March Top 100 Graphic Novels Initial Estimates

By Todd Allen

Here’s the drill: Diamond has released the top 100 graphic novels and relative rankings for the monthly comics for March 2012.  Since Walking Dead is usually a fairly consistently selling title, I’m going to plug last month’s Walking Deadnumbers ( Comichron had January’sWalking Dead estimated at 32,361) 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.

Speaking of Great Kirkman, Vol. 1 of  Walking Dead holds the #1 slot, with orders in the vicinity of 5,600.  Not a huge number, but better than last month’s chart topper.  Hellboy and The Boys (technically a spin-off mini-series) take #2 and #3.  Flashpoint’s tpb edition hits #4 and at #5 Marvel charts with somewhere in the vicinity of 4,100 copies of X-Men Season One, which would be a handful of copies more than February’s Fantastic Four Season One and suggests a little consistency for Marvel’s OGN efforts.  I’m counting 14 publishers in the top 100, but then again graphic novels have always been more of an equal opportunity category than monthly titles.  I would draw your attention to slot #26 and the first tpb of Rachel Rising. There aren’t very many artists out there doing their own thing and solo-publishing.  With ~2100 copies ordered, Terry Moore’s had a better March than a lot of other graphic novels.  Old school.   Also worth noting: Deadpool makes two more appearances: #16 and #76.  Deadpool seems like it might have a proportionally higher profile in collected editions than in monthlies.