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03-20-2008, 04:48 PM
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The Comics Chronicles: February 2008 Report
by John Jackson Miller, The Comics Chronicles
Special to Newsarama  More than 16 years after a comic book with the same name and issue number became one of the best-selling comic books of all time, X-Force #1 topped a month that otherwise looked like a return to slower Februaries past. The Comics Chronicles (http://www.comichron.com) projects that Diamond Comic Distributors’ overall sales of comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines to retailers equaled approximately $32.53 million, an increase of 1% over February 2007. But, except for trade paperback sales, all the narrower categories posted slight declines, with drops of 5% and 6% respectively for units and dollars sold of Diamond’s Top 300 comic books. The top-seller, X-Force #1, was one of only three titles to break the 100,000-copy barrier, coming in at approximately 105,000 copies. After a relatively long stretch of event-driven top-sellers, it was actually the lowest-selling top-seller at Diamond since February 2001, when Uncanny X-Men #391 topped the list with 102,400 preordered copies. (Comparing apples to apples, reorders for that issue probably would have resulted in a higher total.) No top-seller in the Diamond-exclusive era has ever had orders or preorders below 100,000 copies. How much does the lack of a blockbuster mean? Not necessarily very much, since the February 2008 Top 300 as a group… Top 300 units: 6.26 million copies Year to date: 13.02 million copies Top 300 dollars: $19.62 million Year to date: $40.65 million …sold 1.22 million more copies than the February 2001 grouping, an increase of 24%. Why? Mid-list strength. The 5,000-copy mark was at 191st place in February 2001; today, it’s at 226th place. The major publishers are simply offering more titles now than they were then. Last month, DC had 88 offerings in the Top 300, and Marvel had 83. Back in February 2001, DC had 73 — and Marvel had 42! The major publishers’ slates were actually smaller in February 2008 than they had been in recent months — the top five publishers placed 232 comics in the Top 300, versus 246 in January. The result was that 32 publishers made the Top 300, a larger number than in a while. One new publisher made the list for the first time: the numerically named Th3rdworld, whose Space Doubles #1 came in 300th place. While Th3rdworld’s offering was at the $2.99 level, historically, smaller publishers have generally had higher price points — and one partial result of the leaner major-publisher offerings last month may have been seen in the average cost of comics in the Top 300. It was the highest ever recorded: Average cost of comics in the Top 300: $3.36 Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: $3.13 Most comics purchased cost less, as can be seen in the weighted-order figure, which was not a record. The identically named 1991 X-Force #1 phenomenon, incidentally, had orders of 3.18 million copies, a staggering 3 million of which went into the direct market. Capital City Distribution alone had orders of 806,100 copies of the issue, which had five variant covers and relaunched the New Mutants title under Rob Liefeld. Click here to review the full Top 300 comic book and Top 100 graphic novel sales charts with sales estimates. >b>The Top 100 Diamond revised January’s report early in March (changes detailed at http://www.comichron.com/Home/tabid/...Default.aspx); the year-to-date figures take these into account. Trade Paperbacks February 1998 marks exactly 10 years since Diamond Comic Distributors began reporting indexed trade-paperback sales; it began with a modest list of ten items that also included price guides. Diamond reports its Top 100 trade paperbacks each month now, and that category, led by Dynamite’s second volume of Boys, fared better than periodicals when compared with the same month last year: Top 100 trade paperbacks: $4.01 million, up 7% Year to date: $8.14 million, up 5% Insert the Diamond Top 100 TPBs here Top comics plus top trades: $23.63 million, down 4% Year to date: $48.76 million, down 1% While the trade paperback increase is not enough to erase the relative softness in periodicals once the Top 300 comics are added; Diamond’s backlist includes thousands more titles, some entries maybe only selling a book a month. That figure for February completely covers the gap and brings the month into slightly positive territory: All comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines: $32.53 million, up 1% Year to date: $67.09 million, up 2% The $9.9 million in “missing miscellaneous” is almost certainly mostly trade paperbacks from 101st place and lower. Magazines likely represent less than $1 million a month, and given the size of the comics orders at 300th place, it’s likely that the Top 300 chart captures the vast majority of comics orders, dollar-wise. The real trade paperback total, then, may be closer to the $10-13 million range.  