DIAMOND's APRIL 2007 SALES CHARTS & MARKET SHARE REPORT

[MattBrady]

Diamond released their monthly Direct Market Sales Charts and Market Share report Monday, this month for titles that went on sale in April 2007, and while Marvel led both the comic book and graphic novel charts with the start of their Fallen Son: Death of Captain America event specials and the Civil War trade paperback, respectively, overall the margin between market leaders Marvel and DC narrowed in April as compared to recent months.

As mentioned, Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America - Wolverine - the first of five Jeph Loeb-written one-shots was the top-selling comic book of April, and Marvel dominated the Top 10 with seven charters, including an impressive #6 debut for The Avengers: The Initiative #1, again demonstrating the marketing power of Civil War aftermath titles. Marvel's hold on the Top Ten was only broken up by two issues of Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America - # 7 and 8, the former of which was the second bestselling comic book of April, and Justice Society of America #5 at #10.

DC staged something of a "comeback" in the #11-20 chart positions, helping explain the tighter market shares, charting nine of ten, including April's issues of 52 and the related World War III one-shots. Only Dark Horse's Buffy #2 broke up DC's wave, coming in at a very impressive #12 for the month...

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[biffordmichael]

I thought Runaways would be higher...FIRST POST!

Biff

[von Doom, M.D.]

The discrepancy between the #1 and #2 best-selling TPB's is encouraging, because it implies, to me at least, that outsiders were buying it. I only wish Civil War had been better, so they'd be more apt to stay.

And I'm honeslty surprised by the #1 comic, but hey, it's cashing in on the biggest thing since Superman's death and it stars Wolverine. I guess it was just an excuse to print money.

[melperfect]

This looks like a great month for the industry, a Dark Horse book at #12 and the top 40 plus titles are all putting up very strong numbers. I know the index number doesn't equal sales, but based on reading these charts for the past few years, the top 40 looks extremely bright.

Go comics industry!!!

[spidertour02]

1 3 279.46 FALLEN SON DEATH O/CAPTAIN AMERICA WOLVERINE $2.99 MAR

Of all the words to abbreviate, they chose to shorten "of."

[Ace]

Friends really shouldn't let friends buy hundreds of thousands of Jeph Loeb comics.

[speedfreak]

DC closing the gap again, and with solicitations showing they've still got some very good stuff in the pipeline. I know a lot people hate the dc vs marvel thing on the boards, but for me that's good news.

Also I'd like to see a comparison with sales from a few years ago. Weren't the top books just scraping to 100000 not so long ago? The market can finally be said to be growing again, instead of the annual decline that seemed a foregone conclusion not so long ago.

[nafannataz]

Looks like the difference between Marvel and DC were the Civil War TPs

[Jonnytech]

Its very cool that all the top 40 books sold 100,000+ !

[slitthroat]

Originally Posted by speedfreak

DC closing the gap again

Till World War Hulk and the X-men Event occur

[Simon DelMonte]

What I find most interesting is that the Dark Tower comic is still selling like mad. If you judge by the message boards, it's barely a blip on the radar, an event for the first month but ignored by and large since then. I don't think I saw any reviews of the rest of the series on this or any other site.

But it's clearly still selling. And it obviously is selling to the hordes of Stephen King fans. This is big news, though what it means for the industry as a whole I can't say. And whether the fans are happy, I can't say either. My friends who are Dark Tower fans are, for the most part, not enjoying this series, and will buy the rest out of loyalty. If these people are representative of the larger fandom, further DT comics might not do so well.

[whitemarkd]

How long do you figure Shadowpact's got? And I didn't realize JLA: Classified and JSA: Classified sold so poorly, though I guess they're more variable based on the characters and creators for each story/arc. (I don't buy JLA: Classified - I'm waiting for some satellite-era (or earlier) stories - but I find JSA: Classified very consistent, even with all the one- and two-part stories lately by different creative teams.)

[MichaelH]

Originally Posted by Jonnytech

Its very cool that all the top 40 books sold 100,000+ !

They didn't. Whatever Detective Comics is selling is the reference point. Thus Detective has the index number 100.00. It doesn't mean the book sold 100.000 copies.

[artiepants]

including an impressive #6 debut for The Avengers: The Initiative #1

big WOOT-WOOT! to Dan Slott and Co. I'm lovin' the Initiative, hope it stays a strong seller.

[Somebody]

Originally Posted by Ace

Friends really shouldn't let friends buy hundreds of thousands of Jeph Loeb comics.

LOL. So true....

Originally Posted by MichaelH

They didn't. Whatever Detective Comics is selling is the reference point. Thus Detective has the index number 100.00. It doesn't mean the book sold 100.000 copies.

