THE COMICS CHRONICLES: APRIL 2008 REPORT

[MichaelDoran]

by John Jackson Miller, The Comics Chronicles
Special to Newsarama

Exactly 15 years after what may well have been the most lucrative month in the history of comics, the industry began to recover ground and put 2008 back into positive territory overall.

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 $36.74 million, 6% higher than April 2007 and bringing the year-to-date to $135.04 million, less than $1 million ahead of last year.

But narrower categories showed slight losses. While Marvel’s chart-topping Secret Invasion #1 with its 250,000 copies ordered kicked off the summer event season, this April was up against strong comparatives from last year in several categories, starting with the Top 300 comics:

Top 300 units: 6.71 million copies, down 6%
Year to date: 25.82 million copies, down 6%

Top 300 dollars: $21.45 million, down 2%
Year to date: $81.24 million, down 5%

Radical entered the Top 300 for the first time with two entrants priced at $1 each: Hercules #1 and Caliber #1, ranking 149th and 160th respectively.". Only three items topped the 100,000 copy mark, with the 10,000-copy mark falling at 169th place. The Top 300 comics and Top 100 trade estimates appear here: http://www.comichron.com/MonthlyRank...1/Default.aspx

Diamond also did something unusual: while in the past it has generally not allowed low-priced sampler issues to be represented in the Top 300 list, for the second month in a row Marvel samplers in bundles of 25 (this month, the Iron Man/Hulk sampler and the Avengers/Invaders sketchbook) were ranked in the Top 300. These are kind of apples amid the oranges here; while for tabulation purposes one is tempted to break them out into their individual copies, the addition of several hundred thousand cheap copies would tend to cloud comparisons — the reason Diamond stopped ranking such items to begin with. Reporting bundles seems to be a solution aimed toward better representing their presence, even if they aren’t really comparable items on a one-to-one basis. We’ll see if this trend continues, and whether it spreads to other publishers.

Cable #1 curiously made a repeat appearance this month; it is unknown whether its figures for March or for April are the correct ones (or, somehow, both).

The average comic book offered dropped slightly in price year-to-year, but the average comic book ordered increased:

Average cost of comics in the Top 300: $3.31
Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: $3.20

The Marvel trade Secret Invasion Infiltration had orders of approximately 7,250 copies in its first month to lead the trade paperbacks list, but last April’s Civil-War-strewn charts were too steep to conquer here, too:

Top 100 trade paperbacks: $4.74 million, down 7%
Year to date: $16.85 million, down 1%

Top comics plus top trades: $26.19 million, down 3%
Year to date: $98.45 million, down 4%

Showcase Presents Superman Family Vol. 2 made a repeat appearance, reportedly owing to a printing error; however, the number of copies shipped in April was more than in February, so it’s not entirely clear which month which sales should be attributed to.

While the Top 100 comics and trade sales were off, we see in April 2008 how focusing just on the categories that can be divined by using Diamond’s order index number and its indexed sales figures charts can miss the larger picture. Using the final, complete sales through Diamond of publishers in its Market Share category, we can compute growth overall when all Diamond comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines are included:

All comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines: $36.74 million, up 6%
Year to date: $135.04 million, up 1%

The $10.55 million in “missing miscellaneous” is 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 $14-15 million range. So here, April 2007’s big trade paperbacks — and all the ones before and after it — are working for April 2008, too — completely closing gap.



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

The Diamond overall dollar market shares, reported earlier on Newsarama (http://www.newsarama.com/marketrepor...l08sales.html), appear in the accompanying graphic. Marvel led DC in dollar shares 39.78% to 27.22% in April 2008, with Dark Horse in third with 8.05%. Marvel had 92 items in the Top 300 to DC’s 86, with Image, IDW, and Dark Horse all in the mid-20s.



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


The death of Captain America was still reverberating through the industry last April, with Fallen Son: Wolverine as the direct market’s top seller with just over 157,000 copies sold. Comparatives for the month:

April 2008 final orders versus April 2007 final orders (est.)
Top 300 units: -6% (6.71 million copies vs. 7.13 million copies)
Top 300 dollars: -2% ($21.45 million vs. $21.82 million)
Top 100 trade paperbacks: -7% ($4.74 million vs. $5.11 million)
Top comics plus top trades: -3% ($26.19 million vs. $26.93 million)
Overall Diamond orders for comics, trades, and magazines: +6% ($36.74 million vs. $34.8 million)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300: -1% ($3.31 vs. $3.32)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: +5% ($3.20 vs. $3.06)

Eight comic books topped six figures in unit sales, and the 10,000-copy mark was at 160th place. The 300th place comic book sold around 1,350 copies, far lower than this April’s mark of 2,950 copies. Again, it appears that while there are fewer blockbusters in 2008, the lower sectons of the list are performing somewhat better relative to the same time last year.

