.89%	3.90%
BOOM! STUDIOS	1.67%	1.92%
AVATAR PRESS	0.97%	0.82%
VIZ MEDIA	0.92%	0.40%
ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT	0.92%	0.89%
OTHER NON-TOP 10	8.68%	4.29%

It's possible in part because Marvel and DC only combined for 64.76% of the market this month — their lowest combined market share since March 2004. Contrast the current figure with October's 81.26%, during the early weeks of the DC relaunch. Image's Walking Dead-powered sales strength is a big factor — its 8.6% market share is its highest since February 2003.

As mentioned here many times previously, the recovery of the early 2000s was powered by a virtuous cycle of a hit from one publisher being followed by a hit from another publisher — so strength at middle-tier publishers is key to a recovery. But one difference in 2012 is that the trade paperback market is much more developed, so there is a place for retailers' dollars to go even when there are months without a major event comic book. Walking Dead and other trades may be evolving into just that — reliable places for retailers to hold their cash and a hedge against month-to-month volatility.

Full numbers next week. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Free Comic Book Day, from 2002 to today

2012-05-02T18:36:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Saturday marks 10 years since the first Free Comic Book Day, and as with last year, I'll be signing my Star Wars, Mass Effect, and Iron Man comics at Chimera Hobby Shop, 808 W. Wisconsin Ave., Appleton, Wis. from 11:00AM to 1:00PM, and again from 3:00PM to 6:00PM. I think it's the seventh or eighth straight year I've participated at a local shop here, and I'm glad to take part. It's very important to the business, and it's become a model for other hobbies.

It's a tradition — and so in something else that's become a tradition here, I'm retelling the story of how an event which began with a suggestion by a retailer in the pages of a trade magazine has become a major happening in stores around the world, and the kickoff not just for the summer but most of the comic book year for many publishers.

There had been earlier hopes for an equivalent to the milk marketing board in comics — some kind of advertising council — over the years, including a publisher-and-distributor attempt in the mid-1990s that met several times but never generated much of anything before it vanished in the industry's collapse that decade. The idea for Free Comic Book Day, by contrast, came from the retail sector — or, rather, from a retailer: Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics in California.

I had signed Joe on in the late 1990s as a monthly columnist for Comics & Games Retailer magazine, a trade publication that went for free each month to most of the comics shops in North America. Like the other columnists, Joe's contributions ranged from commentary on retail issues to practical advice — and in June 2001, just as the comics industry was beginning to emerge from the disaster of the 1990s, Joe advised us he had a special column on the way, along with something unusual: an instantaneous response from the Powers That Be being addressed.

In "The Power of Free," Joe spoke of how Baskin-Robbins had held its annual Free Scoop Night on May 2, 2001. The event resulted, he wrote, in the ice cream store near his shop moving 1,300 scoops in four hours, meaning that's how many patrons came through the door. Joe wrote that he'd suggested a national comics "open house" event to Diamond Comic Distributors in 1997; now, he thought, the key element to add would be giveaway comics.

Giveaway comics were a major source of new readers for the comics industry over its history, from the March of Comics issues given away at shoe stores to the Big Boy comics still distributed in restaurants. I've done a lot of research into those and several other giveaway lines over the years — and it's plain that many of the people who learned to read comics (and, odd as it sounds, the storytelling language of comics is something one does have to learn to read) learned it from ones they got for free. Most of those comics went completely away in the 1980s and 1990s. Joe's suggestion in the article was that publishers could create sampler comics for their different lines — "just as Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream... a selection of samplers available from different publishers would allow stores to better cover the disparate tastes of those who'll show up."

Joe suggested a variety of steps that could be taken by publishers, retailers, and creators; I've posted the original article pages here, which I hope he doesn't mind. Click the pages to see them larger. It shows that many of those ideas, relating to the production and distribution of the samplers, were pretty close to what was eventually adopted. It also shows the sidebar response from Diamond's Roger Fletcher, embracing the idea and promising to solicit retailer interest in the idea.

