John Jackson Miller 
With The Avengers movie releasing, this seems like a good time to post the near-complete year-by-year record of Avengers sales, according to statements Marvel filed with the U.S. Postal Service. The first postal statement appeared in 1966; I have all of them since then with the exception of 1975, 1988, 2005, and 2010 when Marvel … Read more
UPDATED to reflect new information Diamond Comic Distributors has released the full lists for March 2012, and as reported here last week, while March itself was against a five-week month and slightly off, it nonetheless contributed to the first time in the 21st century the direct market has ordered more than $100 million in the … Read more
Over the past two months, we haven’t been able to make a very good comparison with 2011’s comics sales. January was up against a month in 2011 in which many of Diamond Comic Distributors‘ products missed their shipping month because of the distributor’s switch to Tuesday arrival dates; February was had an unusual five shipping … Read more
March 2012 is the fifth anniversary of The Comics Chronicles site, which began with a posting that included the sales figures I had collected to that point that had appearing in the Statements of Ownership in comics from 1960 to 1969. I promised at the time to provide more years later on — but I … Read more
Following yesterday’s mention of his Rule of Eight — an observation relating to the survival rates for independent publishers whose lines expanded quickly — Marc Patten wrote to remind me of an important nuance: “If memory serves, I think the ‘Rule of 8’ stemmed from the concept of new companies with some sort of shared … Read more
I have written many times that the recovery in comics sales that began in earnest at the end of 2001 was built upon a “virtuous cycle” developing, in which retailers placed the money from strong-performing comics not solely into paying down other expenses, but into ordering more of the next big project. With Marvel’s … Read more