The News Blog of Comics Culture
The rolling program of Marvel Now! relaunches continued in January, with SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN, NEW AVENGERS, SAVAGE WOLVERINE, UNCANNY X-FORCE, YOUNG AVENGERS and MORBIUS. Plus, there’s the miniseries DEADPOOL: KILLUSTRATED – and, just as interesting as the January launches, the continuing question of how the earlier Marvel Now titles are settling down.
Once again, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 40% to 35% in units, and 35% to 32% in dollars.
Tweet Marvel topped both units and dollars in February, while DC reclaimed the top comics spot with Justice League of America #1 by Johns and Frank. The big news this month was IDW’s surge for their first time over 7% market share– it’s amazing how far you can go riding on a little pony. They [...]
Industry analyst John Jackson Miller has taken the Bookscan numbers posted by Brian Hibbs, and added them with the Diamond year-end sales charts, and then triangulated them with a cosine angle, trapped the outlines in their own layer, tossed the results with a bit of olive oil and garlic, and presented it all for you to read. The above infographic gives a visual representation of sales for each product (GNs and periodical) in various channels; as Miller points out, library and digital sales are not included and the Bookscan numbers are very low, but the end result is a combined comics market of more than $700 million, which Miller notes, is the first time comics sales have reached this level since 1993 or 1994, the high times of speculation and chromium covers.
It’s pretty much as you were in a fairly quiet month for new books. Boom’s dollar-book Deathmatch and the return of Hellboy, alongside a new Adventure Time spin-off and Brian Wood’s new book Mara are the notable debuts. Walking Dead, Saga & My Little Pony top the chart again, elsewhere the Image Firsts reprint programme features strongly, and a few long running licensed books end ahead of relaunches.
It’s my FAVORITE day of the year, when Brian Hibbs posts the year-end sales from bookstores via the Bookscan chart. Now we know these numbers are significantly low, but as I always say, they present a metric.
The huge take away? Well, we all knew The Waking Dead was a juggernaut,—sales in this franchise would have made it the #3 publisher all by itself—but after that it’s kids comics all the way, led by the maybe-comics of Dork Diaries, but following by Big Nate, Ninjago, Ursula Vernon’s Dragonbreath, Drama and so on.
This month’s DC sales column is not being hosted at The Beat. However if you speak German you can read ithere. The column will return in an English language version next month.
TweetThe January sales estimates are up at The Comics Chronicles. It’s a big January and is looking like a win for Marvel, more so with their launches. We’re starting to see the tiers establish themselves for the relaunch, and the reorders are a bit less I was expecting to see, in what I’m very close to proclaiming [...]
Diamond has released their preliminary top 10 and comparative charts for January, and it was another good month for Marvel and comics overall. Although periodical sales were down a bit from last month, GNs were up quite a bit — perhaps oddly given the Christmas sales season. Both periodical and graphic novels were up in strong doubles digits from January 2012, however, showing that the comic book recovery is well under way, no matter what you thing of creative shuffles.
The second month of Marvel Now titles arguably makes for more interesting sales data than the first. We’re starting to get a sense of where some of the books that had huge launch numbers in November are actually going to settle down. And we’re also seeing how the second-tier Marvel Now books are going to fare, with this month seeing the launches of CABLE & X-FORCE, THUNDERBOLTS and AVENGERS ARENA, as well as the relaunch of AVENGERS itself.
As always, Amazon’s best seller lists are only rolling snapshots, but it’s always interesting to peek into what’s selling. The Kindle isn’t known as an ideal comics reading platform, but the top 20 free and paid comics has both the usual suspects and some surprises. The paid list has the warhorses—Walking Dead, Big Nate, Geoff Johns—but the free list is a total mishmosh.
TweetThe big sales news for December was definitely coming out of the Marvel Now relaunch and the “death” of Peter Parker. Big numbers on first issues, big drops on subsequent issues and an Amazing drop-off to start off the saga of The Superior Spider-man.
Walking Dead is only the number three indie book this month, as IDW’s My Little Pony, and Dynamite’s Masks take the top two spots on their first issues. Saga, Spawn & Adventure Time all see good jumps, and there are decent launches for Judge Dredd, Shadowman and Clone. Elsewhere it’s relatively quiet. There are a clutch of new books launching, notably Great Pacific, which is getting great write-ups, and the final series of Locke & Key, hitting new heights.
While Marvel keeps rolling out its latest round of relaunches, DC is sticking to its guns in November. There’s the “Death of the Family” crossover that continues running through various Batman titles. There’s the “Rise of the Third Army” crossover that continues running through the Green Lantern books. There are three minor crossover storylines running through various other titles. And there are, finally, the Before Watchmen and “digital-first” lines of books, both of which continue to expand in November.
We often wonder what writer/industry analyst John Jackson Miller does for fun. Is it really crunching sales charts? Looking at his extensive 2012 Comic Book Sales Figures round-up, it doesn’t seem to be anything else. The above link will give you his estimates of the top 100 comics and graphic novels for 2012. Here’s his analysis of these charts. Including this interesting metric:
While the Marvel Now! relaunch programme got under way in October, November saw it in full swing, with the first issue of ALL-NEW X-MEN, new creative teams (and new numbering) on HULK, IRON MAN, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, X-MEN LEGACY, FANTASTIC FOUR and FF, and a new direction for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. With all the issue #1s supported by extensive promotion, the chart is turned upside down.
You won’t be surprised to hear that this gives Marvel the largest share of the North American direct market in November, leading DC by 40% to 33% in units and a rather closer 34% to 30% in dollars.
Marvel maintained its top publisher spot in both inits and dollars for December, as Diamond released preliminary charts for last month. The Marvel Now books made up 6 out of the top 10 comics, topped by the final issue of Amazing Spiderman. DC’s Batman titles had a strong showing, however.
Over in graphic novels, Image pretty much crushed it, not just with The Walking Dead but strong showings for Saga, Chew and Fatale as well, making for one of its strongest monthly shares in a while.
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