And it happened. The first Free Comic Book Day was on May 4 of the following year — right after the release of Spider-Man, and a year and two days after the Baskin-Robbins event that Joe said provided the partial inspiration. The magazine followed the progress of the event, and was happy to be associated — our Maggie Thompson attended many of the FCBD board meetings as an advisor. But it all came from Joe — and Diamond and the major publishers' evident agreement that, as he had written, 2001 was the beginning of a turnaround for comics, a new opportunity. "There's a strong sense among many retailers with whom I've spoken that we're definitely experiencing a resurgence of sales and customers," he wrote. "A promotion like this could be the calling card we need to give our market strong forward momentum."

And it did. A few years later, both the sportscard and gaming hobbies put together similar events, organizers citing the FCBD experience as a positive reason to go forward. And FCBD still goes forward.

Lots of free comics are on offer this year: you can find the full list of titles here. Signing schedules can also be found on their website. There's also a handy FAQ page on the site. If your local comic shop is not listed, give them a call for a complete list of events and signings.

Avengers comics sales history -- five decades, assembled!

2012-05-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

With The Avengers movie releasing, this seems like a good time to post the near-complete year-by-year record of Avengers sales, according to statements Marvel filed with the U.S. Postal Service. The first postal statement appeared in 1966; I have all of them since then with the exception of 1975, 1988, 2005, and 2010 when Marvel did not publish figures at all — the latter two being the first years from New Avengers and then the re-re-re-rebooted Avengers series. (Yes, New Avengers is considered part of the same "series," at least as far as postal subscriptions go. So even with the name change, it's been one title since 1963.) Click to see the entire table of Avengers sales over the years.

Marvel's Avengers brought together several heroes from other titles under the roof of Avengers Mansion: Iron Man (and later Captain America) from Tales of Suspense; Thor from Journey Into Mystery; and Hulk, Wasp, and Ant-Man from Tales to Astonish. The formula succeeded, providing Marvel with a new team title and a subgroup of heroes within its own universe. When Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor each got their own titles, the books were colloquially known as "the Avengers titles," even though all the characters had started elsewhere before the Avengers existed.

The sales story of The Avengers is an adventure all on its own, with several heroic recoveries. From a 1967 plateau of nearly 277,000 copies, Avengers sales declined along with most other titles in the 1960s, but held relatively steady through much of the 1970s. Sales improved dramatically in 1979, with modest growth during Jim Shooter's return tenure on the title and continuing on through to 1984.

But sales began to slip in the late 1980s, with sales now split between the main title and West Coast Avengers and, later, Solo Avengers. (Those titles will have their own entries here eventually.) When the rest of the industry was exploding in sales in the early 1990s, Avengers saw only modest sustained increases. The title had dwindled to five-figures in the mid-1990s when Marvel brought Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld on board to relaunch part of he Marvel line as part of "Heroes Reborn." Liefeld's brief stint on Avengers dramatically increased sales on the title, and after he left, Avengers had better luck holding onto its gains after "Heroes Return" began than other titles in the experiment had.

By 2003, sales had again approached pre-Reborn levels, and Marvel rebooted the series as New Avengers under Brian Michael Bendis. Sales soared again, and the title benefited from its central role in the Civil War storyline in the mid-2000s. Sales slipped during the recession later in the decade, and Marvel rebooted the series a fourth time (this time as Avengers again) in 2010, in advance of the 2012 Avengers feature film.

What's the best-selling issue of the main Avengers title? The peak seller in the 1980s, according to archival records, was November 1985's #261, a Secret Wars II crossover, with sales of 277,400 copies — including 151,900 copies in the Direct Market. As 277,000 was the average in 1967, one of the issues that year — or from an earlier year — likely trumps it. Bendis's New Avengers #1 had Direct Market final orders of at least 241,500 copies in late 2004 and early 2005, and newsstand, subscription sales, and later reorders would likely have boosted it still higher, so it's a contender.