As always, these dollar amounts are at full retail cover price. They do not reflect what Diamond realized, as retailers buy at different discounts. Nor do they represent sales to consumers — instead, they are what retailers bought to sell. Sales charts for all of these categories across time appear here: http://www.comichron.com/VitalStatis...0/Default.aspx Market Share The Diamond overall unit and dollar market shares, reported earlier on Newsarama (http://www.newsarama.com/marketreport/Feb08sales.html), appear in the accompanying graphic. Marvel led in all subcategories tracked above except for number of items placed on the Top 300 list, which DC led. Dark Horse placed third in all subcategories except for number of items in the Top 300, where it placed fifth. IDW's share of the Top 300 comics dollar sales was again the fourth largest; again, once all products were included, Image placed fourth in overall dollars and units sold.  Monthly rankings across all subcategories appear here (http://www.comichron.com/MonthlyRank.../Default.aspx), and market share charts going back to the beginning of the Diamond data appear here: http://www.comichron.com/VitalStatis...9/Default.aspx One-year historical comparisons Again, big events seem to describe the difference with last February, when the big seller was the final issue of Civil War, with nearly 265,900 copies sold. But the number of comics above the 100,000-copy mark was not much larger — five, as opposed to three. Comparatives for the month: Feb. 2008 final orders versus Jan. 2007 final orders (est.) Top 300 units: -5% (6.26 million copies vs. 6.6 million copies) Top 300 dollars: -6% ($19.62 million vs. $20.82 million) Top 100 trade paperbacks: +7% ($4.01 million vs. $3.76 million) Top comics plus top trades: -4% ($23.63 million vs. $24.58 million) Overall Diamond orders for comics, trades, and magazines: +1% ($32.53 million vs. $32.17 million) Average cost of comics in the Top 300: +2% ($3.36 vs. $3.29) Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: -1% ($3.13 vs. $3.15) Note that despite the record cost of comics in the Top 300 this time out, the average comic book purchased in February 2007 actually cost 2¢ less. A part of that comes from last year’s #2 book, Dark Tower: Gunslinger Reborn #2, which moved 172,000 copies at $3.99. Five-year historical comparisons February 2003 was a big month for comics sales analysis. Since the beginning, Diamond had published its preordered comics sales figures, just a Capital City had before it. The consequence was that the sales charts were usually out in the same month the charts were for, presenting a curious picture for anyone who didn’t know the charts ranked preorders. The charts both overstated and understated comics sales. Publishers still got rankings for books that did not ship, or that never shipped — and as reorders were not included, books that performed better after the preorder window got no benefit. But in the late 1990s, Diamond had begun calculating market shares based on aggregated final orders, and for February 2002 — after it had already released preorder reports some time earlier, Diamond returned to release indexed final order calculations for its major categories. It has published final order statistics ever since. The result is that, beginning this month, five-year comparatives are apples-to-apples: Feb. 2008 final orders versus Feb. 2003 preorders (est.) Top 300 units: +7% (6.26 million copies vs. 5.86 million copies) Top 300 dollars: +19% ($19.62 million vs. $16.54 million) Top 50 trade paperbacks: +13% ($2.93 million vs. $2.59 million) Top 300 comics plus top 50 trades: +18% ($22.55 million vs. $18 million) Overall Diamond orders for comics, trades, and magazines: +48% ($32.53 million vs. $22 million) Average cost of comics in the Top 300: +11% ($3.36 vs. $3.03) Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: +10% ($3.13 vs. $2.82) Diamond only published reports for its Top 50 trades in 2003 — so to compare apples to apples, the 2008 numbers have been pared back to the Top 50 to show a clear comparison. Jim Lee’s “Hush” continued as the top seller in February 2003: Batman #612 topped the list with orders of approximately 145,400 copies. Marvel held the next 12 places in the charts, its various “Ultimate” titles riding high. On the trade paperback side, the top seller was Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 5: Public Scrutiny with orders of 9,800 copies. DC edged Marvel in overall dollars sold, 27.58% to 27.07%. Ten-year historical comparisons The Top 300 comics for February 2008 sold slightly fewer copies than they did a decade ago, but they sold for a good deal more money: Feb. 2008 final orders versus Feb. 1998 preorders (est.) Top 300 units: -5% (6.26 million copies vs. 6.6 million copies) Top 300 dollars: +25% ($19.62 million vs. $15.71 million) Top 7 trade paperbacks: +36% ($706,400 vs. $518,000) Top 