October 2013: First $50 million comics sales month in Diamond Exclusive Era

Last October was the best month in all of 2012 for retailer orders of comic books and graphic novels — and still, this October was able to better its mark, passing $50 million in merchandise for the first time in the 16 years that Diamond Comic Distributors has been the exclusive sales agent for all the major publishers.

It’s a five-shipping-week month versus a five-shipping-week month, so this is a straight-up comparison — and with comics shops ordering approximately $50.3 million worth of comics and graphic novels in the month, we can see what’s been added to the market in the slightly more than two years since the DC relaunch. June 2011, the last five-week month before the relaunch, had orders of $36.5 million. So that’s a increase on the order of 37%, over a period when average comic book cover prices have only gone up by about 4%.

With October sales this strong, odds are good for the year-over-year growth to hold up through November and December. Last November and December’s combined orders were $80.6 million: two flat months would finish off 2013 at $514 million, up 8%. Two months at October’s 6% growth level would end the year at $519 million, while two months at 2013’s 10% growth pace would end the year at $522 million. That’s the likely range, then somewhere around $519 million for the year, an increase of $45 million over 2012. The “gravy day” for the industry — on which we move ahead of 2012’s total sales — should be right at Thanksgiving, no pun intended.

The aggregate change figures:

The Walking Dead #115 was the most-ordered comic book in the month and is expected to be in contention for the top seller of the year. Diamond noted in its press release that Image had taken over 10% of the unit market share in October:

The dollar sales track is the one that Comichron has paid more attention to across time (see the charts here), and Image’s 9.26% dollar market share this month is only its highest level since July 2012, when Walking Dead #100 came out. Meanwhile, Image’s unit share this month is its highest since February 2003, when its unit sales mark that month was 11.24%. Image was regularly above 10% in unit market share in the late 1990s.

Image, we can see from the below, released 59 comics in October to Marvel’s 78; that kind of ratio squares with the last time Image was above 10% in unit sales (in February 2003, it had 35 new comic book titles on the market compared to Marvel’s 53). The total number of new items shipped:

Diamond shipped 515 new comics issues in the month, and 342 new graphic novels.

Comic books, up 11.9% over a year ago, saw a $7 title in the #2 slot, Batman #24:

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RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	THE WALKING DEAD #115	$2.99	IMAGE
2	BATMAN #24	$6.99	DC
3	INFINITY #4	$3.99	MARVEL
4	FOREVER EVIL #2	$3.99	DC
5	INFINITY #5	$3.99	MARVEL
6	JUSTICE LEAGUE #24	$3.99	DC
7	SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #1	$3.99	DC
8	THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE #1 (MR) [*]	$4.99	DC
9	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #20	$3.99	MARVEL
10	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #19	$3.99	MARVEL

On the graphic novel side of things, the Batman Vol: 3 Death of the Family hardcover placed first in a list topheavy with higher-priced items: -->

RANK	DESCRIPTION	PRICE	VENDOR
1	BATMAN HC VOL 3 DEATH OF THE FAMILY	$24.99	DC
2	AVENGERS: ENDLESS WARTIME HC	$24.99	MAR
3	THE JOKER: DEATH OF THE FAMILY HC	$29.99	DC
4	BATMAN: THE COURT OF OWLS BOOK & MASK SET	$24.99	DC
5	AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER VOL. 6: THE SEARCH PART 3	$10.99	DAR
6	HELLBOY: MIDNIGHT CIRCUS HC	$14.99	DAR
7	BATMAN VOLUME 2: THE CITY OF OWL SC	$16.99	DC
8	LAZARUS VOLUME 1	$9.99	IMA
9	SAGA VOLUME 1	$9.99	IMA
10	SAGA VOLUME 2	$14.99	IMA