But the relaunched Avengers Vol. 2 #1 — the first "Heroes Reborn" issue — had preorders through Heroes World Distribution of 276,734 copies — and that does not include newsstand or subscription sales, which would have taken it into the 300,000s. So barring some much higher issue from 1963-65, that rebooted issue is a good candidate for the top-seller. [The closest modern-era rivals would come from 1993, the biggest year of the boom era; Avengers dropped no less than four foil or otherwise enhanced covers on the market in that publishing year. There are several near the peak that could have made it into the 300,000s, but the data is incomplete, and the average for the year was nonetheless under 200,000. The 300k-plus club for Avengers is likely very small, in any event.]

All told, the nearly 600 monthly issues of the main Avengers title likely sold between 125 and 135 million copies. Not bad for a book about to hit 50!

Look for more Title Spotlights here. And be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook!

My thanks to Eric S., Brent Frankenhoff, Mike Howell, and others who helped locate Statements.

[Update 5/2/12: And the aforementioned Frankenhoff has definitively found there were no Statements for 2005 and 2010, so the numbers are basically complete.

I have also looked further into the sales from 1993: At least at Capital City Distribution, the top-selling issue that year wasn't one of the foil issues, but rather #368, the first "Blood Ties" issue, which at 103,900 copies had orders nearly four times what #367 — and most of the other non-enhanced issues of the year had. That would seem to predict an overall sale of at least 300,000 copies and possibly much higher, since newsstand draws would be more likely to track upward in concert with Direct Market orders on an un-enhanced issue. Coming at the end of the year, #368's sales would have been reflected in the 1994 Statement, which found average sales, newsstand included of 165,408. Since the Statement for 1995 saw sales falling by more than 50%, I believe that #368 probably is responsible for 1994's total being as high as it was, and that the real average could be as much as 25,000 copies less.

It's all extrapolation, however — while there are archival sources with complete information for individual issues for some years, 1993 sits in one of the gaps between them.]

March 2012 comics sales estimates now online

2012-04-09T17:37:00.001-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

UPDATED to reflect new information

Diamond Comic Distributors has released the full lists for March 2012, and as reported here last week, while March itself was against a five-week month and slightly off, it nonetheless contributed to the first time in the 21st century the direct market has ordered more than $100 million in the first quarter of the year. The Comics Chronicles estimates retailer orders of $33.7 million for the month; that brings the quarter to $101.9 million. (Click to see the charts for the month.)

Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 just barely topped 200,000 copies ordered, its numbers boosted by various special offers to retailers, about which more further down. It marks a return to the top of the charts for Marvel, after several months of DC leadership during its relaunch. The 300th place title was off by more a thousand copies; that benchmark is very sensitive to fifth weeks for obvious reasons, however, and it's worth noting that the figure is higher than the four-week months on either side of last March.

It was, as mentioned last week, the first month since 1994 that five publishers — Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and IDW — had dollar market shares higher than 5%. The percentage captured by the Top 20 publishers was the highest in years: just 1.55% of the items and 3.18% of the dollars were sold by publishers outside the Top 20. The list of the Top 300 Comics and the Top 300 Trade Paperback and Graphic Novels included only familiar names, which rarely happens.

There is, in fact, a disconnect this month when it comes to the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks and Graphic Novels. While the comparative sales statistics that Diamond released find graphic novel dollars off by 5.67%, the actual numbers behind the Top 300 show a different picture, up 25%, or more than $1 million, over the same grouping from last year. Now, occasionally strength in the top-sellers is offset by weakness below 300th place — but a 30-point gap requires more explanation.

Updated: I've confirmed with the distributor that the aggregate change figures are correct, and that what I considered to be the most likely explanation for the gap is probably also correct. The Top 300 list contains a large number of trade paperbacks discounted greater than the usual amount, and since Diamond's market shares and percentage-change figures are based on wholesale and not retail dollars, it becomes possible that the retail dollar value of trades stores ordered went up, while the amount of money they paid (the total wholesale dollars) went down.

