Diamond Comic Distributors has released its full comics sales report for February 2017, and the Comichron estimates based on those sales figures are now online. The estimates now appear on our master page for February 2017 Comic Book Sales, and are sortable and searchable.
As mentioned here Friday, February was another month in which a lot of comic books were shipped to the Direct Market at relatively little cost to retailers, although for a different reason than in January. That month, Marvel’s 10% minimum overship resulted in the largest number of comic books sent to market in any January since 1997. This time, it was Image’s 25th anniversary — and its promotionally priced comic books — that caused the largest number of new comic books to be shipped than in any February since 1997, according to Comichron’s analysis of data released today by Diamond Comic Distributors.
More than 7.85 million comic books were shipped by Diamond to retailers in North America, and more than 750,000 of them were copies of Walking Dead #163, which retailers ordered at its 25-cent cost. Special no-cover-price variants were also offered for retailers who ordered 250 copies or more, and again for 500 copies or more.
Diamond does not include comics cover-priced under a dollar in its Top Sellers lists, a move made after Batman: The Ten-Cent Adventure, a nine-cent issue of Fantastic Four and a 13-cent Gen13 topped the charts in 2002, along with all the original Free Comic Book Day issues. (We removed those issues to the tops of their respective months, with asterisks rather than rankings, in the Comichron charts.) So while Diamond acknowledged the performance of the Walking Dead issue in its press release, it ranked Marvel‘s Star Wars: Darth Maul #1 as the top-seller for February.
The 25-cent Image copies resulted in a lopsided market share reading for the company; its unit share was 18.13%, as compared with a 9.58% dollar share. While Diamond’s unit shares from month to month can be found on Comichron’s individual monthly pages, it isn’t something we keep a trendline file on (in part because of volatility like this) — so we can’t really say the last time its unit share hit such a level. The 9.58% dollar share is Image’s best since January 2016, so while it’s on the high end, it’s hit loftier marks relatively recently.
We see the absence of the Walking Dead issues from the charts when we add up the sales of the Top 300 comics. 6.33 million copies of the Top 300 comics were sold, but 7.85 million copies were sold overall. That’s a larger than usual gap unaccounted for, and includes the Walking Deads.
Retailers ordered $39.77 million in comics, graphic novels, and magazines across February’s four shipping weeks; that’s the first time the overall total has been below $40 million since February 2014. Comics dollar sales were off 4.47% and graphic novels off 3.3%, resulting in a year-over-year decline of 4.11%. The aggregate sales statistics appear below:
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| TOP 300 COMICS SHIPPED (in UNITS) |
||
| February 2017 | 6.33 million copies | |
| 1 Year Ago | 6.03 million copies | +5% |
| 5 Years Ago | 6.09 million copies | +4% |
| 10 Years Ago | 6.6 million copies | -4% |
| 15 Years Ago | 5.21 million copies | +21% |
| 20 Years Ago | 7.9 million copies | -20% |
| ALL Comics Shipped in Month (Units) |
7.85 million copies | +17% |
| Year To Date | 13.36 million copies | |
| 1 Year Ago | 12.44 million copies | 7.0 |
| 5 Years Ago | 11.87 million copies | 13 |
| 10 Years Ago | 13.3 million copies | 0 |
| 15 Years Ago | 11.06 million copies | 21 |
| ALL Comics Shipped Year to Date (Units) |
15.42 million copies | +12% |
| TOP 300 COMICS SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| February 2017 | $23.06 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $24.05 million | -4% |
| 5 Years Ago | $20.98 million | +10% |
| 10 Years Ago | $20.82 million | +11% |
| 15 Years Ago | $15.06 million | +53% |
| 20 Years Ago | $18.87 million | +22% |
| ALL Comics Shipped during Month (Dollars) |
-4% | |
| Year To Date | $49.34 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $48.42 million | +2% |
| 5 Years Ago | $40.8 million | +21% |
| 10 Years Ago | $41.7 million | +18% |
| 15 Years Ago | $31.8 million | +55% |
| ALL Comics Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-2% | |
| TOP GRAPHIC NOVELS SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| February 2017 (Top 300 GNs) | $8.5 million | |
| February 2017 (Top 100 GNs) |
$4.88 million | |
| February 2017 (Top 50 GNs) |
$2.72 million | |
| February 2017 (Top 25 GNs) |
$1.46 million | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$7.86 million | +8% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago (Top 300) |
$5.72 million | +48% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago (Top 100) |
$3.76 million | +30% |
| Versus 15 Years Ago (Top 25) |
$2.47 million | -41% |
| ALL Graphic Novel Shipped in Month (Dollars) |
-3% | |
| Year To Date | $14.32 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $15.82 million | -9% |
| ALL Graphic Novel Dollars Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-8% | |
| TOP 300 COMICS plus TOP GNs SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| February 2017 (including Top 300 GNs) |
$31.56 million | |
| February 2017 (including Top 300 GNs) |
$27.94 million | |
| February 2017 (including Top 100 GNs) |
$25.78 million | |
| February 2017 (including Top 25 GNs) |
$24.52 million | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$31.8 million | -1% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago (Top 300) |
$26.7 million | +5% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago (Top 50) |
$24.58 million | -6% |
| Versus 15 Years Ago (Top 25) |
$17.53 million | +53% |
| All Comics & GNs Shipped in Month (Dollars) |
-4% | |
| Year To Date | $63.7 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $63.94 million | 0% |
| ALL Comics & GNs Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-4% | |
| ALL COMICS AND GNs SHIPPED (in Dollars) |
||
| February 2017 | $39,77 million | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$41.48 million | -4% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago |
$35.82 million | +11% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago |
$32.16 million | +24% |
| Year To Date | $79.87 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $83 million | -4% |
| TITLE SPECIFICS | ||
| TOP SELLING TITLE | ||
| Star Wars Darth Maul#1 |
105,177 copies at | $4.99 |
| 300th SELLING TITLE |
||
| Zombie Tramp #32 |
4,044 copies at | $4.99 |
| NEW RELEASE VOLUME |
||
| New Comics Released |
449 | |
| New Graphic Novels Released |
297 | |
| New Magazines Released |
22 | |
| Total New Print Items Released |
768 | |
| PRICING | ||
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.78 | |
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders |
$3.65 | |
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 25 |
$3.43 | |
| Median Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.99 | |
| Most Common Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.99 |
The numbers for the 300th place title are better than those for the 300th place title a year ago, which is a good sign.
What was selling in Feburary in years past? Check out of Flashback column for the month.
Last Friday I participated in an Ask-Me-Anything about all matters comics-related on Reddit; click to read it.
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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