June 2021 looks to have been a colossal month for periodical comics, according to Comichron’s projected rankings for comics initial orders, just posted. Venom #35 led a five-week month slate that was the largest yet since the pandemic began. Find the June charts here.
We counted 406 new comics overall and nearly 1,000 new variants for June. Projections suggest initial orders of between 8-9 million copies totaling nearly $40 million, rivaling any of the best months of the 2010s. DC’s 60-issue slate is near its 2019 levels; Marvel’s is still about a third smaller.
A year after DC’s departure from Diamond, we’re retiring our DC-only charts. Everything on our DC pages is captured in the all-industry reports, and they no longer really function as Lunar reports as that distributor adds more publishers. June DC can be found at https://bit.ly/Jun21ComicsDC; if things change and Lunar starts reporting anything, we’ll start a new section.
Finally, I do still expect Diamond’s monthly charts to return at some point. That data was a product of its warehouses; it always reported shipments, not orders. (Ironically, a DC idea!) With first DC and then Marvel no longer flooring all their stock there, logistical systems are likely evolving. We shall see!
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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