Buffy continues in the top spot, while a double-shipping Walking Dead takes second and third places. Turtles creeps back up to fourth, and Star Trek/ Legion of Superheroes gets off to a very promising start. Further down, Orchid benefits from a rock star contributor, Garth Ennis & John Byrne launch new titles and a remarkable success story finishes off the month.

This month everyone wants to know how DC’s New 52 has affected the sales of everyone else’s books. It’s a little too early to tell, the re-charting DC books have pushed a lot of indies off the charts, but while the indie publishers have a lot less titles charting this month, their market and dollar share have only dropped a little, suggesting that sales are up overall. The next three months will show the effects far more clearly.

Only 87 indie books charted this month, down from last month’s high of 127 and again the number 87 book sold around the same as the number 87 book last month. The bottom book sold 5,167 compared to last month’s 3,341. In total those books sold approximately 921,878, well down on last month’s 1,053,116. That said, last month the average sales were 8,292 per book, this month it’s 10,596. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.

A look over the sales seem to suggest that the better-selling books have weathered okay, but a lot of books further down the charts have suffered serious drops, with retailers maybe choosing to spend their re-stock money on DC books rather than indies.

This month Image were the number three publisher, with 4.49% dollar share and a 3.98 market share thanks to two issues of

Writer Ivan Brandon gives voice to the frequently-stated among creators idea that sales charts are a dangerous thing for the business, and may actually help put people out of work. He was most upset by the recent iFanboy piece that looked at all the Marvel books that seemed to be below the line that spelled cancellation:

John Jackson Miller has posted his estimates for October 2011 sales ( ICv2′s will be out tomorrow) and it was a month of records:

It was a great month for being ultimate, being afraid and flashing.

It’s been a while since we took a look at The New York Times’ Graphic Novel best sellers lists. Let’s take a peak shall we?

Okay, so comics sales were kinda crap in March, based on year-to-year comparisons, although better than February. Plus, the top book popped its head above the 100,000 mantle. But ICv2 reports that GN sales were even more problematic:

Diamond has released the figures for March and things are looking up — at least from February, with comics up 17.13 percent and graphic novels up 13.86 percent. But sales in the first quarter were still down from 2010: Comic sales declined by 8.57 percent and GNs declined by 7.24 percent. Marvel led the month ins dollars and units. PR and charts below. BUT, see John Jackson MIller’s analysis:

ICv2 is up with the actual numbers for January and they aren’t so hot, as we previously guessed; however, the slow January sales have a number of mitigating factors:

* January always sucks
* A lot of top books did not ship from DC
* The number of products shipped in general was down from December.

Overall, sales were dramatically down in January, with Marvel regaining their top at the spot with FF #587 but Image making their best showing in three years.

With Diamond’s year-end sales charts released, along with year-to-year comparisons, the pundits are out in force, making all kinds of observations and suggestions. We’ll try to run them down in an orderly fashion but you might want to get a cuppa…there are a lot of them,. We’ve bolded things for skimmers, however.

First off, heroic John Jackson Miller has taken all the sales charts and given us the Top 1000 Comics and Top 1000 GNs of 2010. Jackson finds softening in every region of the periodical chart:

TweetThe other day ICv2 released their sales estimates for December, and the year ended on a mixed note, as we previously reported: Comics were down 7.5 percent, while graphic novels were up a gaudy 26.7 percent. Combined sales were up 2.2 percent year over year. So why the GN sales surge? A change in shipping [...]