John Jackson Miller 
A big change, as the headline says, but first the news: As reported here Friday, after five consecutive years of growth following DC’s “New 52” reboot, the Direct Market gave back some of those gains in 2017 — and December served as a lackluster finish to a disappointing year. Overall, Direct Market orders finished the … Read more
In the 21st Century, growth — and sometimes rapid growth — in the comics Direct Market has often been the rule. Following the complete collapse of the mid- and late-1990s, retailer orders for comic books and graphic novels increased in 2001-2008 and from 2012-2016, broken up with a three-year recessionary period turned around in mid-2011 … Read more
The first full week of 2018 saw a repeat at the top of the reorder charts at Diamond Comic Distributors — and a new mix of books atop the advance reorder charts. Let’s look first at how the books already in stores fared, and move on to the future: TOP REORDERED ITEMS for Jan. 2-8, 2018 … Read more
March is a ways off, but we already know a few things about the comics sales charts then. First, this March has four shipping weeks versus five last year, so it’ll face a bit of a challenge there; our extra week this quarter falls in January. We also know that the big ticket for the … Read more
Earlier this month, MAD magazine did something it’s done regularly every year since the 1950s: it ran its Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation for the year, this one in issue #549. It did so as well at the end of 2016, in #543 — and while that year’s form was notable for being the … Read more
I know from experience that people are frequently looking to see the charts for future months before they’re released; until now, those requests have gone to a redirect page. But we’ve seen enough reorders and advance from the past few weeks from Diamond Comic Distributors to be able to collate some information onto pages for … Read more