ICv2 has released their annual report on comics sales in North America, and everything was down from the pandemic highs. Overall comics and graphic novel sales were down 7%, with $1.87 billion sales in 2023, down from $2.01 billion in 2022.
By format, graphic novels were down 7% and periodicals down 6%, preserving their relative shares. By channel, the results were similar, down 8% for comic stores, and 7% for the book channel. All numbers represent comics and graphic novel sales in the US and Canada.
Although sales decreases are never thrilling, overall sales are still much higher than in 2019 – up 70% from that year. And that’s still impressive.
“A single-digit percentage decline in the North American comics and graphic novel market in 2023 is a huge win,” ICv2 President Milton Griepp said of the report. “The many readers that found or re-found comics and graphic novels as a preferred form of entertainment during Covid are sticking around, maintaining a huge increase in market size over the last five years, despite the full return to normal daily activities post-pandemic and intense competition for consumers’ money and attention. That’s a testament to the power of the medium and to how hard everyone in the industry has worked to build and maintain this audience.”
Other trends from the report, and a companion piece on comics shop channel sales:
• Comics kickstarters were up 30% in dollars raised.
• ICv2 is no longer tracking digital sales, since so many are through subscriptions to online comics services. The number above do not include any digital figures, and previous numbers have been adjusted to remove digital sales.
• In comics shops, as tracked by ComicHub worldwide, periodical comic sales were down 5.8%, and graphic novel sales were down 11.9%.
• Once again, comparisons to 2019 are still very positive: new comic sales in comic stores were up 18% in 2023 compared to sales in 2019; graphic novel sales were up 49%, and overall sales were up 29%.
• The report contains a lengthy explanation of the methodology for the charts, as numbers from different distributors are harder to come by. ComicHub, which was used for comics shop sales analysis, only tracks 125 stores, but ICv2 uses data models from comparisons with years when both Diamond and ComicHub tracked sales to project their analysis. Bookstore data is from Circana BookScan, with data from ComicHub removed. Information from school book fairs and Kickstarter was also included in the appropriate channels.
While the above numbers are not thrilling, neither do they justify the constant moaning about the supposed “death” of the American comics market. Despite all the griping about periodical comics, sales fell less than graphic novel sales in comics shops (perhaps due to the decline in manga sales from their lockdown explosion.) You can see more about slowing manga sales in Brian Hibbs’ BookScan analysis.
The last time I did an in-depth look at periodical sales trends I made a chart of my own tracking just periodical sales. Because digital has now been removed from these numbers it’s NOT an exact comparison – until 2023 the numbers below included digital, so the drop is a bit smaller with digital removed. But since I don’t have the adjusted numbers, let’s go with this for now. Adding in 2023’s $410 million in sales, we get this chart:
As you can see, it’s NOT manga, it’s NOT Dog-Man – periodical sales are holding their own. When YouTubers sit down and screech about the death of comics, they just screech. They don’t show numbers. They don’t have data – they generally just make shit up.
Now it’s worth noting that in my December piece, retailers and observers were expecting a 20% drop in sales for 2023 in various channels and format. These numbers from ICv2 definitely don’t show that, and I’d like to investigate that discrepancy a bit more. The gloomy predictions were from people who DO see numbers, so I don’t dismiss them out of hand. But the uncertainty is mostly in comics shops. In bookstores sales, we have very accurate numbers with Circana BookScan.
But since people like anecdotal numbers, here’s one from retail consultant Atom! Freeman the other day:
Just heard from a small chain retailer that they hit $3 Million in annual sales for the first time.
Stop listening to the comics doomscrolling.
— Atom! Freeman (@AtomBangFreeman) July 13, 2024
None of these numbers show comics sales collapsing. That just isn’t true. But the business of making and selling comics has gotten way more complicated and the narrative is more scattered. We all owe a big thank you to Milton Griepp for putting together these numbers year after year. (And thank Brian Hibbs for his part, while you’re at it.)
I don’t know if it made a dent, but there were 2 months in 2023 when DC’s titles went on hiatus for an unpopular event. Also DC stopped publishing Superman for over a year in 2022-23.
Good. But I have grown tired of the endless soap opera that is mainstream super-hero comics anyway. In fact, the moment I heard the words “Hickman leaving Ultimate Spider-Man” and “Peach Momoko leaving Ultimate X-Men” I drop those last two too.
I feel like I only hear about comics is if someone comes out as gay, that is now a bi-annual event anyway. Hehehe, bi. It became the new “character dies in this issue”. Writers talk about progressive values, but as bisexual I don’t understand why I need a comic book character invented decades ago by two straight men that clearly never showed any hints of being gay to suddenly turn gay. Like, that doesn’t advance any plot. No villain will ever use Tim Drake’s bisexuality that appeared five minutes ago against him. I don’t feel any less threatened by rejection of my family because of a comic book. It just feels like a publicity stunt.
You take a look at Batman and is the almost annual long arc with the Joker again, again again. Jesus Christ DC, get new material or retire the bat. And the same with Spider-Man and Green Goblin. I no longer care about One More Day or Damian being a biological son of Bruce with urgh Talia, just end those things.
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