January 2022 estimates are online. Scorched #1 from Image sold over 257,000 copies to retailers in the first monthly list since the majority of Marvel’s distribution went to Penguin Random House. Total Direct Market orders likely $45 million: see the charts here.
For the latest batch of changes, we consolidated lists into a single page, where the Diamond chart appears by default, but there’s an option to project Marvel overall orders based on what we believe Diamond’s share to be. In this month’s case that puts She-Hulk #1 in second.
The order defaults to Diamond’s original; click on the “Projected” tab to reorder by what we believe the overall Marvel totals could be. That column also restores the reorder penalty that Diamond applies to titles. As always, estimates subject to change.
We have consolidated on the same page our retail initial order dataset’s rankings of DC’s titles, which found that Detective Comics #1050 was the most ordered DC book. DCs will not be integrated with Diamond at this time; Marvel’s move to PRH has made that process more difficult, as where the Marvel titles landed in the Diamond list previously had been a solid benchmark to compare against. Without it, there just aren’t as many high sellers that we have 100% of the sales reporting on.
If you can’t see the yellow column beside the Diamond chart, you may need to refresh or clear your cache. After a couple of years of the tables bifurcated — and for a while, trifurcated — we’re trying to keep things on one page. Until the next distribution gyration, anyway!
About January’s Direct Market size, $45 million would be ahead of January 2020 — and the same size as January 2019, which had the benefit of one extra shipping week.
Longtime chart-watchers will notice that with DC out of the monthly charts and only about 3/8 of Marvel sales at Diamond, a LOT of rarely seen stuff climbed into Diamond’s Top 400. CGC graded releases, Dynamic Forces signed copies, high-dollar variants — even comics bundles.
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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