{"id":3685,"date":"2019-01-16T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T16:25:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T21:25:45","slug":"the-2018-two-thousand-look-at-1000-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/16\/the-2018-two-thousand-look-at-1000-top\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2018 Two Thousand: A look at the 1,000 top-selling comics and graphic novels ordered by comic shops"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With the release of 2018 end-of-year comics orders from Diamond Comic Distributors<\/a>,<\/b>\u00a0Comichron<\/b> has drawn upon that information to project estimates for the Top Thousand Comics and the Top Thousand Graphic Novels for 2018<\/b><\/a>. The tables are on the page just beneath the image links to individual months.<\/p>\n

This year’s charts have our sorting and searching features implemented, as now do our previous 27 years of annual charts,\u00a0going back to 1991<\/b><\/a>. You can find the links to them, along with updated comparatives for how the market as a whole did across that time, by viewing our Yearly Comics Sales<\/b><\/a> page.<\/p>\n

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Led by Action Comics<\/i> #1000<\/a>,\u00a0the Top Thousand Comics<\/b>
\naccounted for around 50.43\u00a0million copies; we don’t yet know how many copies Diamond sold altogether. (We’ll see that when the December data comes out.) This is an increase of 1.5% in units over what the Top Thousand sold in 2017.<\/p>\n

Here are the totals for the Top Thousand Comics from the past few years. Diamond did not release figures for 2016, but we calculated\u00a0minimum values for the Top Thousand<\/a><\/b> based on known orders and reorders from that year:<\/p>\n

2010:<\/a> 45.3 million copies
\n2011:<\/a> 47 million copies
\n2012:<\/a> 53.43 million copies
\n2013:<\/a> 52.21 million copies
\n2014:<\/a> 52.07 million copies
\n2015:<\/a> 58.59 million copies
\n2016:<\/a> 59.8 million (minimum, probably slightly higher)
\n2017:<\/a> 49.68 million copies
\n2018:<\/a> 50.43 million copies<\/b><\/p>\n

As you can see, 2018’s figure comes in under 2012’s \u2014 but we know that Diamond sold more comics in 2017 than in 2012, so it may have done so in 2018, too. This is a consequence of the Top Thousand representing a smaller portion of the distributor’s volume. In full retail
\ndollars, the Top Thousand Comics likely sold for $213.3 million, a big 11% leap over 2017’s $190.6 million. That’s a consequence of the top sellers being so much more expensive; $8 and $10 were not impediments to sales, in many cases.<\/p>\n

Almost everything in the Top 100 had “multiple order codes” at Diamond,
\nmeaning there were variant covers or reprints combined into one entry;
\nsometimes it’s not a simultaneous variant, but rather a reprint with a different cover.<\/p>\n

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Breaking down unit sales \u2014 and again employing our estimated minimums for 2016 \u2014 we see a rebound in the higher tiers in 2018, but declines in the midrange and lower-tier sellers, in part a consequence of so many fewer comics (not variants, but unique interiors) being released in the year. The first chart shows what’s in each bracket; the second is a cumulative measure:<\/p>\n

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NUMBER OF COMIC BOOK ISSUES SELLING\u00a0<\/b>THIS MANY COPIES DURING YEAR<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n

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