In September, Spawn matched the issue count of Cerebus — and while creator Todd McFarlane did not write and draw every issue of his title, as Dave Sim did with the latter, Spawn #300 (or, more specifically, the next issue) earned the title a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records under “longest-running creator-owned super-hero comic book.” It also gave publisher Image its best monthly showing of 2019 and helped produce a Direct Market month that was up 4% year-over-year, according to data released today by Diamond Comic Distributors.
We’ll have the issue-by-issue sales estimates online on Monday; look for them on our September 2019 page.
Comichron calculates that comics shops in North America ordered a little over $47 million in comic books, graphic novels, and magazines from Diamond; it was an even comparison, calendar-wise, as
the month had the same number of shipping weeks.
September’s performance brought third quarter orders to $139.7 million, up 2% over the same quarter last year. It’s also up 9% over the third quarter of 2017, which was the slumpiest part of the last slowdown; that quarter was up against DC‘s Rebirth event in 2016, the second-best quarter of the decade.
As noted here all summer, the market has moved in a very narrow range relative to 2018. The year-to-date through August had been marginally in negative territory; September brought it marginally into positive territory. Nearly $390 million worth of comics, graphic novels, and magazine have been ordered in the first nine months of 2019; that’s an increase of exactly one quarter of one percent, or a little less than a million dollars.
Spawn #300 led both the unit and dollar sales charts, priced as it was at $7.99. It was the first time Spawn had led the Diamond charts since Spawn #100 in July 2000. (Edit: A previous version of this post had missed that one, placing the most recent issue earlier, in 1997.) By our count, Spawn has led Diamond’s charts 21 times since Spawn #1 debuted in first place; click to see the chart from June 1992, which has just been added to Comichron.
A significant number of those bestselling months come from the 1995-96 period when no Marvel comics were available from Diamond. (Continuing along the McFarlane nostalgia thread, Spawn #300’s third printing in November, seen at right, plays off his work on Amazing Spider-Man #300 in the 1980s.)
Meanwhile, the J.J. Abrams Spider-Man #1 — a relaunch, more coincidentally, sharing the name of the title that McFarlane ruled the charts with two years before Spawn — took second in both units and dollars, with the biweekly alternating House of X/Powers of X combo from Marvel taking the next four spots on the unit sales list. It’s not insignificant that the fifth issues outsold the fourth issues: that means that demand was continuing to grow well after the fourth issues’ order cutoffs passed.
DC got its top-ranked item in Doomsday Clock #11, and the Black Label launch Harleen #1 placed tenth in units and fourth in dollars.
Comics as a category saw improvements both over August and year-over-year. Retailers ordered 7.57 million copies, up 5%; the dollar value of those books was up 11%. Those gains come despite a smaller new release slate: publishers released 443 new comic books in September, a drop of 7%. Image’s number of new comics releases was down significantly, from 66 to 42; its 13% year-to-year sales improvement in September looks more impressive in light of that. Marvel released the exact number of comics it did in the previous September; its dollar sales were up 1%. Marvel is up 7% year-to-date.
DC’s new-comics offerings grew considerably versus the previous September, although the charts below overstate the size of the increase. As in August, at least 11 of DC’s comic book releases were counted twice because they were cardstock covers priced at a dollar higher: Action Comics #1015, Aquaman #52, Batgirl #39, Batman #79, Batman/Superman #2, Catwoman #15, Event Leviathan #4, Justice League #32, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy #1, Supergirl #34, and Young Justice #8. DC’s dollar orders held steady year-over-year in September; it’s down 6% year-to-date.
Year-to-date, comic-book orders stand at 61.6 million comic books, down about 2 million copies, or 3%, from the first nine months of 2018; dollar sales are up 2%.
Graphic novels continued to underperform relative to periodicals, down 20% in units and 12% in dollars against what was a strong month for them in 2018. That month had new Saga and Walking Dead edition which sold in the five figures; this month’s top-seller, Batman Damned, was a $29.99 hardcover, and those help more on dollars than they do for units. Publishers sent 369 new graphic novels to market, an increase of 2%.
It’s immediately noticable that Guts, Raina Telgemeier‘s September-debuting graphic novel, does not appear in the Top 10 at all, despite selling more than 76,000 copies in its debut week through Bookscan-reporting stores. The books in the line definitely do significant business in comics shops, but retailers tend to order Scholastic‘s titles outside Diamond.