Yes, can we get this mentioned in big red letters at the start of these columns. Someone ALWAYS does this.

Det. Comics (used as the index because Batman didn't ship), sold around 55k. Only the Top 8, by my reckoning, sold 100k+, although Wolverine and those just below it are in the middle-90ks.

[artiepants]

Originally Posted by MichaelH

They didn't. Whatever Detective Comics is selling is the reference point. Thus Detective has the index number 100.00. It doesn't mean the book sold 100.000 copies.

is it Detective this month because Batman's schedule is so erratic?

[whitemarkd]

Originally Posted by Jonnytech

Its very cool that all the top 40 books sold 100,000+ !

Not necessarily - we just know that they just sold more than Detective Comics, which is indexed at 100,000. (Usually the list is normalized to Batman's sales, but no Bats that month.) The actual numbers come out later.

EDIT: Sorry, MichaelH - didn't see your post til I'd finished mine.

[Snowspinner]

Originally Posted by artiepants

is it Detective this month because Batman's schedule is so erratic?

Presumably, as there was no Batman.

They occasionally do adjust - it was Uncanny X-Men on the month the Morrison run of Batman started, as Batman sold disproportionately high that month.

[Colonsus]

Originally Posted by slitthroat

Till World War Hulk and the X-men Event occur

Exactly, and if we're being honest, DC's success in this month was due largely to the FOUR EXTRA WWIII Specials, which basically sold like 4 issues of 52. Don't expect a repeat of that since all of those were god-awful.

I think DC's in for a rough road ahead, since Countdown has gotten off to a pretty underwhelming start, but we'll see...

[von Doom, M.D.]

Originally Posted by artiepants

is it Detective this month because Batman's schedule is so erratic?

It's Detective EVERY month.

[Somebody]

Originally Posted by Snowspinner

They occasionally do adjust - it was Uncanny X-Men on the month the Morrison run of Batman started, as Batman sold disproportionately high that month.

No, it was still Batman that month (and, hell, they kept Batman as the index during the whole Loeb/Lee run, re: disproportionately high...)

Honestly, they should find another title now - the traditional reason for using Batman was that it was a stable seller and shipped every month. It's not really been "stable" since #608, and it's missed two or three months in the past year.

Originally Posted by von Doom, M.D.

It's Detective EVERY month.

Uh.... no. No, it's not. It's only Det when Bat doesn't ship.

[Angelophile]

Originally Posted by biffordmichael

I thought Runaways would be higher...FIRST POST!

Biff

That's a pretty HUGE leap. Wasn't the last issue at 79 in the charts?

[Snowspinner]

For me, the interesting stuff on this chart begins at 23 or so. Ignore 52, Fallen Son, World War III, Justice, All-Star Superman, and Dark Tower - they're minis, and tell us little about how the market will be doing in nine months or a year. (52 does to an extent, because of Countdown, but still.) Ignore Wolverine - it may as well be a mini right now, since it's working on a superhot creative team.

Ignore JLA, JSA, and the three Avengers books - JLA because it's dependent on its team right now, the others because, frankly, each company has a few hot titles.

As of 23, you get to the interesting stuff - the meat and potatoes.

And from 23-43, you've got a 12/8 split, though two of those are minis for Marvel. (Marvel Zombies and Omega Flight)

So we have a really interesting split - Marvel is dominating the big events end of the chart, but the midlist of the chart is very much up for grabs. And of course a ton is decided in trades, where right now Marvel has a bit of a stranglehold from the Civil War trade releases. But annually bookstore sales show DC to decimate Marvel on trades, because of perennials like Dark Knight, V, Watchmen, and Sandman - stuff that routinely outsells even the highest profile new trades of a year in the bookstore market. (Hell, Watchmen continually appears on the top-100 trades in the direct market.)

My instinct is to root for DC in the midlist, just because I think DC has more titles where they're trying to build something that will last. Fewer of their midlist titles seem to me to be dominated by event storytelling, which is good today, but can be a big problem down the line. (Put simply - where's House of M on the trades list? And how many of us own a Zero Hour TP? Now compare to a relatively generic title like Batman & The Mad Monk - which didn't sell for beans in issue form, but is still there on the trade chart.) But Countdown looks like it may screw that up, which would be, to my mind, a very bad thing.

Interesting times.

[ZEBULON]

Man if it wasnt for the 52 gimmick and godawful spinoffs of that like world war black adam, dc would barely be in the top 20. rough days ahead for dc. I hope didio didnt unpack all of his boxes yet.

[razorwing77]

If Batman/Detective are the index standards for monthly comics, does anyone know what they are using for trades? What is 1.00?