The News Blog of Comics Culture
The “Return of Bruce Wayne” and “Brightest Day” brands continued to be the driving force behind DC’s periodical output in October. While most of the Batman books were on hiatus, a bunch of one-shots, collectively titled Bruce Wayne: The Road Home, filled the gap. Other October releases include the low-profile miniseries Knight and Squire and JLA/The 99. Consequently, average sales of the DC Universe line remained relatively flat.
TweetFor your infographic entertainment, we’ve just posted Diamond’s raw info in our popular “Sales Chart” category. We’ve also posted the top 50 Indies, Top 50 Indie GNs, Top 50 Manga, and Top 25 Small Publisher Comics and Small Publisher GNs below. Enjoy! Top 300 Comics — November 2010 Top 300 Graphic Novels November 2010 Top [...]
Diamond has released their November basic data dump, and no sales rebound sight, with overall sales down 8.28 percent from a year ago and down 6.64 percent from November. However, graphic novel sales surged 14.84 percent since last year, driven by sales of THE WALKING DEAD trade collections. John Jackson Miller already has his preliminary analysis up. Diamond has recently started releasing much more information on comparative sales — I’m told this is because the partial figures they were releasing were giving rise to inaccurate projections by such folks as Miller. We have a lot more data to go on on how the market changes from year over year; let’s be judicious in how we analyze it.
Overall, the comics market is down 5.66 percent YTD in dollars and -4.18 percent in units from 2009. While that isn’t a great number, considering the economy, it could be worse.
It’s fitting that September’s top selling comic features an image of Wolverine crouching atop a giant turd, because overall, sales were in the crapper, and the whole quarter was in the dumpster, ICv2 tells us. If you think we’re exaggerating, the normally understated ICv2′s use of the word “Sucked” is a strong indicator.
The business news website ICv2 isn’t known for being hyperbolic. So when Milton Griepp said that this month’s comics sales had “plummeted” everyone leaped up, screaming, knocking over chairs and spilling drinks everywhere.
Sales of comics and graphic novels through Diamond Comic Distributors dropped substantially in August with periodical comics falling 17% and graphic novels down 21%. There wasn’t a single comic title even close to the 100,000 in August.
If it weren’t for the continued strength of SCOTT PILGRIM trades, the GN drop would have been even more grisly. On the periodical side, there was no big book, but, said ICv2, Certainly “the lack of one big title can’t account for everything.”
The grim details immediately set the punditocracy to arms, perhaps sniffing the hint of burning smoke in Tom Spurgeon’s Doomapocalyptigeddon which he descried from his aerie high in the Misty Mountains, the same distant smell of charring paper and brimstone that we’ve been picking up for the last few weeks.
TweetVampires beat zombies this month, as the first issue of IDW’s new series based on the True Blood TV show is the top selling “indie” comic, beating an anniversary issue of The Walking Dead. We’ve also got the first issue of Doctor Solar and a new Star Wars miniseries from Dark Horse, while a new [...]
Tweet ICv2 posted their sales for July yesterday, but bucking a recent trend, periodical sales were down while GN sales were up a bit, mostly because so many Scott Pilgrim books were sold. Nut graph: “The over-all picture was one of weakness, however, as the increase in graphic novel sales was insufficient to outweigh weak [...]
Buffy may be on a break, but that doesn’t mean that a Joss Whedon book isn’t the top selling “indie” comic this month as Serenity takes the top spot. Further down the list we have lots of Red Sonja comics, a Goon spin-off by Eric Powell, and yet more adaptations of movies and TV shows.
Dark Horse had a 3.53% unit share and a 5.30% dollar share, Image had a 3.38% unit share and a 3.88% dollar share, and IDW had a 3.07% unit share and a 3.67% dollar share.
I’ve listed every “indie” title in the top 200, every title from Image, Darkhorse, and IDW (ie. “the front of Previews”), and a selection of others.
Thanks to icv2.com and Milton Griepp for permission to use these numbers, which are estimates, and can be found here.
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