{"id":3764,"date":"2018-09-14T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T16:38:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T21:38:14","slug":"fantastic-four-1-leads-august-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/14\/fantastic-four-1-leads-august-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Four #1 leads August 2018 comics sales; market up 4%, Marvel up 22%"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2017 truly was the summer of our discontent. The June-July-August stretch saw the worst year-over-year declines of any three month stretch in two decades, and August itself<\/a><\/b> was down dramatically, despite a huge number of new comics releases. Marvel’s<\/strong> Secret Empire<\/strong><\/em> was ending, with multiple series wrapping up in advance of the publisher’s fall Legacy event; DC’s<\/strong> sales were down dramatically against the huge Rebirth launch sales of 2016.<\/p>\n

Given the improvement seen so far this year, it would have been remarkable if August 2018<\/b> comics and graphic novel orders didn’t beat those from the previous year \u2014 and indeed, they did, up 4% with dollar sales increases for both comics and graphic novels. Comics shops in the United States and Canada ordered $47.7 million in comics, graphic novels, and magazines in the month; the year-to-date total stands at $343.8 million, just 1% off last year. Click to visit our page for August 2018 comics sales estimates<\/a><\/strong>; the figures will be posted there on Monday.<\/p>\n

What is remarkable is that retailer dollar orders beat the previous August despite many fewer releases<\/b>. While both Augusts had five shipping weeks, exactly 60 fewer new comic books were offered to market last month versus in August 2017, and slightly fewer graphic novels. That’s a reduction in the new comic book slate of 11%; there were even fewer new comics released than in July, which had one less shipping week. That reduction in offerings, plus DC’s higher prices this year, explains why new comics unit sales were up 5% while comics unit sales were down 5%. Remember, most new current product slates would have gone into development late last year, when prospects were a lot worse; belt-tightening on the number of new releases now is likely at least in part an echo of what happened then.<\/p>\n

The comics that were<\/i> released, however, sold relatively better in the aggregate \u2014 led by Fantastic Four<\/em> #1<\/a><\/strong>, the top seller for the month. That comic book, along with significant discount offerings on many graphic novels, helped Marvel to a month that was up 22% in dollars over the previous August, a rate of increase that was five times better than the market as a whole and a pace matched among top-ten publishers only by Boom<\/strong>. Marvel represented $19.5 million of the $47.7 million worth of comic books and graphic novels retailers ordered in the month; that’s actually it’s best August performance in the Diamond Exclusive Era, though that neither accounts for inflation nor the number of shipping weeks in the month. (In some stronger recent years, August only had four ship weeks.)<\/p>\n

Our preliminary video for the month is below:<\/p>\n