Following the report on comics orders for October 2010, here’s a look back at what was going on in previous years… October 2009‘s top seller was DC’s Blackest Night #4, with first-month orders of 136,100 copies copies. By the end of the year, it would have orders of more than 140,200 copies, making it the … Read more
In place of this week’s Flashback Friday, a much more expansive look back on the past. With the help of T.M. Haley, I’m pleased to announce the expansion of monthly sales rankings into a tumultuous stretch of history: 1995 and 1996, the period of the Exclusivity Wars in the comic-book Direct Market. I’ve written … Read more
Following the report on comics orders for August 2010, here’s a look back at what was going on in previous years… August 2009‘s top seller was DC’s Blackest Night #2, with first-month orders of 145,600 copies. By the end of the year, it would have orders of more than 161,400, making it the fifth-best-selling … Read more
by John Jackson Miller and T.M. Haley In 1991, Marvel Comics launched a new “adjectiveless” X-Men title; the original 1963 X-Men series had been known as Uncanny X-Men for several years. That new X-Men issue, with its five covers, released into the superheated speculator market of the early 1990s and became the best-selling comic book … Read more
Following the report on comics orders for June 2010, here’s a look back at what was going on in previous years… June 2009‘s top seller was DC’s Batman and Robin #1, with estimated first-month Diamond orders of 168,500 copies. It would ultimately be the fourth best-selling comic book of 2009, with reorders bringing it … Read more
When Marvel took its direct market comics distribution to its own distributor, Heroes World, in 1995, it was no longer possible to look at a single distributor’s rankings to see a real top-seller list. From then until August 1996, the only public sales charts that reconciled all publishers’ titles were based on retailer reports, such … Read more