{"id":5093,"date":"2012-05-04T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T16:07:47","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T21:07:47","slug":"comics-sales-strong-in-april-highest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/04\/comics-sales-strong-in-april-highest\/","title":{"rendered":"Comics sales strong in April, highest Image share since 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s an incredibly busy day in the comics world. The Avengers<\/i> movie is releasing; see our post on Avengers sales history<\/b><\/a>. It’s the day before Free Comic Book Day<\/b>; see our post on its history<\/b><\/a>. And it’s also May-the-Fourth-Be-With-You Star Wars Day<\/b><\/a> (and USA Today<\/b><\/i> just announced my new Star Wars comics series<\/a> <\/b>minutes ago). So it happens that the monthly preliminary release of comics sales figures comes on a day when many are paying attention to pop culture \u2014 and the news is just the kind you want to see on such a day. Click to see the preliminary comics sales charts for April 2012.<\/b><\/a>
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Diamond Comic Distributors<\/b><\/a> reports that comics shops in North America ordered nearly 14% more dollars worth of comics and graphic novels than last April; The Comics Chronicles<\/b><\/a> has a preliminary projection of $36 million for sales for the month. The performance in all categories is slightly better than the performance for the first quarter, and as this is our first really clean month-to-month comparison of the year, it indicates that what we were seeing in previous months wasn’t a fluke.<\/p>\n

With Marvel’s Avengers Vs. X-Men <\/i>#2<\/a> <\/b>leading the market and DC’s relaunch titles continuing, new comics orders continued to be up double digits \u2014 and the Image’s Walking Dead<\/a> <\/b><\/i>trades continued to dominate their category. Graphic novels are now up nearly 10% for the year; the laggard category, thus far, trade paperbacks may be poised to break into double-digits as the DC relaunch trades enter the mix.<\/p>\n

The aggregate change figures:<\/p>\n