It is possible to sort the lists Diamond provides by wholesale dollars; the publisher provides a dollar ranking when it lists titles on its site. Looking at the Wholesale Dollar rankings reported by Diamond, we see evident discounting on a lot of Marvel items this month. The Secret Invasion trade paperback, ranked 32nd in unit orders and 7th in full retail dollars, is ranked by Diamond at 136th place in wholesale dollars. So even if we didn't know there was a sale – the numbers contain plenty of evidence of a sale!

The information is there — and from it, you can often ferret out what titles were discounted more heavily, as was done in the Secret Invasion example above. (But note that it is not necessarily the case that two titles with equal unit sales rankings and different dollar sales rankings mean that one of the books had a special discount. Different retailers order at different discounts, and what's paid for a given product varies from item to item by who's doing the ordering.)

There are often special discounts figured into sales of not just graphic novels, but comics themselves; as noted above, Marvel offered a significant promotional discount on Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 this month. Diamond includes these unit sales in its rankings, but, again, because of the wholesale/retail distinction, the publisher doesn't get the same amount of credit in dollar market shares that it would if the titles had been offered at the regular discount.

Promotionally-cover-priced comics do get trimmed off the lists at the Diamond level — nothing below $1 usually appears any more. But it's tough to say what should be done about regularly priced books retailers didn’t pay the usual rate for. The Comics Chronicles' interest is how many comics are in circulation, period, so it wouldn't be good to see the numbers of comics actually sold trimmed just for ranking purposes, as happened in the DC returnable situation. (Those unreturned DC copies do end up on the charts eventually — though we may only see them reflected in the aggregate totals until the end-of-year rankings.)

Separate dollar rankings used to be provided by Capital City Distribution in its trade magazine, but the lists were never referred to as much as the unit-sales lists. The reason goes back to the purpose of the lists to begin with in the 1980s: retailers wanted to know how titles sell relative to each other, unit-wise. I suspect today's internet readers still do. The feeling at Comichron is that the item-rankings horserace in 2012 isn’t going to matter as much to people looking at the site in 2022 — readers are just going to want to know how many copies of a given book were in circulation.

As always, every figure on Comichron is subject to change as more information comes in. The aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

March 2012: 6.02 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -14%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +18%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -30%
YEAR TO DATE: 17.89 million copies, +15% vs. 2011, -12% vs. 2007, +11% vs. 2002, -30% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
March 2012 versus one year ago this month: -2.45%
YEAR TO DATE: +14.74%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

March 2011: $20.8 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +2%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -7%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +48%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +4%
YEAR TO DATE: $61.6 million, +14% vs. 2011, -4% vs. 2007, +34% vs. 2002, +1% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
March 2012 versus one year ago this month: -1.18%
YEAR TO DATE: +15.85%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2012: $6.44 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +25%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -7%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: -10%
YEAR TO DATE: $18.13 million, +22% vs. 2011

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
March 2012 versus one year ago this month: -5.67%
YEAR TO DATE: +13.42%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

March 2012: $27.23 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +7%
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: +39%
YEAR TO DATE: $79.73 million, +16% vs. 2011

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
March 2012 versus one year ago this month: -2.61%
YEAR TO DATE: +13.42%

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

March 2012: approximately $33.72 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +1%
YEAR TO DATE: $101.81 million, +13% vs. 2010, +3% vs. 2007

One notable change is that the ten-year comparisons now extend out to the Top 50 trade paperbacks; Diamond moved to reporting the Top 50 in March 2002.

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.48; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $3.46. The median and most common price for comics offered was $2.99.

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Dead Quarter no more: Best winter in comics in years

2012-04-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Over the past two months, we haven't been able to make a very good comparison with 2011's comics sales. January was up against a month in 2011 in which many of Diamond Comic Distributors' products missed their shipping month because of the distributor's switch to Tuesday arrival dates; February was had an unusual five shipping weeks. But with March's sales, we finally have 13 weeks to compare — and while March itself was against a five-week month and slightly off, it nonetheless contributed to the first time in the 21st century the direct market has ordered more than $100 million in the first quarter of the year.