It’s little surprise that the top trades of April 2007 performed better than the top trades of April 2008: six of the top eight were Civil War collections. The top seller, simply Civil War, had one-month orders of nearly 19,200 copies at $24.99 each. So right off the top, the six Civil War trades resulted in more than $1 million added to last April’s total.

Partly because of that, Marvel soared ahead in market shares that month, leading DC 40.56% to 34.34%. Marvel also placed 93 items in the Top 300 to DC’s 91; the closest competitor to either was Image, with 17.

The charts for April 2007 can be found here: http://www.comichron.com/MonthlyRank...6/Default.aspx


Five-year historical comparisons


In its third month of reporting final orders rather than preorders, Jim Lee’s phenomenon continued to roll on. Batman #614 topped the charts with 153,600 copies sold to retailers in its first month; it would continue to pile up reorders afterward. Like this April, it was only one of three titles to sell more than 100,000 copies. The 10,000-copy mark was at 180th place; the 300th place comic sold only 1,600 copies.

April 2008 final orders versus April 2003 preorders (est.)
Top 300 units: +11% (6.71 million copies vs. 6.02 million copies)
Top 300 dollars: +28% ($21.45 million vs. $16.73 million)
Top 50 trade paperbacks: +30% ($3.4 million vs. $2.61 million)
Top 300 comics plus top 50 trades: +28% ($24.85 million vs. $19.34 million)
Overall Diamond orders for comics, trades, and magazines: +38% ($36.74 million vs. $26.7 million)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300: +10% ($3.31 vs. $3.01)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: +15% ($3.20 vs. $2.78)

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.

The Batman: Hush hardcover had first-month orders of 7,300 copies, slightly eclipsing the more expensive Orbiter hardcover with its 7,200 ordered copies. A bigger dollar performer than either was the third-place item, the $49.95 Hellboy: Art of Mike Mignola.

Marvel led the dollar market shares, with 32.32% to DC’s 26.17%. CrossGen held at fifth with 4.11%, the next to last month it would be above 4%. DC had 80 items in the Top 300, versus Marvel’s 68 and a considerable 40 for Image.

February through April 2003 were unique in that Diamond had previously published preorder rankings for each, before issuing final orders later. This allows us to see what the preorder-to-final difference was. For April, the preorder chart had unit sales of 5.85 million copies, versus the final 6.02 million, after reorders were added to the rankings and comics that did not ship were removed. That’s a 3% difference; the real reorder rate is probably a few points above to account for the comics that didn’t ship.


Ten-year historical comparisons


April 1998 saw Uncanny X-Men #356 as the market leader at Diamond, topping the charts with 149,500 copies preordered. Eight comics had preorders in the six-figures, while the 10,000-copy mark was at 178th place. Sales for April 1998:

April 2008 final orders versus April 1998 preorders (est.)
Top 300 units: -5% (6.71 million copies vs. 7.03 million copies)
Top 300 dollars: +22% ($21.45 million vs. $17.56 million)
Top 25 trade paperbacks: +104% ($1.97 million vs. $961,000)
Top 300 comics plus top 25 trades: +26% ($23.42 million vs. $18.52 million)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300: +24% ($3.31 vs. $2.67)
Average cost of comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders: +28% ($3.20 vs. $2.50)

Significant for tracking purposes is that April 1998 was the first month in which Diamond reported indexed preorder figures for its Top 25 trade paperbacks, permitting us our first ten-year comparisons this month.

Interestingly, dollar sales for the same grouping of items has more than doubled in the intervening decade — although part of the comparison is skewed because in April 1998, Diamond was still working out what belonged on the trade paperback list and what belonged with the comics. The top item, for example, was the $6.95 Verotik Illustrated #3, with its preorders of 8,600 copies; where the top traditional trade was probably Image’s $9.95 Kabuki: Skin Deep, with preorders of approximately 4,200 copies. Diamond even included a $4 Vampirella ashcan in the April 1998 list. In later tables, Diamond would tend to move such items into the comics listing.

