When Diamond paused its sales reports for months in 2020, Comichron provided industrywide rankings based on a retail initial order dataset. Diamond’s paused its reports again and while it’s likely also temporary, let’s get back on the horse with our projected MARCH 2021 rankings!
First, DC: We project Joker #1 was its top seller to shops in a month with a VERY small DC slate. 36 new issues (in a five-week month, no less!) ties a low from December 1990. Still, DC initial orders appeared up from February. Our DC March rankings are here.
Once Diamond’s comics enter the picture, BRZRKR #1 from Boom was easily the top comic book ordered in March, with Marvel’s Alien #1 second and Joker third. With DC included, March initial orders for comics appear WAY up from March 2020. Our overall rankings are here.
Again, this is based on the same set we’ve been using to track DC since it left Diamond. It’s orders, so it’s in line with other Comichron data. Obviously, we greatly prefer to use Diamond’s reporting to complete the picture, and will surely incorporate it when it’s available. I did project relative sales levels on issues and used them to estimate overall sales, but we’re holding off on publishing index numbers until more data’s available. It’s like a “too early to call” election result. But the rankings at least provides at least a partial picture.
The past year’s permitted much progress on our historical comics sales research, and you’ll be seeing more of that soon. At the same time, I expect to continue collecting what information we can on current comics. It’s an easy bet historians will be looking at this era one day!
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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