By Todd Allen

Here’s the drill: Diamond has released the top 100 titles and relative rankings for the monthly comics for February 2012.  Since Walking Dead is usually a fairly consistently selling title, I’m going to plug last month’s Walking Dead numbers (both Comichron and ICV2 had January’s Walking Dead estimated at 31,596) into Diamond’s rankings.  That should get us relatively close to the formal estimates that should be out soon.  If Walking Dead had a good month, the numbers should be higher.  If Walking Dead had a bad month, the numbers will be lower.  History suggests this will be within +/- 5%, if not +/- 1%, praise to Great Kirkman.

1
105.38
JUSTICE LEAGUE #6
$3.99
DC
132,179
2
100
BATMAN #6
$2.99
DC
125,431
3
75.19
ACTION COMICS #6
$3.99
DC
94,311
4
73.5
DETECTIVE COMICS #6
$2.99
DC
92,192
5
73.24
GREEN LANTERN #6
$2.99
DC
91,865
6
60.05
BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT #6
$2.99
DC
75,321
7
54.21
SUPERMAN #6
$2.99
DC
67,996
8
52.98
FLASH #6
$2.99
DC
66,453
9
49.39
AQUAMAN #6
$2.99
DC
61,950
10
49.12
BATMAN AND ROBIN #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
61,612
11
46.58
UNCANNY X-MEN #6
$3.99
MAR
58,426
12
46.08
UNCANNY X-MEN #7
$3.99
MAR
57,798
13
43.43
WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #5
$3.99
MAR
54,475
14
43.08
WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #6
$3.99
MAR
54,036
15
42.18
WONDER WOMAN #6
$2.99
DC
52,907
16
42.12
NEW AVENGERS #21
$3.99
MAR
52,831
17
41.83
AVENGERS X-SANCTION #3
$3.99
MAR
52,468
18
41.35
TEEN TITANS #6
$2.99
DC
51,866
19
41.01
AVENGERS #22
$3.99
MAR
51,439
20
40.92
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #679
$3.99
MAR
51,326
21
40.65
AVENGERS #23
$3.99
MAR
50,988
22
40.38
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #680
$3.99
MAR
50,649
23
39.88
NEW AVENGERS #22
$3.99
MAR
50,022
24
39.65
WINTER SOLDIER #1
$2.99
MAR
49,733
25
39.43
UNCANNY X-FORCE #21
$3.99
MAR
49,457
26
39.41
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #679.1
$2.99
MAR
49,432
27
39.17
GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS #6
$2.99
DC
49,131
28
38.66
UNCANNY X-FORCE #22
$3.99
MAR
48,492
29
38.32
BATWOMAN #6
$2.99
DC
48,065
30
37.24
BATGIRL #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
46,710
31
37.16
NIGHTWING #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
46,610
32
35.85
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
44,967
33
35.51
AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #4
$3.99
MAR
44,540
34
35.24
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #7
$3.99
MAR
44,202
35
33.85
CAPTAIN AMERICA #8
$3.99
MAR
42,458
36
33.29
INCREDIBLE HULK #5
$3.99
MAR
41,756
37
33.02
FANTASTIC FOUR #603
$2.99
MAR
41,417
38
32.1
SWAMP THING #6
$2.99
DC
40,263
39
32.04
WINTER SOLDIER #2
$2.99
MAR
40,188
40
31.59
FF #15
$2.99
MAR
39,624
41
30.62
SECRET AVENGERS #22
$3.99
MAR
38,407
42
30.44
RED LANTERNS #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
38,181
43
29.94
WOLVERINE #301
$3.99
MAR
37,554
44
29.5
DAREDEVIL #9
$2.99
MAR
37,002
45
29.04
CATWOMAN #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
36,425
46
28.91
SECRET AVENGERS #23
$3.99
MAR
36,262
47
28.73
X-MEN #24
$3.99
MAR
36,036
48
28.4
X-MEN #25
$3.99
MAR
35,622
49
28.38
X-MEN LEGACY #262
$2.99
MAR
35,597
50
28.33
DEADPOOL #50
$3.99
MAR
35,535
51
27.95
RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
35,058
52
27.3
MIGHTY THOR #11
$3.99
MAR
34,243
53
27.13
SUPERGIRL #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
34,029
54
26.98
ANIMAL MAN #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
33,841
55
26.88
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
33,716
56
26.69
WOLVERINE AND X-MEN ALPHA AND OMEGA #2
$3.99
MAR
33,477
57
26.36
ULTIMATE COMICS ULTIMATES #7
$3.99
MAR
33,064
58
26.31
SCARLET SPIDER #2
$2.99
MAR
33,001
59
26.3
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
32,988
60
26.12
DEFENDERS #3
$3.99
MAR
32,763
61
25.82
VENOM #13
$3.99
MAR
32,386
62
25.49
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #513
$3.99
MAR
31,972
63
25.19
WALKING DEAD #94 (MR)
$2.99
IMA
31,596
64
25.19
ULTIMATE COMICS X-MEN #7
$3.99
MAR
31,596
65
24.19
SUPERBOY #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
30,342
66
23.99
ULTIMATE COMICS X-MEN #8
$3.99
MAR
30,091
67
23.74
ASTONISHING X-MEN #47
$3.99
MAR
29,777
68
23.26
BTVS SEASON 9 FREEFALL #6
$2.99
DAR
29,175
69
22.46
MAGIC THE GATHERING #1
$3.99
IDW
28,172
70
22.01
CARNAGE USA #3
$3.99
MAR
27,607
71
21.6
SUICIDE SQUAD #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
27,093
72
21.42
VENOM #13.1
$2.99
MAR
26,867
73
21.37
DEADPOOL #51
$2.99
MAR
26,805
74
21.28
BIRDS OF PREY #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
26,692
75
21.14
VENOM #13.2
$2.99
MAR
26,516
76
21.12
VENOM #13.4
$2.99
MAR
26,491
77
21.09
GREEN ARROW #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
26,453
78
20.99
VENOM #13.3
$2.99
MAR
26,328
79
20.7
BATMAN BEYOND UNLIMITED #1
$3.99
DC
25,964
80
20.45
CAPTAIN AMERICA AND BUCKY #627
$2.99
MAR
25,651
81
20.3
STORMWATCH #6
$2.99
DC
25,462
82
19.01
FEAR ITSELF FEARLESS #9
$2.99
MAR
23,844
83
18.99
FEAR ITSELF FEARLESS #8
$2.99
MAR
23,819
84
18.96
X-FACTOR #231
$2.99
MAR
23,782
85
18.82
X-FACTOR #232
$2.99
MAR
23,606
86
18.57
MAGIC THE GATHERING #2
$3.99
IDW
23,292
87
18.34
ALL STAR WESTERN #6 [*]
$3.99
DC
23,004
88
18.11
NEW MUTANTS #37
$2.99
MAR
22,716
89
17.64
NEW MUTANTS #38
$2.99
MAR
22,126
90
17.51
PUNISHER #8
$2.99
MAR
21,963
91
17.38
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #634
$2.99
MAR
21,800
92
17.33
HUNTRESS #5
$2.99
DC
21,737
93
17.12
MOON KNIGHT #10
$3.99
MAR
21,474
94
17.1
AVENGERS ACADEMY #25
$2.99
MAR
21,449
95
16.93
HULK #48
$2.99
MAR
21,235
96
16.84
AVENGERS ACADEMY #26
$2.99
MAR
21,123
97
16.45
DEMON KNIGHTS #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
20,633
98
16.41
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #6 [*]
$2.99
DC
20,583
99
16.01
CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1
$3.50
DAR
20,081
100
15.81
FATALE #2 [*] (MR)
$3.50
IMA
19,831