The Comics Chronicles initially estimates retailer orders of $33.7 million for the month; that brings the quarter to $101.9 million. (Click to see the preliminary charts for the month.) Retailers ordered more than $12 million more in comic books and trade paperbacks than they did in the first quarter of 2011, and the figure even beats out the first quarters from the boomlet years mid-decade in the 2000s. (That is not adjusted for inflation —2007 or 2008 would probably beat out this quarter if it were. But comics prices have actually gone down since the first quarters of 2011 and 2010, so inflation becomes less relevant to the nearer-term comparisons.)

There is, again, an asterisk that will live as a curiosity in the records for all time. Diamond included Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 in the totals for March, even though it didn't go on sale until April. "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." I can confirm that is exactly how it works. It certainly doesn't hurt the month to have it in there; I expect orders may approach 200,000 copies when the full figures are out next week. But even at that, it's a contribution of less than $1 million to the month. March would look slightly worse without it, but again, it fares well versus a five-week March from last year.

The top-selling graphic novel was a familiar name, Walking Dead Vol. 1. As often happens, when a prominent title is priced lower than the average for the category — the book costs $9.99 — it gave a boost to the unit sales for the category. Trade paperback and graphic novel units were the one category this March that outsold last March.

The comparatives for the month:

COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

	DOLLARS	UNITS
MARCH 2012 VS. FEBRUARY 2012
COMICS	-5.32%	-2.99%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-7.13%	9.54%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-5.89%	-2.07%
MARCH 2012 VS. MARCH 2011
COMICS	-1.18%	-2.45%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-5.67%	2.93%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-2.61%	-2.03%
FIRST QUARTER 2012 VS. FIRST QUARTER 2011
COMICS	15.85%	14.74%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	8.39%	7.25%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	13.42%	14.13%

Diamond did not compute a this-quarter versus last-quarter figure this time around; it would be a drop of about 11.6%. But the drop from Q4 2010 to Q1 2011 was nearly 16%, so that's a much softer slide into winter.

Here are the market shares:

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

PUBLISHER	DOLLAR SHARE	UNIT SHARE
MARVEL COMICS	36.21%	39.94%
DC COMICS	30.95%	36.09%
IMAGE COMICS	6.66%	5.59%
IDW PUBLISHING	5.74%	4.71%
DARK HORSE COMICS	5.24%	3.98%
DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT	2.90%	2.38%
BOOM! STUDIOS	1.42%	1.27%
AVATAR PRESS	1.15%	0.93%
ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT	1.06%	0.98%
VIZ MEDIA	0.86%	0.38%
OTHER NON-TOP 10	7.81%	3.75%

Looking back, I believe that this month marks the first time in the Diamond Exclusive Era that there have been five publishers above the 5% mark in Dollar Market Share. CrossGen never topped 5%, and while publishers besides Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse have topped 5% before in recent years, we never had more than four publishers above 5% in any given month. To get back to months with five publishers over 5% we probably have to go back to 1994, when Valiant finished the year over 5%.

The full estimates will be along next week. In the meantime, be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook. The big historical update is coming, offering a great opportunity for you, the comics reader, to get involved!

Statement of Ownership database hits the 3,000 mark

2012-03-31T22:10:00.003-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

March 2012 is the fifth anniversary of The Comics Chronicles site, which began with a posting that included the sales figures I had collected to that point that had appearing in the Statements of Ownership in comics from 1960 to 1969.

I promised at the time to provide more years later on — but I didn't realize how much later on. What happened is that as I continued to look into what titles and years I still didn't have data for, I realized there were too many holes yet to go forward with simple rankings. So I have continued plugging holes and adding data — and here in the waning minutes of March five years later, I have just added the 3,000th postal statement containing post-1959 comics sales figures to my database. More than 450 titles from more than a dozen publishers from the last 52 years are included.

