Diamond Comic Distributors released their sales data for the month of July recently and there where several surprises in it, with the biggest being Captain America: Reborn taking the top spot over DC's summer event Blackest Night. Hit the jump for a full breakdown of the top 10 comics and graphic novelsA quick note before the charts. The pricing is from Diamond's list, the page count for the DC comics is from their site, but the page count for the Marvel comics are from third party sources because Marvel does not actually list the page counts of their comics on their website, so they may not be completely accurate.
COMICS
- Captain America: Reborn #1 - $3.99/32 pgs - 193,142 est units sold.
- Blackest Night #1 - $3.99/48 pgs - 177,105 est units sold.
- Batman and Robin #2 - $2.99/32 pgs - 117,986 est units sold.
- Amazing Spider-Man #600 - $4.99/104 pgs - 116,857 est units sold.
- Green Lantern #43 - $2.99/32 pgs - 109,426 est units sold.
- Green Lantern #44 - $2.99/32 pgs - 105,063 est units sold.
- Dark Avengers #7 - $3.99/32 pgs - 94,189 est units sold.
- Incredible Hulk #600 - $4.99/104 pgs - 92,343 est units sold.
- Captain America #601 - $3.99/48 pgs - 87,844 est units sold.
- Ultimatum #5 - $3.99/32 pgs - 86,748 est units sold.
Again, the biggest surprise here is Captain America: Reborn doing better than Blackest Night, which took the #1 and #2 spots, respectively. Whether this is a fluke or not is hard to tell at this point, but, traditionally, Marvel has sold better than DC and although Green Lantern has been getting a lot buzz recently, Blackest Night is still a DC book, which could be making readers hesitate to pick it up.
The anniversary issues for both Incredible Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man, unsurprisingly, did well and Batman and Robin's #1 spot from last month seems to have been based on some genuine interest since #2 was the third best selling book of the month.
Wednesday Comics was released this month as well and did not do that well. Issue #1 came in at #36 on the charts and sales dropped significantly with each new issue (#4 charted at 58). Not a great showing for a project like this and it is unknown at this time just how much further down this will go and what exactly is keeping people away, though the $4 price tag and seemingly low page count probably played a role. Unless something drastic happens, the series should level out around the mid-60's to mid-70's range for the duration of the run.
The anniversary issues for both Incredible Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man, unsurprisingly, did well and Batman and Robin's #1 spot from last month seems to have been based on some genuine interest since #2 was the third best selling book of the month.
Wednesday Comics was released this month as well and did not do that well. Issue #1 came in at #36 on the charts and sales dropped significantly with each new issue (#4 charted at 58). Not a great showing for a project like this and it is unknown at this time just how much further down this will go and what exactly is keeping people away, though the $4 price tag and seemingly low page count probably played a role. Unless something drastic happens, the series should level out around the mid-60's to mid-70's range for the duration of the run.
COLLECTIONS, OGN AND MANGA
- 100 Bullets Vol 13, Wilt TPB
- The Boys Vol 4, We Gotta Go Now TPB
- Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader HC
- Green Lantern: Rage of The Red Lanterns HC
- Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow HC
- Mouse Guard Vol 2, Winter 1152 HC
- Parker: The Hunter HC
- Star Wars Adventures Vol 2, Princess Leia and The Royal Ransom
- Naruto Vol 45
- Fruits Basket Vol 23
Nothing too surprising here except for the low ranking of Parker: The Hunter and the absence of Asterios Polyp though that could be have been expected as well. Each sold exceptionally well in retail channels not tracked through Diamond, though, so that could make up a for the low showing on the charts.
MARKET SHARE
Marvel - 42%/37%
DC - 34%/30%
Dark Horse - 4%/5%
IDW - 4%/5%
Image - 3%/3%
The first number is Unit Market Share and the second is Dollar Share. The other big surprise this month was Marvel's drop in market share and DC's gain. Last month Marvel had almost half of the market share and there are some significant drops for them. DC also has about a third of the market share which is higher than normal for them.
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3 comments:
For me, the first issue of Wednesday comics needed to impress the hell out of me to shell out $4 a week for 3 months for a newspaper.
I just couldnt justify the cost in my budget.
It's just so expensive for a shorter version of an anthology book in that format.
DC has been stepping it up big time in the past two years, with all their Green Lantern stuff, and more recently high-profile shiz like Batman & Robin. no wonder they've got an increase in market share. the thing that always surprises me is Marvel hardly being seen in the top 10 collections chart - even though their trade collecting turnaround is astonishingly high/fast.
If it wasn't for Cap. 601 dropping, REBORN probably wouldn't have sold as much. But Marvel is champion at promoting their product so...
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