Diamond Comic Distributors released the preliminary 2013 year-end data on Wednesday; now, it has added the closing chapter of the sales year with the preliminary sales report for December.
Retailers ordered $42.22 million in comic books and graphic novels in December, a sum almost identical to that of November. Less than $9,000, or the sales of a single issue of a 400th-place title, separated November and December’s orders. But last December was weaker than last November, so the result was an uptick in the year-to-year percentage change: the direct market ordered nearly 6% more dollars worth of comics and graphic novels this December than last December.
Orders for the fourth quarter totaled $134.79 million in comics and graphic novels, more than a million dollars better than the third quarter and an improvement of more than $6 million over the fourth quarter of 2012. Since the third quarter was already a record for the Diamond Exclusive Era, the fourth quarter represents the highest dollar value for a quarter, unadjusted for inflation, since the early 1990s.
The resulting sales for the year came in at around $517.66 million, which as reported earlier this week is an increase of 9% over last year’s figure of $474.45 million.
The percentage change statistics:
| DOLLARS | UNITS | |
| DECEMBER 2013 VS. NOVEMBER 2013 | ||
| Comics | 0.63% | 1.60% |
| Graphic Novels | -1.40% | 3.67% |
| Total Comics and Graphic Novels | -0.03% | 1.76% |
| DECEMBER 2013 VS. DECEMBER 2012 | ||
| Comics | 1.09% | -3.64% |
| Graphic Novels | 18.02% | 20.38% |
| Total Comics and Graphic Novels | 5.93% | -2.07% |
| YEAR 2013 VS. YEAR 2012 | ||
| Comics | 10.22% | 6.70% |
| Graphic Novels | 6.50% | 5.12% |
| Total Comics and Graphic Novels | 9.04% | 6.58% |
| FOURTH QUARTER 2013 VS. THIRD QUARTER 2013 |
||
| Comics | -0.72% | -2.39% |
| Graphic Novels | 5.79% | 2.09% |
| Total Comics and Graphic Novels | 1.23% | -2.06% |
| FOURTH QUARTER 2013 VS. FOURTH QUARTER 2012 |
||
| Comics | 4.16% | -0.97% |
| Graphic Novels | 7.80% | 9.50% |
| Total Comics and Graphic Novels | 5.28% | -0.22% |
IDW had a dollar market share of 8.18%, a record for the publisher; it was good enough to put the company into the third place slot. The previous high for IDW was 7.54%, in April 2013. It’s the only time in 2013 IDW placed third; it did so three times each in 2011 and 2012, first doing so in June 2009. See other Diamond-era records here.
The next three publishers after Marvel and DC had 21.78% of the dollar orders: this is the highest total for that sub-grouping since February 2003, when it was 23.47% (with the CrossGen in IDW’s place). The market shares for December:
| PUBLISHER | UNITS | DOLLARS |
| Marvel | 36.56% | 35.42% |
| DC | 31.13% | 27.22% |
| IDW | 6.17% | 8.18% |
| Image | 8.07% | 7.32% |
| Dark Horse | 6.35% | 6.28% |
| Dynamite | 3.25% | 3.22% |
| Boom | 2.12% | 2.06% |
| Zenescope | 1.16% | 1.11% |
| Eaglemoss | 0.18% | 0.98% |
| Zenescope | 0.91% | 0.91% |
| Other | 4.08% | 7.32% |
Marvel’s Origin II #1 was the top-selling comic book, though since it didn’t appear in Diamond’s year-end top 10, that tells us it wasn’t one of the year’s bigger blockbusters. Once again, only one comic book in the Top 10 was priced below $3.99. The Top 10 comic books for the month:
| COMIC BOOK | PRICE | VENDOR | |
| 1 | Origin II #1 | 4.99 | Marvel |
| 2 | Avengers #24.Now | 4.99 | Marvel |
| 3 | Batman #26 | 3.99 | DC |
| 4 | Forever Evil #4 | 3.99 | DC |
| 5 | Superman Unchained #5 | 3.99 | DC |
| 6 | Justice League #25 | 3.99 | DC |
| 7 | Harley Quinn #1 | 2.99 | DC |
| 8 | Justice League #26 | 3.99 | DC |
| 9 | Inhumanity #1 | 3.99 | Marvel |
| 10 | Superior Spider-Man #23 | 3.99 | Marvel |
Fables Vol. 19 from DC led the graphic novel charts. The Top 10 graphic novels for the month:
| GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS | PRICE | VENDOR | |
| 1 | Fables Volume 19: Snow White | 16.99 | DC |
| 2 | Adventure Time Volume 2: Pixel Princesses | 11.99 | Boom |
| 3 | Richard Stark’s Parker: Slayground HC | 17.99 | IDW |
| 4 | Deadpool Kills Deadpool | 14.99 | Marvel |
| 5 | Star Lord: Worlds On The Brink | 7.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | Nightwing Volume 3: Death Of The Family | 16.99 | DC |
| 7 | Saga Volume 1 | 9.99 | Image |
| 8 | Deadpool Volume 3: Good Bad And Ugly | 15.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | Saga Volume 2 | 14.99 | Image |
| 10 | The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye | 14.99 | Image |
Here’s the list of how many new titles each major publisher shipped. IDW had 88 items on the shelves, contributing volume to that market share record:
| PUBLISHER | COMICS | GNs | MAGAZINES | TOTAL |
| DC | 92 | 25 | 1 | 118 |
| Marvel | 72 | 30 | 0 | 102 |
| IDW | 55 | 33 | 0 | 88 |
| Dark Horse | 50 | 12 | 0 | 62 |
| Image | 47 | 12 | 0 | 59 |
| Dynamite | 34 | 6 | 0 | 40 |
| Boom | 28 | 4 | 0 | 32 |
| Zenescope | 11 | 3 | 0 | 14 |
| Valiant | 8 | 4 | 0 | 12 |
| Eaglemoss | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Other | 74 | 110 | 23 | 207 |
| TOTAL | 471 | 239 | 29 | 739 |
The final December report should be along on Monday.
Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 25 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises.
He is the author of novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, and his upcoming release, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country. Read more about them at his fiction site.
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