So I won't be able to make the anniversary month, but a large update is forthcoming, nearly doubling the number of titles for the 1960 list, for example. It took me and those helping two years to locate the first 2,000, but a decade to get the next thousand. There are major changes coming to the 1960s lists, and I will be posting those first.

My expectation is that fewer than a thousand more remain to be found — and now I believe I know where the majority of them appeared. So when I do the updates this time around I will be including a hit list of specific titles, years, and in many cases, exact issues yet to be surveyed; I'll also involve the Comichron Facebook page in the process, so readers can help. There are a lot of cases where I have the sales figure but not the entire Statement, which includes a lot of useful data; I'm looking to add all of those to the files as well.

So while I'm not nearly done with this lifelong project, the home stretch is visible up ahead. Stay tuned to Comichron in the weeks ahead: it won't take five years this time!

More on "The Rule of Eight"

2012-03-13T12:05:00.004-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

Following yesterday's mention of his Rule of Eight — an observation relating to the survival rates for independent publishers whose lines expanded quickly — Marc Patten wrote to remind me of an important nuance: "If memory serves, I think the 'Rule of 8' stemmed from the concept of new companies with some sort of shared universe concept, rather than just number of titles."

Thus, the eight-monthly-title barrier he perceived would not necessarily apply to publishers with differentiated lines. Dark Horse and Image both had mini-universes (Dark Horse with "Comics Greatest World" and Image with its families of studio titles), but in either case no one shared-universe sub-line accounted for more than half the publisher's output.

But when it comes to firms where the majority of the publisher's business relied on a shared universe, eight monthly titles appears to have been more of a red line, historically: Valiant/Acclaim, Tekno•Comix, and CrossGen are among the companies that vanished after crossing it. "There is still no shared-universe line that has managed to survive outside of Marvel/DC to date as far as I know," Patten says, beyond that eight-monthly limit.

There are likely exceptions to be argued with the formulation, but the larger point is this: the expansion seen in middle-tier companies today is in some ways different from the expansion seen in the 1990s. Publisher lines are more differentiated internally, and less reliant upon individual customers who buy everything. Comics have become, like many other media, more grazer-friendly.

Virtuous cycle? February comics sales show depth

2012-03-12T14:48:00.003-05:00

by John Jackson Miller

I have written many times that the recovery in comics sales that began in earnest at the end of 2001 was built upon a "virtuous cycle" developing, in which retailers placed the money from strong-performing comics not solely into paying down other expenses, but into ordering more of the next big project. With Marvel's "Avengers Vs. X-Men" event launching later in 2012, the question was whether the market could hold its gains from the DC relaunch through the "Dead Quarter," giving shops something to work with as AVX approached.

As reported here on Friday, according to figures released by Diamond Comic Distributors, Direct Market orders had their best February in years, with the year-to-date increase mirroring the increase of early 2002, when Wolverine: The Origin fed into Dark Knight Strikes Again, which fed into the Spider-Man movie, the first Free Comic Book Day, and the Transformers nostalgia boomlet. With the estimates for February sales online, we see that the internal numbers also show positive signs.

Last February, while itself a rebound month for the market, had the lowest orders ever for a top-selling title, with Green Lantern #62 selling 71,500 copies to retailers in its initial month. This February, market-topping Justice League #6 had orders approaching 135,400 copies (excluding the Combo Pack) and six titles outsold last year's top-seller.

But perhaps the more important comparisons come by looking at the two-month cycle — the tempo retailer orders are placed on. Most titles would expect to lose significant ground as the winter months are entered; retailers in February 2011 cut their Green Lantern orders more than 6% from the previous December. This February, Justice League's orders dropped by less than 5% from December — and the issue was a Feb. 29 shipping product, so it included only first-day shipments. I would suspect that going down the list we'd find a similar lessening of the usual winter order reductions; retailers ordered nearly 1 million more copies of the Top 300 comics in the month than in February 2011, so that seems likely.

