BRZRKR #2 from Boom Studios led Comichron’s projected all-industry rankings for comic shop initial orders in April 2021, with Image’s and Geoff Johns’ Geiger #1 in the Top 3. Batman #107 was DC’s top finisher, in fourth.
In the ongoing absence of official distributor charts, rankings are based on initial orders from a sizable retail order dataset. Like charts pre-2003, reorders aren’t included, so under-ordered books like Batman/Fortnite see less benefit. You can see how just the DC comics ranked here.
April’s rankings saw BRZRKR repeat from March, but the gap that month would have been much larger. April’s top sellers are much more tightly packed. March’s orders appeared to be well ahead of the last pre-shutdown month in 2020. April 2021 comics orders, 6.5 to 7 million copies, for $29-30 million, have no easy comparative, as last April saw only three new releases. But April’s showing was well above March 2020, which also had four weeks — it did it on the strength of 27% fewer new periodical releases.
Finally, we’re working backwards! Just posted are February 2021’s initial order rankings, which were led by TMNT: The Last Ronin #2 from IDW. February also appears to have improved vs. 2020, despite a smaller DC slate. See Februrary’s report here.
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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