May 2006 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

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Comic-book orders in the direct market in May were higher than they'd been in nearly a decade, thanks to the release of what would arguably be the most important comic book, sales-wise, in the Direct Market during the first decade of the 2000s: Civil War #1 from Marvel.

Among Diamond's Top 300 comics, unit orders were up 23% over the previous May, and dollar orders were up 28%. Diamond's overall sales including all comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines rose an astounding 40% over May of the previous year to $37.58 million. Year-over-year increases of that magnitude had not been seen since the beginning of the 1990s color comics boom.

Civil War #1 shipped at least 260,700 copies in its first month, missing the 21st-century record held by July 2005's All-Star Batman and Robin #1 by a mere 400 copies. DC's Infinite Crisis finale narrowly missed the 200,000-copy mark. Orders for DC's first four issues of 52 were only estimated by Diamond, owing to that title's returnability -- but estimates for all four were above 120,000 copies. 

The powerful sales coming from the major publishers resulted in not a single new publisher appearing on the list in May. The bottom of the Top 300 chart was at 2,800 copies; it had been a long time since the bar had been set so high.

DC's weekly 52 title was returnable, so the totals were estimated — likely reduced by 10% —  in the reports to account for its returnability. Diamond did not release the dollar sales rankings for the comics in 101st through 300th place this month.

Read more in our original report from the month. You can also click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 chart. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.
Click to read the methodology for this table's estimates.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
Title links below lead to current listings for the issues on eBay. As an eBay Partner, this site may be compensated if you make a purchase.

May 2006 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Shipped to North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 100 Graphic Novel chart. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.

The links lead to title details on Amazon (paid links). You can also find the books at your comics shop.

The Top 100 trade paperbacks and graphic novels reported by Diamond had orders worth $3.65 million at full retail in May, an increase of 3% over the same month in 2005. For the first five months of the year, the Top 100 trades for each month total $18.24 million, off 2% from the same period in the previous year, when sales were $18.69 million. Adding those to the Top 300 comics for the month yields $27.19 million, a big increase of 24% over the $20.6 million ordered in May 2005. That, also, is the highest total seen in that category since December 1996.