Avengers: Infinity War had another nine-figure week to start off the month of May; it was a period that also included a very busy Free Comic Book Day and some improved news about the state of the market. In response, retailers continued to restock the Infinity Gauntlet trade paperback — and on the advance reorder side, it’s all Amazing Spider-Man in the latest Diamond Comic Distributors reorder charts. First we’ll look first at how the books already in stores fared, and move on to the future:
TOP REORDERED ITEMS for Apr. 30-May 6, 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.
The top reordered trade paperback and top item overall was, of course, the Infinity Gauntlet trade paperback. Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War Prelude was the second-most reordered trade paperback.
Action Comics #1000 was the top reordered comic; after a week in which all its variants made the Top 25, the only variant of the April 18-released comic book to do so was the Blank Edition. It went out of stock last week so that should be the end of the variants charting. (See listings for them on eBay.)
Hunt for Wolverine #1, the fourth-place comic book in April, was the top reordered Marvel comic book. It went on sale April 25 and is now marked as out of stock in Diamond’s system.
The top reordered hardcover was a repeat entry, the Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus hardcover. In second was last week’s leader, the $150 Absolute Preacher Vol. 3. It went on sale April 25.
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. 30-May 6, 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.
For the second week in a row, Marvel had 22 of the top 25 advance-reordered items in the week — and just as DC had a week where Action #1000 variants monopolized the chart, all the top 10 advance reordered comics were many Amazing Spider-Man #800 variants, with the John Romita Sr. edition leading the list, with the Frank Cho and Mark Bagley variants in second and third. There were sixteen variants in the Top 25, the most of anything we’ve seen all year. The comic book releases on May 30.
DC’s first entry is Brian Michael Bendis‘s Man of Steel #1, at eleventh place, which goes on sale the same day.
The top June-shipping entry is X-Men Gold #30‘s JSC Classified variant, which releases June 20. The first Marvel Fresh Start launch is a bit below that, Tony Stark Iron Man #1.
The only graphic novel on the list is the Shaw variant of the collected edition of Thanos Wins by Donny Cates, which ships June 27.
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 May 2018 and June 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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