If Walking Dead didn’t increase it’s sales over January, it looks like the drops are continuing, but the basic hierarchy remains the same for the top 14, with the exception of Aquaman inching ahead of Batman and Robin.  Marvel’s top seller, still Uncanny X-Men would dip below the 60K line.  The worst top seller for Marvel in recent memory.  Avengers X-Sanction, for a book that’s leading into a big deal supposedly high order cross-over is very tepid in the vicinity of 52K, so I hope the fans get as excited as the retailers are supposed to be.

Debuts include Winter Soldier around 49K (issue two drops to  40K), Magic: The Gathering at 28K,  Conan the Barbarian at 20K and Fatale at just under 20K (pre-multiple printings?).

Scarlet Spider takes the customary Marvel issue 1-2 plunge from 53K – 33K.  Ouch.

“Real” numbers will be out soon, but that’s what it looks like we’re dealing with.

1 COMMENT

  1. Im gonna go in the “numbers will be very slightly higher” pond.

    Well Done to walking dead then, again :D

    Still, plenty one can conclude from this.

    Several of the lower tier DC relaunch titles continue to do horribly.

    Some marvel titles – including Iron Man, Thor and the two secondary Ultimate books are dropping like gravity has them, and the Wolverine renumbering didn’t have any real lasting effect at all.

  2. Whatever the numbers, we do know that Marvel didn’t crack the top ten for the second month in a row. Almost as amazingly, Wonder Woman outsells the New Avengers, even if only by a few copies. Remember when New Avengers was Marvel’s pacesetter? Crazy.

  3. Walking Dead rose a little this month based on my own guesses.

    You’d be better off trying these calculations with AXM or AA.