300 comics plus top 7 trades: +25% ($20.33 million vs. $16.23 million) Average cost of comics in the Top 300: +27% ($3.36 vs. $2.64) Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: +32% ($3.13 vs. $2.38) The energy from the return of its characters from the “Heroes Reborn” experiment faded a bit in February 1998, with Uncanny X-Men #354, X-Men #74, and Spawn #71 settling in at the top three spots. Uncanny had preorders of approximately 142,400 copies, and seven titles crossed the 100,000 threshold. Rob Liefeld returned to the Top 25 with the new Youngblood #1 placing 22nd, this time published by Awesome. Again, February 1998 marked Diamond’s first publication of indexed trade paperback figures — albeit in a catchall category called “books,” where the top-ranking item was the Overstreet Price Guide. Diamond was also still unsure of what to include in the category, including the $5.99 price point Silver Surfer: Parable. The top product, thus, was probably Preacher: Ancient History, with its preorders of 6,700 copies. Marvel just edged out DC in the overall dollar shares for February 1998, 24.74% to 23.29%. Links to these and all previous months back to 1996 can be found here: http://www.comichron.com/MonthlyRank...4/Default.aspx 15-year historical comparisons In 1993, nearly a dozen different distributors sold comics in the direct market, making overall calculations based on individual distributor figures more difficult. Publishers were able to look at their own sales and make market estimates based on those: One internal publisher report made available to The Comics Chronicles estimates overall direct sales of 25.8 million copies. An astronomical number by today’s terms, that figure would nonetheless be bested on the way to the all-time peak of April 1993, when Superman returned from the dead. Readers are cautioned that while the 25.8 million copy estimate tracks with the source publisher’s own recorded sales, it is unknown how the publisher derived sales for its competitors. Further research is required. Capital City Distribution reported that the average cost of its top 520 comic books was $2.32. That figure was probably a bit above the weighted average. If applied to the above estimate, that overall direct market dollar sales would have been in the $50-60 million range. Capital City Distribution and Diamond both published indexed sales figures, and for both, February 1993 found Stormwatch #1 from Malibu/Image as the #1 title. Internal Capital City documents detail initial orders of 220,575 copies of Stormwatch #1, meaning that one point on the February 1993 Capital Chart equals 1,238 copies sold by Capital. That does not include Diamond or other distributors, however; the order index number at Diamond would be different, and adding sales for any title at both would still not result in total direct market orders. What was Stormwatch’s total sale? According to documentary sources obtained by The Comics Chronicles, the top-selling Marvel title at Capital for the month, the fifth-place Venom: Lethal Protector #3, had direct-market sales of 633,850 copies across all channels, including 150,020 copies at Capital City. If that Capital-to-direct-market ratio obtained for Stormwatch #1, we might expect total direct market sale to be near 935,000 copies. But that total presumes that Capital’s share of sales for both titles and both companies was the same — an unlikely situation, as publishers saw some variation in their performance between distributors. Marvel had at least 98 items on the stands in February 1993, including nine Marvel UK titles and an Uncanny X-Men Masterworks, its top-selling of three trade volumes. Monthly projections based on Diamond and Capital City’s indexed reports for individual months in 1993 are possible and are scheduled as a future project for The Comics Chronicles. 20-year historical comparisons While overall sales projections for individual months of 1988 remain even further off — though there is data, which remains to be crunched — some facts are known about individual issues. With multiple distributors and few reporting sales, determining the top comic book from sales charts is not straightforward, but the top comic book for February 1988 was likely Uncanny X-Men #231. Marvel sold 260,800 copies of the issue to direct market distributors. Initial orders from Capital City Distribution are known to have been 67,200 copies, or 25.8% of the total direct market orders. The direct market accounted for 64% of Marvel’s sales of the issue, which had final newsstand sales of 99,800 copies of the issue and 48,900 copies in subscription, foreign, and other special markets sales. The total sales for the issue, 409,500 copies, was very close to the average of 408,925 copies Marvel reported to the Postal Service for all Uncanny X-Men issues in 1988. Average print runs for the title for the year were 633,760 copies, suggesting that wastage for Uncanny X-Men #231 in the newsstand market was on the order of 