When Diamond paused its monthly retail sales charts (and it apparently is just a pause) this winter, we also paused our DC rankings, since it’s usually better to do both sets at once. But since they’re ready, let’s get rolling again with four months of DC order rankings!
As a refresher: Our DC rankings are based on a sizable subset of retail orders from its distributors (now, just Lunar). We only look at initial orders for comics; no reorders, no graphic novels. We don’t report copy counts at this stage; rather, we report relative sales levels.
NOVEMBER saw a close finish between Dark Nights Death Metal and the Batman books. Only 46 new comics from DC in November meant unit sales lagged vs October, but the Three Jokers hardcover would likely have more than made up for it. Click to see our November DC charts.
DECEMBER saw the end of Midtown’s UCS as a DC distributor, leaving only Lunar — and our dataset saw a rebound in DC comics units ordered thanks in part to a larger slate of new releases. Batman/Catwoman launched in the top three. Click to see our December DC charts.
JANUARY saw DC release just 42 new issues, its smallest slate since December 1990’s 36 new issues. Yet thanks to “Future State,” 23 were first issues; between that and Death Metal’s finale, Jan. comics orders easily beat December’s. Click to see our January DC charts.
FEBRUARY’s slate was no bigger — and with all those Future State series now on second or later issues, our set found unit orders down considerably. But again, the action was on the bookshelf, with the Joker War hardcovers landing. Click to see our February DC charts.
Lastly, we’ve enhanced our retail dataset, and have used it to amend our DC reports back to May 2020 so it’s apples-to-apples throughout. Those reports start here. We won’t be changing DC’s estimates yet in our existing DC-plus-Diamond pages, but that’ll happen once we see what the end-of-year report has to offer.
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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