February's total was, of course, aided by the fifth shipping week — it was the first February with five Wednesdays since 1984. Past years show about an 11% increase in Top 300 comics unit orders in weeks with five months; this month's increase in the Top 300 was 18%, so there's something more going on. Whether due solely to the extra week or not, the depth of publisher offerings was much greater this month: we never see a February with just 15 publishers represented in the Top 300. February used to be the month where we'd see the publisher names that usually bubble under. But this month, Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and IDW combined for 239 entries — and Dynamic Forces (Dynamite) added an additional 25! So there aren't a lot of slots left.

We can further see the depth by looking at the 300th-place title bellwether. Look at the number of copies ordered of the 300th-place title in the last

February 2003 • 1,585
February 2004 • 857
February 2005 • 1,155
February 2006 • 1,561
February 2007 • 1,314
February 2008 • 1,997
February 2009 • 2,604
February 2010 • 2,237
February 2011 • 2,860
February 2012 • 4,185

These are all years in which Diamond reported Final Orders, so we're comparing like against like in all cases. Even with the fifth week, retailers ordered far more copies of the titles in the low 200s than they did during even the years that were overall, like 2005-2007. The fragmentation of sales across multiple titles is an old theme on this site, but the above figures are a pretty good indicator that something fundamental has changed in the Direct Market. (The 300th-place graphic novel, by the way, had unit orders of 337 copies, versus 295 last year.)

It may be that the successful model for a middle-tier publisher is no longer keeping to a small-sized line — the "Rule of Eight" observed by market analyst Marc Patten many years ago, who found a high mortality rate for publishers that extended past eight monthly titles in the post-Image era. IDW (which had its highest market share ever this month), Dynamic Forces, and to an extent Boom have joined Image and Dark Horse on what would appear to be a tier where trade paperbacks are making the economies of scale make sense. Is eight titles is no longer the barrier, but the lower entry point to a Periodic Table-like island of stability? And how many publishers can inhabit that region? It's something worth more research.

Here are the aggregate figures:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

Feburary 2012: 6.09 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +18%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -8%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +17%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -24%
YEAR TO DATE: 11.87 million copies, +24% vs. 2011, -11% vs. 2007, +7% vs. 2002, -30% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
February 2012 versus one year ago this month: +19.63%
YEAR TO DATE: +25.94%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

February 2011: $20.98 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +17%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +1%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +39%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +11%
YEAR TO DATE: $40.8 million, +22% vs. 2011, -2% vs. 2007, +28% vs. 2002, unchanged vs. 1997

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
February 2012 versus one year ago this month: +22.26%
YEAR TO DATE: +26.71%

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TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2012: $5.72 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +11%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -11%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: -53%
YEAR TO DATE: $11.69 million, +20% vs. 2011

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
February 2012 versus one year ago this month: +15.65%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.93%

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TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

February 2012: $26.7 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +15%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: -1%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +26%
YEAR TO DATE: $52.5 million, +22% vs. 2011

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
February 2012 versus one year ago this month: +20.11%
YEAR TO DATE: +23.49%

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

February 2012: approximately $36.5 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +21%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +13%
YEAR TO DATE: $69.04 million, +25% vs. 2010, +5% vs. 2007

This is the last month that the ten-year comparisons will be limited to the Top 25 trade paperbacks; Diamond moved to reporting the Top 50 in March 2002.

A couple of observations on the aggregates: the Direct Market has now banked $14 million over the first nine weeks of 2012 versus the year before; this will come in handy as the comparatives for the second half of the year will be more challenging, as we get into comparisons with the early DC relaunch months.

Also, it's interesting to see that the dollar value of all the Top 300 comics ordered in 2012 to date is identical with the figure for the first two months of 1997. That was a period with much lower prices, of course, but the larger unit sales then was driven largely by there being many more shops. That's the big mission should our nascent virtuous cycle continue; comics sales improved in the 2000s but the number of shops didn't swell very much in response. Will retailers farther removed from the calamity of the late 1990s be more willing to expand, especially as the general economy improves? That's one of many big questions, but it's a nice one to be able to ask at all.

