October brought the restoration of many Marvel titles’ legacy numberings (as well as the creation of several legacy titles through the cobbling-together of multiple miniseries) as part of its Legacy event. The promotion, which required retailers to meet certain thresholds to order special lenticular covers, helped Marvel and the Direct Market’s orders increase 5% over September, but paled in comparison to sales from the previous October, the Rebirth-driven second-strongest month of 2016. Click to see comics order estimates for October 2017.
Many fewer new comics were released this October versus the year before, however: 484, down 8% or 52 comics from the year previous. Perhaps owing to Legacy, Marvel’s release slate was its smallest in a long time; Marvel released 81 new comic books, its fewest since February 2016 and eight fewer than it released last October. The 7.62 million comic books retailers ordered, while nearly identical to orders from the previous two months, was off 21% from 2016’s overstuffed October; that shortfall likely drops to 18% with the Loot Crate book from that month removed. Marvel’s Thor #700 was its top seller, in advance of the release of the popular film, Thor: Ragnarok.
The Dark Multiverse event at DC — including Dark Nights: Metal #3 (with North American shipments of 158,700 copies) and various Batman specials — dominated the top 10; orders continued to come in for Dark Nights: Metal #1, bringing it above 271,000 copies. It remains second on the list of top-sellers for 2017. While the Marvel Legacy lenticular covers were priced identically with their normal counterparts and thus combined in rankings by Diamond, two DC issues had different prices and were not. With orders fused, Action Comics #989 and #990 would have placed 9th and 12th respectively.
Mister Miracle, one of September’s most heavily reordered books, saw orders off very slightly from its second to third issue.
Image saw its dollar market share climb above 11% thanks to strong performances in the graphic novel category; the Here’s Negan hardcover alone had first-month North American orders above 19,300 copies, with a full retail dollar value of nearly $400,000. (Edit: An errant decimal point resulted in an earlier incorrect headline.) Trade paperback and hardcover sales to retailers overall were up slightly over the previous year.
The vital statistics for the month:
| TOP 300 COMICS SHIPPED (in UNITS) |
||
| November 2017 | 7.03 million copies | |
| 1 Year Ago | 8.79 million copies | -20% |
| 5 Years Ago | 7.38 million copies | -5% |
| 10 Years Ago | 7.15 million copies | -2% |
| 15 Years Ago | 5.75 million copies | +22% |
| 20 Years Ago | 8.52 million copies | -17% |
| ALL Comics Shipped in Month (Units) |
7.7 million copies | -21% |
| Year To Date | 67.48 million copies | |
| 1 Year Ago | 74.31 million copies | (9.0) |
| 5 Years Ago | 66.21 million copies | 2 |
| 10 Years Ago | 71.3 million copies | -5 |
| 15 Years Ago | 58.05 million copies | 16 |
| ALL Comics Shipped Year to Date (Units) |
76.05 million copies | -8% |
| TOP 300 COMICS SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| November 2017 | $27.2 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $34.23 million | -21% |
| 5 Years Ago | $27.03 million | +1% |
| 10 Years Ago | $22.92 million | +19% |
| 15 Years Ago | $15.74 million | +73% |
| 20 Years Ago | $21.83 million | +25% |
| ALL Comics Shipped during Month (Dollars) |
-16% | |
| Year To Date | $260.59 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $286.33 million | -9% |
| 5 Years Ago | $233.84 million | +11% |
| 10 Years Ago | $225.64 million | +15% |
| 15 Years Ago | $162.75 million | +60% |
| ALL Comics Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-10% | |
| TOP GRAPHIC NOVELS SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| November 2017 (Top 300 GNs) | $7.56 million | |
| November 2017 (Top 100 GNs) |
$5.28 million | |
| November 2017 (Top 50 GNs) |
$3.39 million | |
| November 2017 (Top 25 GNs) |
$2.19 million | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$6.97 million | +8% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago (Top 300) |
$8.61 million | -12% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago (Top 100) |
$5.51 million | -4% |
| Versus 15 Years Ago (Top 50) |
$3.04 million | +12% |
| ALL Graphic Novel Shipped in Month (Dollars) |
+2% | |
| Year To Date | $72.04 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $77.88 million | -7% |
| ALL Graphic Novel Dollars Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-11% | |
| TOP 300 COMICS plus TOP GNs SHIPPED (in DOLLARS) |
||
| November 2017 (including Top 300 GNs) |
$34.76 million | |
| November 2017 (including Top 300 GNs) |
$32.49 million | |
| November 2017 (including Top 100 GNs) |
$30.6 million | |
| November 2017 (including Top 25 GNs) |
$29.4 million | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$41.2 million | -16% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago (Top 300) |
$35.65 million | -9% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago (Top 50) |
$28.42 million | -4% |
| Versus 15 Years Ago (Top 50) |
$18.78 million | +73% |
| All Comics & GNs Shipped in Month (Dollars) |
-11% | |
| Year To Date | $332.66 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $363.59 million | -9% |
| ALL Comics & GNs Shipped Year to Date (Dollars) |
-10% | |
| ALL COMICS AND GNs SHIPPED (in Dollars) |
||
| November 2017 | $45,580,200.00 | |
| Versus 1 Year Ago |
$51.29 million | -11% |
| Versus 5 Years Ago |
$47.281 million | -4% |
| Versus 10 Years Ago |
$38.96 million | +17% |
| Year To Date | $436.76 million | |
| 1 Year Ago | $485.97 million | -10% |
| TITLE SPECIFICS | ||
| TOP SELLING COMIC BOOK | ||
| Astonishing X-Men #4 |
40,588 copies at | $3.99 |
| 50th PLACE COMIC BOOK |
||
| Dark Nights Metal #3 |
158,698 copies at | $3.99 |
| 100th PLACE COMIC BOOK |
||
| Punisher Platoon #2 |
25,587 copies at | $3.99 |
| 150th PLACE COMIC BOOK |
||
| Hawkeye #11 | 13,636 copies at | $3.99 |
| 200th PLACE COMIC BOOK |
||
| Ruff & Reddy Show #1 |
8,777 copies at | $3.99 |
| 300th PLACE COMIC BOOK |
||
| Doctor Who Lost Dimension Special #1 |
4,185 copies at | $4.99 |
| NEW RELEASE VOLUME |
||
| New Comics Released |
484 | |
| New Graphic Novels Released |
345 | |
| New Magazines Released |
28 | |
| Total New Print Items Released |
857 | |
| PRICING | ||
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.96 | |
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300, weighted by orders |
$3.87 | |
| Average Cover Price of Comics in the Top 25 |
$3.95 | |
| Median Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.99 | |
| Most Common Cover Price of Comics in the Top 300 |
$3.99 |
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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