DC bested Marvel 25.25% to 23.31% in dollar shares at Diamond, the second time it had done so since Diamond began its “final order” share reporting in October 1997. DC had 71 comics in the Top 300, to the bankruptcy-limited Marvel’s 51.

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


Fifteen years ago this April saw the peak of the early 1990s comics boom — and what was likely the single most financially lucrative month in the history of the industry. When Superman “died” in November 1992, the result was a $30 million dollar day in the business — quite comparable to blockbuster movie openings at the time. With Superman set to return in April 1993, retailers ordered big in an attempt not to be caught short of copies.

The result, according to one internal publisher estimate made available to The Comics Chronicles, was direct market preorders of 48.18 million copies. The biggest single month of the 1990s comics boom — and more than 13 million copies more than the totals for the two months on either side of it.

Was April 1993 the biggest month in comics history? Going back to 1952, the peak year in the pre-Silver Age period for the number of copies offered, we find an average of about 250 new comic books coming out each month. Just comparing with that direct-market figure, those 1952 comic books would need to average 180,000 copies to match the April 1993 total. That’s very possible; the average circulation for comic books publishing Statements of Ownership in 1960 was around 315,000 copies. Not all titles had sales like Superman, but it’s a safe bet that, by units sold, quite a number of months in the 1950s would have topped April 1993.

Dollarwise, however, April 1993 is almost certainly the peak — both adjusted for inflation and not. With all the premium covers around, Capital City Distribution found the average cost of the 630 new titles it offered to be $2.65. That figure is certainly higher than the weighted average, but even at that, a direct-market total of $100 million is not out of the realm of possibility for the month. According to one inflation calculator, that equates to $18 million in 1952 dollars — which would require a mind-boggling 180 million 10-cent copies to be sold, or a per-title average of 720,000 copies. While there were likely quite a few titles above that average, there were considerable distribution-related disparities between the performances of publishers in the 1950s that make that average seem high. And, again, we’re not counting the newsstand for April 1993 — or the aftermarket, next to nonexistent so long ago. (On the other hand, we have no way of knowing what sell-through was in 1993, either, so the real dollar total would be lower to some degree.)

Adventures of Superman #500 was the #1 comic book both at Diamond and at Capital City. Capital sold 717,800 copies of the $2.95 collector’s cover and 161,250 copies of the newsstand cover; Diamond also saw the newsstand cover enter the Top 10. One existing calculation suggests a direct-market total of 3.45 million copies for the collector’s version; that’s a huge number, but not out of line with what else was on the charts. Diamond sold 8.6 times as many Adventures #500s as it sold Amazing Spider-Man#378s — a book that had sold 400,000 direct-market copies several times in the previous year.

At both distributors, the Superman titles took all five Top 5 spots. That performance helped DC to top the market shares at Diamond for only the second time in the distributor’s history, with 33.07% of dollars preordered; at Capital, where DC generally sold disproportionately fewer copies, the 27.55% share was still enough for first place.

The top trade paperback was likely Image’s WildC.A.T.S. Collection, priced at $9.95.


20-year historical comparisons


Capital City reported that Uncanny X-Men #232 was its top-selling comic book of April 1988. Marvel sold 420,100 copies of the issue through all channels, including 261,200 direct-market copies and 111,100 newsstand copies, and copies in subscription, foreign, and other special markets sales. Capital preorders for the issue were 66,600 copies, meaning it was responsible for just over a quarter of the issue’s direct market sales.

Marvel led DC in Capital’s dollar market shares, 41.25% to 32.38% — although, again, Capital is believed to have sold disproportionately fewer DC comics relative to Diamond.

The average cost of the 352 items on Capital City’s sales charts was $2.30 — a consequence of the combining of comic books with larger items, like Fantagraphics’ $49 Mars Attacks Mini Comics Box. That said, Marvel had recently 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.

The top-selling trade paperback item was likely the Crash: Iron Man Graphic Novel, which at $12.95 nonetheless placed 97th among units sold at Capital.


and beyond

The Comics Chronicles is able to project likely top-sellers for individual years, tracking backward based on Statements of Ownership and Circulation. Without delving into individual issue numbers for the earliest issues, which would require figuring out what came out in which month, here are the likely top-sellers:

1983: Uncanny X-Men #172 (averaging 336,824 copies across all channels, including newsstand and subs)
1978: Star Wars (possibly issue #14; 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)


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.

[ejulp]

is there any place online I can go to find what the sales are on some of the top titles, with an estimation of newsstand circulation added in?