69%. Marvel printed approximately three copies to sell one. Marvel had just gone from 75¢ to $1 on its most popular titles, so if the average comic offered wasn’t above $1 before, it certainly was in 1998. …and beyond The Comics Chronicles is able to project likely top-sellers for individual years, tracking backward based on Statements of Ownership and Circulation. These postal statements have been analyzed by comics hobbyists for years: exactly 40 years ago, Don and Maggie Thompson reported on the 1967 batch of figures in the February 1968 issue of Newfangles (reprinted in full on her archive site, here: http://www.maggiethompson.com/Fanzin.../Default.aspx). Without delving into individual issue numbers, which would require figuring out what came out in which month, here are the likely top-sellers for each year: 1983: Uncanny X-Men (averaging 336,824 copies across all channels, including newsstand and subs) 1978: Star Wars (no statement, but likely around 350,000 copies) 1973: Archie (averaging 345,087 copies) 1968: Superman (averaging 636,400 copies) 1963: Superman (no statement, but likely around 770,000 copies) Don’t ask about 50 years ago: There were no numbers in postal statements in 1958. (One bet might be Uncle Scrooge, which was #1 among reports in 1960, with 1.04 million copies per issue.) Statements come with heaping gobs of caveats, some of which can be found here: http://www.comichron.com/FAQs/tabid/192/Default.aspx. Writer of comics and books about comics,John Jackson Miller (http://www.farawaypress.com) has tracked comics sales figures for years, including for Comics & Games Retailer magazine in the 1990s and later for the Standard Catalog of Comic Books line. He’s developing an online archive for academic researchers at The Comics Chronicles (http://www.comichron.com), including a FAQ section and a forum for questions.  |
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03-21-2008, 09:10 AM
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#2 |
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Great stuff as always John. One minor niggle, the original X-Force did not have 5 variant covers, it was pollybagged with different trading cards.
Last edited by Earl : 03-21-2008 at 09:16 AM. |
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03-21-2008, 09:57 AM
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#3 |
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It's neat that the best-selling comic in each of February 1998, 1998, and 2008 was an X-book, even as other titles claimed other Februaries (and many other months) in-between.
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03-21-2008, 10:41 AM
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Yes, that is certainly true — I have it in my files with five different entries (Cable, Deadpool, Shatterstar, Sunspot, and group versions, referring to the cards, I now see). It was X-Men #1 that launched with the five covers. There as a second X-Force #1 printing out there, as well. Thanks for the correction! Last edited by Faraway Press : 03-21-2008 at 11:40 AM. |
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03-21-2008, 11:01 AM
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#5 |
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I HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO, BUT I TOLD YOU SO. I see the numbers on Amazing
Spider-man ORDERED have gone down with each issue. You'll see this next month as well. I've said all along that sales of this book will decline. Granted, compared to most titles coming out, it is still doing okay, but nowhere near the numbers it was doing BEFORE OMD. Nice job Joe S(cumbag). I fully expect Fantastic Four numbers to drop as well. At the shop where I work, we sold about 35 copies of the first Millar/Hitch issue. We've only sold about 25 of the second one. Uh oh. My theory on this is that the movies have probably hurt the comic (I love the FF movies but most people hate them) along with more interest in X-Men, Wolverine and, yes, even Thor and Hulk. I comment Millar and Hitch for trying to get FF back to greatness again but the first two issues didn't do it. I enjoyed them, but I didn't see anything earth-shattering yet. They better pick it up soon or numbers will be back where they were (for our shop, around 15 a month). Captain America, Thor and Hulk continue to do well for us (35 for all three comparerd to 15-20 for Spider-Man). As for DC, the best sellers for us are Justice League, Batman, Detective, Action Comics, the All-Star books, Green Lantern and Green Arrow/Black Canary (which sells almost as much as Spider-Man does, about 15 a month). Declining books include Flash, Wonder Woman (sadly, this is a great book right now with Gail Simone writing it, but DC killed it with Heinberg's lateness in the beginning and then Picoult story. DC should have began it with a new #1 when Simone took over), Justice Society (still selling well but only around 30 copies now compared to 40 a few months ago) and Green Lantern Corps (no more Sinestro Corps War). Countdown is still consistent with around 25 copies a month. Might see slight increase as we get closer to the end next month. I haven't been wrong yet with what was going to happen (except for FF which surprised me with how much it dropped quickly considering it was Millar and Hitch). Stay tuned. JOE, PUT AMAZING SPIDER-MAN BACK THE WAY IT WAS WITH PETER AND MARY JANE MARRIED AND GET MILLAR OR BENDIS TO WRITE IT. IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO SAVE THIS BOOK AND BRING BACK YOUR LOYAL FANBASE. |