Remember to follow Comichron on Facebook and Twitter!

Leap day propels comics to best February in years

2012-03-09T11:54:00.000-06:00

by John Jackson Miller

As you might expect from a site with a name like The Comics Chronicles, we pay special attention to the calendar — and thus took special note of the fact that last month was one of those one-in-28-year Februaries with five Wednesdays. This is why, last month, we cautioned that just as this January was up against an abnormal January (given Diamond Comic Distributors' shipping changes in January 2011), this February wouldn't be a simple comparison either. As our volatility primer notes, retailers order on average 11% more comics by units in five-week months than they do in four-week months.

Still, with each passing week, the case for great improvement in the comics market becomes stronger. Diamond reported combined comics and trade paperback dollar sales were up 20.11% for the month, and the 19.63% bump in periodical units is more than what we would expect to gain from a fifth week. Plus, many of the comics that missed their shipments in January 2011 made it out in February 2011, making last February artificially stronger. So this Feburary's gains look real — and combined with January, we're getting a clearer picture. Click to see the preliminary rankings from February 2012.

Working from my early estimate of between $36 and $37 million for Diamond's sales of all comics and trade paperbacks in February, we are seeing the best two-month percentage start to the year since Diamond began reporting final orders in 2003. The 23.49% year-to-date increase is likely the best since at least 2002, when Wolverine: The Origin and The Dark Knight Strikes Again were wrapping up. The increase actually appears slightly stronger than that year, although there's not enough data from 2002 to say for sure; if so, then this could be the best start of the year in percentage terms since the market peak year of 1993, after which it was mostly all downhill. (I'd have to look into it more, but I'm not sure the bumps from "Age of Apocalypse" and "Marvel Versus DC" in 1995-96 were enough to overcome the loss of shops.)

And 2012's two-month dollar total is higher that any of the years of the mid-2000s boomlet, partially due to inflation: comparing without inflation, the $69 million start to the year is the largest since probably those years of 1995 or 1996, when there were many more comics shops than there are now.

DC again took all top 10 slots in the charts, led by Justice League #6. Marvel took the dollar and unit share titles for the month; Diamond referred to the build-up to the "Avengers Versus X-Men" event in its news release.

The top-selling trade paperback or graphic novel was the Batman: Gates of Gotham collection.

Here are the aggregate change figures from Diamond:

COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

	DOLLARS	UNITS
FEBRUARY 2012 VS. JANUARY 2012
COMICS	10.84%	8.36%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	11.45%	11.07%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	11.03%	8.55%
FEBRUARY 2012 VS. FEBRUARY 2011
COMICS	22.26%	19.63%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	15.65%	11.24%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	20.11%	18.97%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2011 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2010
COMICS	26.71%	25.94%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	16.93%	9.90%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	23.49%	24.61%

And here are the market shares:

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

PUBLISHER	DOLLAR SHARE	UNIT SHARE
MARVEL COMICS	35.92%	38.61%
DC ENTERTAINMENT	29.47%	35.26%
IDW PUBLISHING	6.66%	5.62%
IMAGE COMICS	5.53%	4.88%
DARK HORSE COMICS	4.98%	4.06%
DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT	4.20%	3.82%
BOOM! STUDIOS	1.61%	1.40%
VIZ MEDIA	1.10%	0.49%
EAGLEMOSS PUBLICATIONS LTD	1.08%	0.25%
ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS	1.03%	1.11%
OTHER NON-TOP 10	8.43%	4.50%

IDW's dollar share appears to be a new record for the publisher, besting its old one by more than a full percentage point. It is partially attributable to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1 collection, which broke the top 10.

Barring a collapse in March, this will be a year without a Dead Quarter. Enjoy. Full estimates are expected next week.