With all sales from the year included, Marvel’s relaunched Star Wars #1 from January rocketed to the top spot in Comichron’s chart of the top-selling comic books of the 21st Century (thus far). The chart incorporates Comichron’s estimates of 2015 sales based on information released this week by Diamond Comic Distributors, as well as our estimates from the previous years going back to 2000.
In addition to the entire Top Comics of the 21st Century list, we continue to maintain lists for just the decade of 2000-2009 and the decade of the 2010s.
By the time we added the best-selling 2014 titles to our top-sellers
chart for the century last year, Marvel’s relaunched Star Wars #1 had
already sold 1 million comics and passed it. The issue, with dozens of
variant covers, continued to sell throughout the year, charting several
more times; Comichron calculates that its final 2015 total was 1.073
million copies shipped.
Star Wars #1 takes over the spot held briefly by Amazing Spider-Man #1, which in 2014 got a boost of its own from repackaging. You can see the updated top-sellers by year here.
As with several other top-selling titles, Star Wars‘
sales were inflated by between 250,000 and 450,000 copies sold by the
repackager Loot Crate. The issue would still have beaten everything else
on the charts regardless, though the same cannot be said for Bravest Warriors: Tales of Holo John #1 and Orphan Black #1, which placed fifth and sixth on the century list but wouldn’t have made the Top 300 if not for Loot Crate.
As mentioned here earlier in the week, the Loot Crate effect has probably
played out, as more publishers are following DC‘s lead and sending their
comics directly to repackagers. Thus these outsized sales figures won’t
wind up in the Direct Market charts Diamond produces.
An amazing six issues from 2015 made the Top 10 for the Century list; in addition to the titles already mentioned, Secret Wars #1, Dark Knight III Master Race 1, and Star Wars: Vader Down #1 all made the top ten.
The Top 10 since 2000:
based on orders by North American Comics Shops
| Comic-book Title | Issue | Ship | Price | Publisher | Est. sales | |
| 1 | Star Wars† | 1 | Jan-15 | $4.99 | Marvel | 1,073,000 |
| 2 | Amazing Spider-Man | 1 | Apr-14 | $5.99 | Marvel | 559,200 |
| 3 | Secret Wars | 1 | May-15 | $4.99 | Marvel | 550,500 |
| 4 | Amazing Spider-Man | 583 | Jan-09 | $3.99 | Marvel | 530,500 |
| 5 | Bravest Warriors Tales of Holo John† | 1 | May-15 | $4.99 | Boom | 503,000 |
| 6 | Orphan Black† | 1 | Feb-15 | $3.99 | IDW | 502,000 |
| 7 | Dark Knight III Master Race | 1 | Nov-15 | $5.99 | DC | 449,100 |
| 8 | Star Wars Vader Down | 1 | Nov-15 | $4.99 | Marvel | 410,600 |
| 9 | Walking Dead | 100 | Jul-12 | $3.99 | Image | 384,800 |
| 10 | Civil War | 2 | Jun-06 | $2.99 | Marvel | 341,900 |
issues from 2015 made the Top 300
for the 21st Century list, a big increase of 30 over last year’s 14.
Twenty-four 2015 issues made the Top 100, and 16 made the Top 50. There are more books from 2015 in the Top 300 for the current century than comics from any other year. That’s impressive, even without Loot Crate in the picture.
You can see other sales records from the Diamond Exclusive Era here. Look early next week for our annual post with the Top Thousand Comics and Graphic Novels sales estimates.
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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