February 1992 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Preordered by North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

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Cage #1 was the top debut of the month, although the more historically important release was a few places further down the list. Youngblood #1 made its debut, placing sixth overall — and kicking off what would become a new era of competition in the comics industry. The title by Rob Liefeld was offered under the Image Comics label, the line's first product — although Image's titles would be offered by Malibu for much of the publisher's first year.

Diamond Comic Distributors announced in its February 1992 edition of Diamond Dialogue that Youngblood #1 had an estimated total print run of 305,000 copes, establishing what it said was "an individual sales record for a non-licensed, non-DC/Marvel comic title" offered through Diamond. (Youngblood #1 sold 78,450 copies through rival Capital City Distribution; Diamond's sales would be a bit less than double that.) "Youngblood could play a significant role in how collectors support smaller publishers such as Malibu," Diamond's commentary said, while aiding their market shares. Malibu had a dollar share of 4.14% through Diamond in the month, placing it in fourth.

This was also a landmark month for Diamond, which offered order index numbers in its charts for the first time, following the practice created by Capital in the mid-1980s. Diamond keyed its sales to Amazing Spider-Man (where Capital used Uncanny X-Men). Diamond also expanded its top comics list to include the Top 250, more than doubling what it had offered in the past.

Quasar Special #2 was actually the Direct Market offering of a newsstand comic book that contained the contents of Quasar #33, also out this month. It was designed to allow newsstand readers to see the ending to "Operation Galactic Storm," since Quasar was a Direct-Market-only title.

Legends of NASCAR #2 was a reoffering, at a higher cost, of a hologram cover with an error: Bill Elliott's hologram was placed on Richard Petty's issue.

The raw version of the chart below was published in Diamond Dialogue (February 1992). We've added ship dates. The dates shown below are the dates the comics were scheduled to have shipped from the printer, according to Diamond Previews (December 1991, for February 1992-shipping product).

Diamond reported almost all dates as Tuesdays, which corresponded to when the printer Ronald's released its comics — but World Color Press wasn't releasing its books until 12:01 a.m. on Thursdays, and Diamond's catalog seems to have grouped everything together under the earlier day, regardless of which printer a comic came from. (Capital's Advance Comics uniformly announced dates that were two days later. Its dates appeared in Comics Buyer's Guide and Comic Shop News.) We've adjusted the dates on the comics known to have come from World Color Press to Thursday. Specific on-sale dates were rarely announced in advance for smaller publishers' titles as they could seldom guarantee printer times.

In some cases, comics were delayed; where available, the correct later dates have been included from Diamond's Dateline and Capital City Distribution's New Weekly Releases newsletters. Sometimes comics had multiple shipping-date updates; the very latest one issued is presumed to the actual ship date.

Further, in this era, distributor catalog dates for all publishers did not synch up exactly with the calendar month, so Diamond's January charts included a week's worth of DC comics from February — and are missing the first week's DC comics, which appeared in Diamond's December charts. This would continue until March 1995, when DC would realign its solicitations with the Direct Market's calendar month (that chart only included three weeks of DC sales). Because Diamond did not report indexed sales, there is no way to know where those comics would have landed in this month's chart.

As mentioned above, the charts included order index numbers, keyed to sales of Amazing Spider-Man #361; Capital sold 68,700 copies of that comic book, so one order index point may represent somewhere in the 1,200-1,500 copy range at Diamond. Remember that other distributors would have added more to the totals, and that how certain comics fared did vary from one distributor to the next based on the discounts they offered. Comichron will report more definitive data when it becomes available.

Click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 chart.
Items marked (resolicitation) were offered in an earlier month but never shipped; disregard any previously reported figure, as earlier orders were canceled when the books were resolicited.
Click to read the methodology for this table's estimates.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
Title links below lead to current listings for the issues on eBay. As an eBay Partner, this site may be compensated if you make a purchase.

February 1992 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Preordered by North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top Graphic Novel charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.

The links lead to title details on Amazon (paid links). You can also find the books at your comics shop.

Graphic novels were 7.9% of Diamond's business in February 1992; its comic book business was eight-and-a-half times as large. Even though Diamond began running indexed sales data this month, it would not index its graphic novel sales until six years later, in February 1998. Spider-Man: Fear Itself is a different graphic novel than the 2015 story by that name.