Marvel’s Secret Wars first topped the comics charts more than 30 years ago — and did so again in May 2015, according to preliminary sales reports released this morning by Diamond Comic Distributors.
The event — along with Free Comic Book Day, attention from the second Avengers movie, and a boost from a repackager contributed to nearly $49 million in orders for new comic books, graphic novels, and magazines by North American comics shops in the month.
Periodical comic book unit sales were up 20% year-over-year against last May, while graphic novel sales were flat; the result was that overall sales were up 13.5%. (That makes sense, because periodicals are about two-thirds of Diamond’s combined print comics sales, while graphic novels make up the other third.)
The aggregate changes:
| DOLLARS | UNITS | |
| MAY 2015 VS. APRIL 2015 |
||
| Comics | -10.58% | -9.60% |
| Graphic Novels |
-21.11% | -19.41% |
| Total Comics & GNs |
-13.81% | -10.38% |
| MAY 2015 VS. MAY 2014 |
||
| Comics | 19.94% | 19.53% |
| Graphic Novels |
-0.29% | 9.90% |
| Total Comics & GNs |
13.49% | 18.78% |
| YEAR-TO-DATE 2015 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2014 |
||
| Comics | 16.48% | 16.90% |
| Graphic Novels |
3.41% | -1.13% |
| Total Comics & GNs |
12.31% | 15.35% |
There weren’t any anomalous readings high on the charts due to Loot Crate or other repackagers last month, but that changed in a big way in May.
Boom Studios has been publishing Bravest Warriors comics, based on the cartoon series, for several years; insertion in the May Loot Crate vaulted the Bravest Warriors one-shot Tales from the Holo John up to second place, topping Secret Wars #2.
Loot Crate subscriptions were already climbing toward 400,000 earlier in the year and could be higher now; we ought to get a good idea from the final numbers what the figure is.
| Title | Price | Vendor | |
| 1 | Secret Wars #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 2 | Bravest Warriors: Tales from the Holo John #1† |
$4.99 | Boom |
| 3 | Secret Wars #2 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 4 | Star Wars #5 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 5 | Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars #1 |
$4.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | A-Force #1 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 7 | Old Man Logan #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 8 | Darth Vader #5 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | Convergence #5* | $3.99 | DC |
| 10 | Convergence #6* | $3.99 | DC |
| Title | Price | Vendor | |
| 1 | Batman: Earth-One Volume 2 HC |
$24.99 | DC |
| 2 | Night Nurse | $7.99 | Marvel |
| 3 | Rat Queens Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles Of N’Rygoth |
$14.99 | Image |
| 4 | Southern Bastards Volume 2: Gridiron |
$9.99 | Image |
| 5 | Civil War | $24.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | Saga Vol. 4 | $14.99 | Image |
| 7 | Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past |
$19.99 | Viz |
| 8 | Deadpool Vol. 8: All Good Things |
$24.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | The Valiant | $9.99 | Valiant |
| 10 | Saga Vol. 1 | $9.99 | Image |
The market shares saw a big impact from Secret Wars, with Marvel topping 40% in dollar share — but again that Loot Crate inclusion had effects as well, putting Boom in the Top 5. It’s the publisher’s highest ranking ever.
| Publisher | Dollar Share |
Unit Share |
| Marvel | 40.17% | 41.11% |
| DC | 25.43% | 26.04% |
| Image | 8.89% | 10.28% |
| IDW | 5.06% | 3.82% |
| Boom | 3.96% | 7.16% |
| Dark Horse | 3.83% | 3.43% |
| Dynamite | 2.22% | 1.82% |
| Eaglemoss | 1.16% | 0.27% |
| Viz | 1.01% | 0.33% |
| Valiant | 0.85% | 0.92% |
| Other | 7.43% | 4.81% |
The number of new releases was roughly comparable to that for last May, but the breakdown differed: there were more new graphic novels last year, perhaps helping to explain why graphic novel dollar sales made no gains this time out.
| Comics shipped | Graphic Novels Shipped | Magazines Shipped | Total Shipped |
|
| Marvel | 71 | 35 | 0 | 106 |
| DC | 74 | 25 | 0 | 99 |
| Image | 58 | 10 | 0 | 68 |
| IDW | 42 | 21 | 0 | 63 |
| Dark Horse |
33 | 17 | 0 | 50 |
| Boom | 28 | 6 | 0 | 34 |
| Dynamite | 26 | 2 | 0 | 28 |
| Eaglemos | 0 | 0 | 27 | 27 |
| Viz | 0 | 19 | 0 | 19 |
| Archie | 11 | 2 | 0 | 13 |
| Other | 93 | 91 | 17 | 201 |
| Total | 436 | 228 | 44 | 708 |
The detailed estimates for the month will be along next week.
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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