The comparative sales statistics:
| Dollars | Units | |
|---|---|---|
| September 2019 Vs. August 2019 | ||
| Comics | +5.20% | +9.97% |
| Graphic Novels | +2.90% | -1.98% |
| Total Comics/GNs | +4.60% | +9.12% |
| Toys | -14.00% | -33.26% |
| September 2019 Vs. September 2018 | ||
| Comics | +10.87% | +5.25% |
| Graphic Novels | -11.54% | -20.44% |
| Total Comics/GNs | +4.09% | +3.13% |
| Toys | +9.99% | -17.90% |
| Year To Date 2019 Vs. Year To Date 2018 | ||
| Comics | +2.05% | -3.29% |
| Graphic Novels | -4.26% | -10.04% |
| Total Comics/GNs | +0.25% | -3.79% |
| Toys | +22.69% | +25.47% |
| Third Quarter 2019 Vs. Second Quarter 2019 | ||
| Comics | +13.25% | +8.20% |
| Graphic Novels | +1.68% | +3.50% |
| Total Comics/GNs | +10.01% | +7.88% |
| Toys | +29.24% | +26.14% |
| Third Quarter 2019 Vs. Third Quarter 2018 | ||
| Comics | +5.41% | +0.01% |
| Graphic Novels | -7.95% | -15.17% |
| Total Comics/GNs | +1.59% | -1.16% |
| Toys | +19.23% | +22.45% |
The market shares:
| Publisher | Dollar Share | Unit Share |
|---|---|---|
| Marvel | 38.81% | 45.51% |
| DC | 27.80% | 29.15% |
| Image | 11.01% | 8.32% |
| Dark Horse | 3.26% | 2.27% |
| IDW | 3.08% | 2.92% |
| Dynamite | 2.70% | 2.02% |
| Boom | 2.48% | 2.53% |
| Viz | 1.57% | 0.62% |
| Oni | 0.76% | 0.63% |
| Archie | 0.65% | 0.63% |
| Other | 7.87% | 5.42% |
The top-selling comics by units:
| TOP COMIC BOOKS (by units) | PRICE | PUBLISHER | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spawn #300 | $7.99 | Image |
| 2 | Spider-Man #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 3 | House of X #5 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 4 | Powers of X #5 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 5 | Powers of X #4 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | House of X #4 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 7 | Doomsday Clock #11 | $4.99 | DC |
| 8 | Absolute Carnage #3 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | Dceased: A Good Day To Die #1 | $4.99 | DC |
| 10 | Harleen #1 | $7.99 | DC |
The top-selling comics by dollars:
| TOP COMIC BOOKS (by dollars) | PRICE | PUBLISHER | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spawn #300 | $7.99 | Image |
| 2 | Spider-Man #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 3 | House of X #5 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 4 | Harleen #1 | $7.99 | DC |
| 5 | Powers of X #5 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | Powers of X #4 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 7 | House of X #4 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 8 | Doomsday Clock #11 | $4.99 | DC |
| 9 | Absolute Carnage #3 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 10 | Dceased: A Good Day To Die #1 | $4.99 | DC |
The top-selling graphic novels by units:
| TOP GRAPHIC NOVELS (by units) | PRICE | PUBLISHER | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Batman: Damned HC | $29.99 | DC |
| 2 | Umbrella Academy Vol. 3: Hotel Oblivion | $19.99 | Dark Horse |
| 3 | Paper Girls Vol. 6 | $14.99 | Image |
| 4 | Monstress Vol. 4 | $16.99 | Image |
| 5 | Immortal Hulk Vol. 4: Abomination | $15.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | Heroes In Crisis HC | $29.99 | DC |
| 7 | Batman: The Killing Joke HC | $17.99 | DC |
| 8 | Batman Vol. 10: Knightmares | $17.99 | DC |
| 9 | Batman: Nightwalker: The Graphic Novel | $16.99 | DC |
| 10 | The Joker: His Greatest Jokes | $19.99 | DC |
The top-selling graphic novels by dollars:
| TOP GRAPHIC NOVELS (by dollars) | PRICE | PUBLISHER | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Batman: Damned HC | $29.99 | DC |
| 2 | Umbrella Academy Vol. 3: Hotel Oblivion | $19.99 | Dark Horse |
| 3 | Monstress Vol. 4 of | $16.99 | Image |
| 4 | Marvel Horror Omnibus HC | $150.00 | Marvel |
| 5 | Heroes In Crisis HC | $29.99 | DC |
| 6 | Paper Girls Vol. 6 | $14.99 | Image |
| 7 | Timely’s Greatest: Golden Age Sub-Mariner By Everett HC | $150.00 | Marvel |
| 8 | Umbrella Academy Library Edition Vol. 1 HC | $39.99 | Dark Horse |
| 9 | Batman Eternal Omnibus HC | $125.00 | DC |
| 10 | Spider-Man By John Byrne Omnibus HC | $125.00 | Marvel |
Finally, the number of new items offered:
| Publisher | Comics shipped |
Graphic Novels shipped |
Magazines shipped |
Total shipped |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marvel | 99 | 43 | 0 | 142 |
| DC | 83 | 26 | 0 | 109 |
| Image | 42 | 19 | 0 | 61 |
| Dark Horse | 19 | 21 | 0 | 40 |
| IDW | 25 | 15 | 0 | 40 |
| Viz | 0 | 33 | 0 | 33 |
| Boom | 18 | 14 | 0 | 32 |
| Dynamite | 15 | 5 | 0 | 20 |
| Archie | 11 | 3 | 0 | 14 |
| Oni | 4 | 4 | 0 | 8 |
| Other | 127 | 186 | 19 | 332 |
| TOTAL SHIPPED | 443 | 369 | 19 | 831 |
With the Direct Market as represented by Diamond print orders essentially flat through nine months, one would be correct to imagine that the chances for a year ending very much different from that are small. Last October was the best month of 2018, but the final months of the year were weak, as DC’s new-title cutbacks were really taking hold. An exactly flat fourth quarter obviously puts the year minutely ahead of 2018; perhaps a more meaningful yet reachable target would be beating 2017, which 2018 narrowly failed to do. We’d need a $132.3 million quarter for that, up about 3.6%.
So it’s doable. Either way, of course, the book channel is reportedly doing very well, so comics as a medium is all but assured to see another growth year.
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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