More than 10 million comics ordered in August, most since 1996; Harley Quinn is #1

Since 1998, Diamond Comic Distributors has never shipped more than 10
million comic books to comics shops in a single month. That changed in
August, as DC‘s “Rebirth” resulted in shipments of 10.26 million comics
to retailers in North America.

[UPDATE 9/19: The final estimates are out! Click for our August 2016 comics sales analysis and August 2016 comics sales estimates.]

It’s the first time
Diamond has ever revealed the full number of copies shipped in a single
month; it previously has only announced a total for the entire year.
(Last year’s overall total was 98 million copies.) As a result of August’s shipments, every category for 2016 has turned positive. Retailers ordered $57.66 million in comics and graphic novels in the month, up 31.62% — bringing the year’s total to $388.35 million, up nearly 3%. It’s a five-week month versus a four-week month this time out; there have been 35 shipping weeks in the year to date, versus 34 weeks at the same time last year.

Although the full number of units ordered monthly has not been previously released, Comichron estimates of the Top 300 comics shipped in the past make it possible to guess at the most recent time that shipments topped 10 million. We know that the Top 300 comics sold 10.29 million copies in December 1996, for example, but that comes from a combination of Marvel‘s sales through Heroes World and Diamond’s sales of everything else. Marvel’s return to Diamond in April 1997 resulted in orders of 9.34 million copies of the Top 300 comics; it’s possible that comics outside the Top 300 took that figure over 10 million, but it’s tougher to believe that it topped 10.26 million. There weren’t as many books beneath 300th place then, and lower-tier books were selling at levels a good deal lower back then.

Note that the Top 300 comics will almost certainly come in below 10 million in next week’s final estimate report; the contribution of the comics at the bottom of the charts is well over 260,000 copies. But we will be able to see for the first time exactly what the bubbling-under portion accounts for in a sample month

And, importantly, since the comics unit changes across time are known, Comichron can now project monthly unit sales back to 2009. The change figures below suggest that last August’s unit sales were 7.12 million copies. The Top 300 alone that month sold 6.52 million copies. We also now know that the direct market has ordered 64.7 million copies so far this year; last year’s figure would have been almost identical.

The aggregate changes:

	DOLLARS	UNITS
August 2016 vs July 2016
Comics	13.30%	8.28%
Graphic Novels	16.50%	19.21%
Total Comics/GNs	14.13%	8.95%
August 2016 vs August 2015
Comics	44.58%	44.02%
Graphic Novels	5.53%	7.15%
Total Comics/GNs	31.62%	40.77%
Year-to-date 2016 VS. 2015
Comics	2.66%	0.06%
Graphic Novels	2.81%	1.10%
Total Comics/GNs	2.71%	0.14%

DC led the dollar and unit market shares, posting its highest share since September 2013‘s 40.39%. The high-water mark for DC in the Diamond Exclusive Era was 42.27% in October 2011, the second full month of that year’s DC reboot.

Publisher	Dollar Share	Unit Share
DC	39.27%	44.59%
Marvel	30.78%	32.11%
Image	7.66%	7.78%
IDW	4.92%	3.53%
Dark Horse	3.08%	2.28%
Boom	1.98%	1.57%
Dynamite	1.57%	1.14%
Titan	1.19%	1.09%
Viz	1.14%	0.41%
Oni	0.83%	0.55%
Other	7.58%	4.94%

Harley Quinn #1 was the top selling comic book, and DC took nine of the top ten slots. All of the issues have asterisks, denoting returnability. While returnable books have their orders reduced by an amount in the charts — reportedly 10% — as our recent analysis shows, the median returnable book improves on its reported sales levels. So while it’s correct to say that returnability likely increased the numbers this month, it’s not necessarily the case that the figures are inflated. In fact, the ultimate number of copies shipped in August might wind up higher than the reported figure.

Sales levels are quite a lot higher than at the corresponding time in the 2011 DC reboot, and it’s worth noting at this point that returnability isn’t the only reason why. Five years ago this week, I was discussing with a retailer that there was a natural check on just how big the New 52’s sales could be: retailer cash flow. Sales in the spring and summer of 2011 had been horrible, meaning there was a limit to how much retailers could invest in preorders. 2016’s event, meanwhile, jumps off from a superior position in terms of how much money is in the business. Add DC’s returnability offer and its choice to stagger the release of new launches, and the current relaunch gets both a higher ceiling and a chance to possible have more durable long-term effects.

Diamond’s phrasing was that the number was both the quantity shipped
and the quantity ordered, so it’s likely the 10.26 million-copy figure
has not been reduced to account for returnability.

The top-selling comics:

	Comic Book	Price	Publisher
1	Harley Quinn #1*	$2.99	DC
2	All-Star Batman #1*	$4.99	DC
3	Suicide Squad #1*	$2.99	DC
4	Amazing Spider-Man #16	$3.99	Marvel
5	Suicide Squad Rebirth #1*	$2.99	DC
6	Batman #4*	$2.99	DC
7	Batman #5*	$2.99	DC
8	Justice League #2*	$2.99	DC
9	Harley Quinn #2*	$2.99	DC
10	Supergirl Rebirth #1*	$2.99	DC

While there isn’t as much to say about graphic novels lately, it’s worth remembering there will be an echo effect to Rebirth aiding the industry in the first quarter of 2017, when many of those titles will be collected. Winter is usually a time when the market needs the most help. The top-selling graphic novels:

	Graphic Novel	Price	Publisher
1	Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 3: The Shu Torun War	$16.99	Marvel
2	Batman: The Killing Joke Special Edition HC	$17.99	DC
3	Black Panther Book 1: Nation Under Our Feet’	$16.99	Marvel
4	Spider-Man/Deadpool Vol. 1: Isn’t It Bromantic	$17.99	Marvel
5	Star Wars Volume 3: Rebel Jail	$19.99	Marvel
6	Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HC	$24.99	DC
7	Saga Vol. 6	$14.99	Image
8	Teen Titans Earth One Vol. 2 HC	$22.99	DC
9	Harley Quinn Book And Mask Set	$34.99	DC
10	Harley Quinn & The Suicide Squad: Adult Coloring Book	$15.99	DC

The number of new items released by publisher was pretty high, as befits a five-week month. The number of new comics released increased 19%, while the number of new graphic novels was up 4%:

Publisher	New comics	New GNs	New Magazines	Total shipped
Marvel	93	35	0	128
DC	75	33	1	109
IDW	53	31	0	84
Image	52	11	1	64
Dark Horse	26	16	0	42
Titan	20	10	2	32
Boom	22	8	0	30
Dynamite	22	6	0	28
Viz	0	24	0	24
Oni	10	2	0	12
Other	144	117	24	285
Total shipped	517	293	28	838

The final estimates will be out next week, and mark a milestone for this site: August 2016 makes a full 20 years that I’ve been doing monthly reports, both on Comichron and before, in Comics & Games Retailer magazine. I’ll have some thoughts to publish in the next week on how this project came to be, and some of the challenges involved with it; one is that I’ve often had to do the reports wherever I happened to be when they came out. I’m currently on a junket for my Star Trek and Halo books, for example — television on Thursday and guesting at Dodecacon in Columbia, Mo., today. Neither rain nor snow nor comic convention shall hinder the monthly reports!