  4. Ken Raining,
    You also have to take into account DC’s returnability program. As long as that is going on, DC’s numbers/rankings are going to be greatly inflated. Have we seen numbers where the adjustments have been made for returns yet?

    Also, even with that, Marvel’s reclaimed the market share and dollar share. And outside of DC’s best performing titles, everything else is slipping, moving back to their Pre-New 52 range.

    But I agree with you, sweeping the Top 10 two months in a row is something for DC to crow about.

  5. Thunderbolts missses the top 100? And is now below 20k? :(

    Looks like alot of my titles are sitting between 20-30k. Which is starting to look like the new average…

  6. The Spider-Man sales story of the last 13 years is one of the most amazing in the history of the business. Considering that X-Men didn’t really take off until the very late 70s/early 80s, Spider-Man was probably the best selling character in comics for close to 30 years. By the late 90s, Spider-sales had fallen to their lowest point ever, only to be rebuilt to near the top of the charts by JMS. Sales started to slip by the middle of the 2000s, only to be boosted back up by a couple of years worth of crossovers and marketing stunts. Then they retconned the marriage, sales started to plummet and they’ve just kept crumbling to where Spider-sales are now within spitting distance of their all-time lows.

    Mike

  7. ^X-Men sales didn’t take off until ’83-’84 with Paul Smith’s run as artist. A lot of people assume that the Byrne issues sold great, but the real upswing didn’t start until Smith took over. (Of course, a large reason for those sales had to do with the perceptible amount of depth that the franchise developed, and the Byrne issues were a part of that.)

    I’m not sure why you think that Spider-Man was the best-selling character for three decades. Marvel was just getting started in the ’60s, and even by ’69 Amazing Spider-Man was still only the 7th best-selling title, being outsold by four Superman titles and two Archie titiles. Superman continued to outsell Spidey throughout most of the ’70s (see Comichron.com for this information, btw). And the X-Men outsold Spidey throughout most of the ’80s and ’90s. JMS’s run sold well but was not a best-selling title in comics at the time; it was not really a regular in the top 10.

    That’s not to say that Amazing Spidey’s downturn isn’t noteworthy, though. It seems that sales are actually the worst in the title’s history. Just 3-4 years ago it sold an average of 100,000 copies a month. It’s lost half its readers since then. In recent memory the only sales figure that Spidey can be proud of is the gimmick Obama cover.

  8. MBunge,
    You say, “Then they retconned the marriage, sales started to plummet and they’ve just kept crumbling to where Spider-sales are now within spitting distance of their all-time lows.”

    So are you saying that if they hadn’t retconned the marriage, the Spider-Sales would have stayed at JMS/Civil War Crossover levels while everything else (including Avengers, X-Men, and all the other Marvel titles) suffered sales attrition in a bad economy?

    Is it your hypothesis that Spider-Sales alone would have bucked those trends and been the industry leader? Because that doesn’t sound right.

    Going by these sales charts, for some time now, Spider-Man has been Marvel’s best selling solo title. If not for this sudden surge of DC’s New 52, it would be one of the best selling titles in an industry where most sales are down.

  9. “I’m not sure why you think that Spider-Man was the best-selling character for three decades.”

    Well, to take your examples, while Spider-Man was behind Superman for the 60s and part of the 70s, the Wall-crawler completely crushed the Kryptonian for part of the 70s, and all of the 80s. Spider-Man also dominated the X-Men in the 60s and 70s and the multiple Spider-titles still outsold the single Uncanny X-Men in the 80s. It was only when we started to get multiple mutant books that the X-franchise outstripped Spidey.

    Mike

  10. “So are you saying that if they hadn’t retconned the marriage”

    What I’m saying is that the numbers are clear. The 6 months immediately following the marriage retcon were the steepest sales decline for AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in the entire decade. Those 6 months were worse than the sales drops of the previous 6 years combined and worse than the sales drops of the next 3 1/2 years combined. In fact, I think that 6 months of lost sales were worse than all of the sales drops of the rest of the decade combined.

    True, Spider-sales would likely have declined along with the rest of Marvel, but that’s not what happened. It’s more ike Spider-sales plunged and then the rest of Marvel gradually caught up with the Spider-decline.

    Mike

  11. “What I’m saying is that the numbers are clear. The 6 months immediately following the marriage retcon were the steepest sales decline for AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in the entire decade”

    No. What is pretty clear is that those 6 months before the marriage retcon were close to two years of tie-ins to Civil War (Marve’s most popular crossover event in the past 15 years, where all the titles that tied into it got their numbers greatly inflated).

    If you look at the sales trajectory the Spider-Man titles were on before “The Other”, Road to Civil War, and Civil War, it’s pretty similar to the sales curve of Spider-Man after One More Day.

    Spider-Man’s sales declining in the same fashion as other Marvel titles is exactly what happened once you take away the Civil War crossover bump.