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03-21-2008, 11:02 AM
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It was a pleasant surprise seeing that Space Doubles broke the top 300 books. Number 300 is still top 300 even in a down month. We have a bunch of stuff we're really excited about in development, so hopefully this isn't the last time for us.
Thanks for this analysis and the specific mention, it's very interesting to see how the market is faring in the early months of this year. Last edited by MDeVito : 03-21-2008 at 11:06 AM. |
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03-21-2008, 11:35 AM
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Where in the article did it mention BND? wtf? Grasping at straws mate |
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03-21-2008, 11:39 AM
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Stellar effort, insight and the time you put in John -- just great!
Thank you for all your hard work. It's always greatly appreciated! |
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03-21-2008, 11:48 AM
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Thanks, Billy! I should also note out this week is the new Overstreet Price Guide with a cover by our pal Mark Sparacio — and where, speaking of rankings from the 1970s, I have a feature delving into the distribution of Star Wars comics in 1977. (There's also a cover by Doug Wheatley.)
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03-21-2008, 12:34 PM
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nice work on sword and sarcasm btw, just read through them all today, fun stuff.
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03-21-2008, 12:37 PM
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Meh he's a troll whose future holds a nice ban if he keeps this up. |
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03-21-2008, 01:22 PM
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Boy, I'd have to agree this is a VERY pleasant surprise. Thanks for mentioning us in your article Mr. Miller.  Last edited by lukabeast : 03-21-2008 at 10:22 PM. |
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03-21-2008, 02:18 PM
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did you even read the article. It clearly stated that other than tpb's there was 5% drop in units sold (across the board), and a 6% drop in dollars sold (across the board) Quote:
So, of course Spider-Man is going to drop, along with most of the titles, which also sold less. |
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03-21-2008, 04:57 PM
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Just a note -- if you have trouble reaching my site's stats, try again in a few minutes. My hosting company has picked this weekend to upgrade the servers, joy of joys.
Last edited by Faraway Press : 03-22-2008 at 09:31 AM. |
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03-21-2008, 09:00 PM
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03-21-2008, 11:47 PM
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Wow, you're kinda dense. Matt Brady already warned you about your childish "Joe Scumbag" crap in the Megacon thread. Seriously, if we're to belive your profile, you're in your early 40's. Maybe it's about time now that your entering into middle age that, you know, you grow up? Maybe? Quote:
Yeah, I saw you use this as statistical evidence in another thread as well. How your shop does means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I once went to a shop where every Rob Liefeld book sold through on the retailer end. It wasn't until I got online that I realized it wasn't like that everywhere. Sales on periodicals on the distributor level were down across the board. I was and industry wide dip, not just your little corner of the world. I think you need to calm down just a wee-bit, stop making fun of people, and realize you and your shop (i'm sorry, the shop you work at, I doubt it's YOURS) are not the measuring stick of how great or not so great the industry is doing. It's way too early to tell if Brand New Day is a success, and your madman ravings are doing nothing but painting you as a troll and a bother. Anthony L |
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03-22-2008, 09:25 AM
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MattB |
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