{"id":3713,"date":"2018-12-07T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T16:28:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T21:28:32","slug":"november-comics-orders-down-on-smallest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/07\/november-comics-orders-down-on-smallest\/","title":{"rendered":"November comics orders down on smallest new issue release slate since before Rebirth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"<\/span>2018 is going to come down to a photo finish. We already knew that November comics orders would come in behind those of November 2017<\/a><\/b>, due to that month having an extra New Comics Day, bringing the year-to-date figure back into the red and making December the deciding factor. The question was how much December would need to make up.<\/p>\n

According to preliminary figures released today by Diamond Comic Distributors<\/a><\/strong>, the November loss came in on higher end of our estimated range for two major reasons: even with the shortened calendar, comics publishers did not commit nearly as many titles to the month \u2014 and increasingly, much of the holiday graphic novel business has moved to October. Click to visit our page for November 2018 comics sales estimates<\/a><\/strong>; the figures will be posted there on Monday.<\/p>\n

Fully 121 fewer new comics were released versus the same month in 2017, a drop of 22%; that’s the smallest new comics slate since April 2016<\/a><\/strong>, before the DC<\/b> Rebirth event began. Marvel’s<\/b> 79 new comic books was its lowest number of new releases since October 2015<\/a><\/b> \u2014 and DC’s 67 new comics were down from 95 the previous year. Through the end of November, publishers have released 5,155 comic books in 2018, versus 5,472 in 2017. The year is not going to catch up; it’s like 2017 had a few extra weeks of comics. 2018 has seen 6% fewer new periodical releases.<\/p>\n

\"<\/span>That figure exactly matches the comics unit sales drop for the year \u2014 <\/strong>and is, in fact, evidence that comics periodicals are doing better, per release, than they were in 2017. Comics dollar sales this year are up close to 1.5% on those 6% fewer releases \u2014 and we know 2017’s units were padded by many overships and 25\u00a2 issues, so the true unit performance is probably a couple of points better than that 6%. So the “sales per issue” performance is better.<\/p>\n


\nGraphic novel slates were 12% smaller this November than in the previous November, but the 840-title October-November slate this year was actually 5% larger than 2017’s total number of offerings. With Halloween being a New Comics Day, a big chunk of releases in advance of the holidays landed in October, instead. Dollar and unit sales changes for graphic novels are in a narrow range, so it doesn’t appear that deep-discounting played a larger-than-usual role in the month.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Despite the month’s drop overall and its smaller slate, Marvel actually had a better month than it did the year before; its overall dollar sales were up 3%. The publisher had the top comic book in dollar and unit sales in <\/span>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #1<\/a><\/strong>, priced at $7.99. The top dollar graphic novel was X-Men: Mutant Massacre<\/a><\/i><\/b>, priced at $100.\u00a0It was also a big month for Venom. In addition to the surprising strong performance of the character’s film in theaters, Marvel had the top graphic novel in <\/span>Venom by Donny Cates Vol. 1<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and a top-three new-comics finisher in <\/span>Web of Venom: Carnage Born<\/em> #1<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n

DC benefited from a new Green Lantern<\/i> #1<\/a><\/b>, placing second. Overall, it was a much softer month for DC comparatively, year-over-year, largely because of the aforemetioned smaller slate; DC also had timing issues in play, as November had no new releases from Doomsday Clock <\/strong><\/em>or the bimonthly Batman Damned<\/strong><\/em>. Both those get new issues in December.\u00a0\u00a0Image<\/strong> was off single-digits year-to-year after a big graphic novel month, and Dark Horse<\/strong> was up substantially.<\/p>\n

The charts are below, as are some scenarios for 2018’s final totals. We also have our explanatory video<\/a><\/b> online:<\/p>\n