{"id":3973,"date":"2018-03-09T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T17:31:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T22:31:22","slug":"comics-dollar-sales-off-just-3-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/09\/comics-dollar-sales-off-just-3-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Comics dollar sales off just 3% in February, but graphic novels sag; Wild Hunt #1 leads pack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"See<\/span><\/div>\n

With no new\u00a0Doomsday Clock<\/a><\/i><\/b>\u00a0issue in the offing, February was a slow month in comics shops, according to Comichron<\/b>‘s analysis of data released this morning by Diamond Comic Distributors<\/a><\/b>. But whereas comics and graphic novels were equally responsible for 2017’s overall shortfall, last month graphic novels were the main culprit, with periodicals nearly, but not quite, holding their own.<\/p>\n

Retailers ordered $36.66 million in comics and graphic novels; comics were off 3% in dollars and graphic novels off 18.5% to land down 8% for the month.<\/p>\n

An important thing to remember when looking at the February 2018 data is to ignore the comics units sales, <\/b>because the year-to-year comparisons are impacted by\u00a0last February<\/a><\/b>‘s 25th anniversary Image event, which included a reported 750,000 copies of a 25\u00a2 issue of Walking Dead<\/a>. <\/b>(Walking Dead<\/i>\u00a0#163 will not be found in our charts for that month, because Diamond reports nothing with a cover price below $1.). Combine that with January 2017’s 10% overship on Marvel’s entire line, and the comics unit year-to-date comparisons are a total wreck.<\/p>\n

The 6.3 million copies shipped this February finds a nearer comparative in the last four-week month we experienced, December 2017 \u2014 and there, comics unit sales were slightly up over that month. (Granted, December was pretty bad, but how often does February outsell December? Not very.) Comics dollar sales are going to be much more representative of reality \u2014 and here they’re the bright spot, again only off 3% in February year-to-year. Had there been a Doomsday Clock<\/i> issue in February, the category might have been nearer to break-even still.<\/p>\n

The comparatives are here; remember that January had an extra New Comics Day:<\/p>\n