[Snowspinner]

Before anyone comments on the seeming emphaticness of the market share graphs in the article, let me point out that these are graphs of market share - that is, the sum of everybody's position on the graph in a given month has to be 100%. So if Marvel goes up 5% then everybody else has to decline by a total of 5%. Similarly, if DC goes down, other companies necessarily go up.

Which is why I've always disliked market share as the metric - it's fun if what you're into is Marvel vs. DC. But the much more interesting graph would be total monthly sales for the various companies over the last year or two.

[thefourthman]

FYI: For those who want to know Cable was shipped in Full to retailers twice... some promotional thing for the book. It should be a relatively close number and both would be right... Some shops gave it away on FCBD as a result...

[leahcim]

My store got 40 more issues of Cable number 1 from Marvel as a thank you,I think Cable made a repeat performance because of that..all stores received more?

[thefourthman]

Originally Posted by leahcim

My store got 40 more issues of Cable number 1 from Marvel as a thank you,I think Cable made a repeat performance because of that..all stores received more?

yup... I can't speak as to every store, but we received 100% of our hefty initial order... it was kind of scary.

[LegendOmaha]

Originally Posted by ejulp

is there any place online I can go to find what the sales are on some of the top titles, with an estimation of newsstand circulation added in?

Sadly, no. Any numbers you see are what comic shops ORDERED, not SOLD. There obviously could be a big difference in those numbers. You can go into any shop and see stacks of unsold comics.

[Arion]

I should study Economy because I always love this kind of articles.

[jediracer]

Originally Posted by leahcim

My store got 40 more issues of Cable number 1 from Marvel as a thank you,I think Cable made a repeat performance because of that..all stores received more?

and where are those cable #1 issues today? they can be found at various comic expos all across the country in the "5 for a buck" bins....yipee

[xdemon]

My LCS said Marvel sent him replacement copies of #1 as there was some defect or problem with it. If you brought your original #1 in, you could have the corrected version, The LCS would then send the original #1s back to Diamond/Marvel.

[Alan Coil]

John,

Both charts are the same.

Also, in the next to last paragraph of the 15-year comparison, it says "At both publishers", it should be "distributors".

[Faraway Press]

I'll let the folks at Newsarama who posted it know -- they have the proper chart and the editing powers. Thanks!

In response to the earlier question, I do have estimated sales online including newsstand sales from Statements of Ownership, but thus far on The Comics Chronicles I have only posted the 1960s for all but some select titles. I will get to the later years in time; in the meantime, many are in the Standard Catalog of Comic Books. Note that for recent years, only Marvel and Archie still report figures in that manner.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by LegendOmaha

Sadly, no. Any numbers you see are what comic shops ORDERED, not SOLD. There obviously could be a big difference in those numbers. You can go into any shop and see stacks of unsold comics.

The statements of ownership published annual in Marvel issues provide a clear picture over the years (I think Astonishing X-Men is still over 200,000, for instance). DC's used to, also, but they no longer publish such statements.

[Faraway Press]

Originally Posted by Snowspinner

Which is why I've always disliked market share as the metric - it's fun if what you're into is Marvel vs. DC. But the much more interesting graph would be total monthly sales for the various companies over the last year or two.

Such graphs appear on The Comics Chronicles here -- though for the narrower categories (Top 300 Units, Top 300 Dollars, and Top 300 +Top 100 TPB dollars) and not the Overall one. But you do see the publishers measured independently and not as a share of a whole in those graphics The missing graph from above appears there, too, although it should be up here as well soon.

[Yaw]

maybe I'm missing something but shouldn't this be the "April 2008" Report and not "March 2008?"

[Alan Coil]

Originally Posted by Yaw

maybe I'm missing something but shouldn't this be the "April 2008" Report and not "March 2008?"

I think it should be the May report. It was compiled in May, and it was published in May. That makes it the May report in my book.

[Faraway Press]

Originally Posted by Alan Coil

I think it should be the May report. It was compiled in May, and it was published in May. That makes it the May report in my book.

That way lies madness!

For years at the Buyer's Guide, though, they insisted on labeling the Fan Awards with the year before. Voters were only eligible to vote for the previous year's comics, and the one year they did label it with the current year (when the awards were both voted on and announced), readers ignored the small print and voted for comics on the shelves that instant. But doing it the other way always looked odd -- "why are you running last year's awards this year?" I think we finally gave up and just went the route of all the TV awards, meaning it just became the 22nd-Annual awards or whatever...