The hardcover celebration, Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman releases today — and we know that retailers were already stocking up, as it was the top reordered item last week according to Diamond Comic Distributors‘ reorder charts, also out today. First we’ll look first at how the books already in stores fared, and move on to the future:
TOP REORDERED ITEMS for Apr. 2-8, 2018 (in invoiced 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.
As noted above, the top hardcover and top reordered item overall was DC’s Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman hardcover, which previously had topped the advance reorder charts. It releases in shops today.
The Infinity Gauntlet trade paperback repeated yet again as the top reordered softcover; the book wound up 17th overall in the charts for March, released earlier this week.
Dark Nights Metal #6, which was the top selling comic book for March, will be adding to its total, as it was the top reordered comic book for the week. The top reordered comic book from the month of April was the top reordered comic book last week: Amazing Spider-Man #798, which went on sale April 4.
The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.
And now on to the future…
TOP ADVANCE REORDERED ITEMS for Apr. 2-8, 2018 (in full retail dollars)
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 first Marvel Fresh Start book has made its appearance: Avengers #1, which is slated to release on May 2. (There is an escalating discount opportunity tied to retailers’ orders of Avengers #680, but it’s not known where the issue would fall in the chart below had it been based on invoiced dollars rather than cover price.) At least so far, Marvel’s reported dual-numbering of the Fresh Start titles doesn’t seem to be reflected in Diamond’s nomenclature for books.
Amazing Spider-Man #800 topped the advance reorder charts once a while back; due out May 30, it took second. The top April-shipping comic in advance reorders was the Stuart Immonen variant of Amazing Spider-Man #798, out on April 25.
More DC comics appeared in this chart than we’ve seen in a while; that includes DC Nation #0, already announced to have a million copies ordered. For a quarter comic to make a dollar-ranked list, numbers like that would certainly help. A storyline in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers titles has been getting attention lately; Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25‘s second printing took eighth.
No hardcovers or softcovers made the advance reorder chart last week.
This chart is ranked by full retail dollars and not units, or wholesale dollars.
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 April 2018 and May 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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