October Comics Sales Soften
As the economy went into free fall, ICv2 notes that October sales have shown some slippage. From their just released list of the top 25 titles, just two showed signs of improvement over September sales. One was Amazing Spider-Man #573 which featured the faux-Stephen Colbert for President cover while the other was Batman #680, the penultimate chapter to Batman RIP.
Despite somewhat stagnant sales, the dollars sold in to comic stores were up a “robust” 9% compared with a year ago, according to the industry watchdog. September and October were the first positive months for comic sales since January. Of course, more titles were retailing last month at $3.99, rapidly becoming a standard, as opposed to last October. ICv2 did note that the unit sales for the title charting in the 300th position was 4200 compared with 3000 just twelve months ago which they interpret as a sign of overall industry strength.
Graphic novel sales showed an increase of just 5% compared with last October. Combined with comic book sales, that creates an 8% total increase.
The site notes that the company crossovers, Secret Invasion #7 (154,675 copies) and Final Crisis #4 (115,666 copies) took the first two spots on the list. Marvel had seven of the top 10 and 17 of the first 25 with DC taking the balance. IDW’s G.I. Joe relaunch and Angel: After the Fall were the first non-Top Two titles to crack the top 100 list coming in at 65th and 66th place. This further cements IDW’s fourth place standing among comic book publishers, after Dark Horse and now ahead of Image.
In graphic novels, DC’s Joker by Brian Azzarello, took first place with an estimated 17,000 copies sold, also nabbing the top spot for dollars earned. Marvel’s best seller for the month was the Marvel Zombies trade paperback, which likely hit the top Marvel spot given its three variant covers. Wile Watchmen slipped from first place to sixth, its 6000 copies remains impressive given its age.
Here are ICv2’s estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 comic titles in October:
154,675 Secret Invasion #7 (Of 8) SI*
115,666 Final Crisis #4 (Of 7)
110,261 Hulk #7*
103,941 Batman #680 RIP*
99,513 New Avengers #46 SI
87,258 Mighty Avengers #19 SI
86,770 Astonishing X-Men #27 MD
82,550 Amazing Spider-Man #573 NWD*
81,074 Uncanny X-Men #503 MD
80,731 Justice League of America #25
78,673 Thor #11
77,353 Justice League of America #26
76,407 Final Crisis Rage of Red Lanterns #1
72,405 Captain America #43
72,073 Justice Society of America #19*
69,609 Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1 (Of 2)
69,069 Amazing Spider-Man #574
68,913 Amazing Spider-Man #575
65,888 X-Men Legacy #217 XOS 2
65,878 Detective Comics #849 RIP
65,732 Dark Tower: Treachery #2 (Of 6)*
64,443 The Stand: Captain Trips #2 (Of 5)*
64,412 Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #2 (Of 5)
64,194 Marvel Zombies 3 #1 (Of 4)*
63,757 Avengers / Invaders #5 (Of 12)*
ICv2 is estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores), using Diamond’s published sales indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations) and using that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond’s sales on the remaining titles. We can check the accuracy of our numbers by comparing the Batman number that we calculate using multiple data points; our numbers for Batman are within 1/10 of 1% of each other, ensuring a high degree of accuracy.
Here are ICv2’s estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 graphic novel titles in October:
JOKER HC 17,296
MARVEL ZOMBIES TP* 8,731
BOYS TP VOL 03 (MR) 8,565
SERENITY BETTER DAYS TP 8,118
DARK TOWER LONG ROAD HOME HC 8,014
WATCHMEN TP* 6,122
EX MACHINA TP VOL 07 EX CATHEDRA (MR) 5,966
WARREN ELLIS AETHERIC MECHANICS GN (MR) 5,665
ULTIMATE X-MEN TP VOL 19 ABSOLUTE POWER 5,467
SAVAGE SWORD O/CONAN TP VOL 04 5,259
JUSTICE TP VOL 02 4,989
LOEG BLACK DOSSIER TP 4,812
PUNISHER MAX TP VOL 10 VALLEY FORGE (MR) 4,459
NORTHLANDERS VOL 1 SVEN THE RETURNED 4,355
X-MEN TP MESSIAH COMPLEX 4,355
EMPOWERED TP VOL 04 (MR) 4,314
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS TP VOL 03 4,230
GREEN LANTERN REVENGE O/GREEN LANTERNS 3,919
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 11 SALEM’S SEVEN 3,867
Y THE LAST MAN DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 1 3,804
DAREDEVIL TP CRUEL UNUSUAL 3,794
HELLSING TP VOL 09 3,742
X-FORCE PREM HC VOL 01 ANGELS DEMONS 3,669
MIGHTY AVENGERS TP VOL 02 VENOM BOMB 3,596
ULTIMATE IRON MAN II PREM HC* 3,534