March is a ways off, but we already know a few things about the comics sales charts then. First, this March has four shipping weeks versus five last year, so it’ll face a bit of a challenge there; our extra week this quarter falls in January. We also know that the big ticket for the month already appears to be Robert Kirkman‘s new series, as the Collector’s Edition for Oblivion Song #1 repeated as the top advance reorder item in dollars at Diamond Comic Distributors for the last week of 2017.
Let’s look first at how the books already in stores fared, and move on to the future:
TOP REORDERED ITEMS for Dec. 26, 2017 to Jan. 1, 2018 (in dollars)
These are items that have already shipped, but have been receiving additional orders from retailers. In most cases below, the items are in stock and so the orders are being filled; occasionally items are back-ordered, so their reorders will enter into the channel once they become available.
These are ranked by invoiced dollars, so retailers’ discounts have already applied to the totals before ranking.
DC’s Hawkman Found #1, a “Dark Nights” tie-in that went on sale Dec. 27, was the top reordered comic book of the week. In yet another repeat, Marvel’s Infinity Gauntlet was the top reordered softcover.
DC’s Green Arrow: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 1, also released on Dec. 27, was the top reordered hardcover.
The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.
TOP ADVANCE REORDERED ITEMS for for Dec. 26, 2017 to Jan. 1, 2018 (in dollars)
Let’s look now into the future. These are items that have not yet shipped, but for which the Final Order Deadlines have passed. These reorders, if books are available to fill them, may or may not land in the same shipping month as the books’ release weeks, so a book’s presence on this chart can mean that an item might make a repeat appearance in Diamond’s monthly top-seller charts.
The top advance reorder item was, for the second week running, the Oblivion Song by Kirkman and De Felici Collector’s Edition from Image, priced at $200; it comes with a statue, a print, and a pin and is limited to 1,000 copies. It’s expected to go on sale March 7. The basic comic version, second place last week in reorder dollars, dropped to eleventh; the Walking Dead #176 cover by Bill Sienkiewicz was the top standard-priced comic book this time.
The top advance reordered hardcover was the Action Comics #1000: 80 Years of Superman book. The leading trade paperback was Robotech Vol. 1, from Titan.
Remember, this is ranked by invoiced dollars and not units.
We’ve seen enough reorders and advance from the past few weeks from Diamond Comic Distributors to be able to collate some information onto pages for December 2017 and January 2018; check them out for a further glance at the future.
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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