July 2020 DC Comic Book Sales
Projections for DC Comics Ordered by North American Comics Shops
This data refers only to sales by DC's distributors. Click to see the Diamond and Overall charts.
Covers and issue links on this page lead to current eBay listings. This site may be compensated if you make a purchase.
On June 5, DC announced that it was cutting ties with Diamond Comic Distributors altogether, forcing retailers who wanted its comics to go through Lunar Distribution or UCS Comic Distributors (or one of those firms' subdistributors, such as Universal Distribution in Canada), and to go through Random House for its graphic novels. June 30 was further declared a skip week to give more retailers time to set up accounts.
So as of the July 7 ship date comics, every DC comic book was shipped through UCS or Lunar; it was the first time since the April 1997 that a retailer could not order all major publishers' comics from Diamond. The Joker War story arc was big for DC in July; Comichron projects that Batman #95 was its top seller to retailers in dollars and units, once all versions were merged.
During July, UCS had a Best Sellers section on its website, including sections for comic books, graphic novels, magazines, books, and promotional items. They were simple top ten lists, without any indexed sales figures, and appeared to co-mingle both preordered items and those that had shipped. (For example, the July 7 snapshot, seen at right, included items that had not shipped yet.)
UCS did not include information about what specific timeframe was being measured in the rankings, and the titles listed updated dynamically through the month. As such, while Comichron archived several instances of the reports, the UCS data on comic books was too limited in detail to be of much use to retailers.
With UCS releasing little official information about its DC sales and Lunar releasing none at all, Comichron has drawn upon a subset of known retail orders both to determine approximate rankings and to project the relative order volumes of comic-book releases. The subset represents a sizable number of copies, but it is not possible at present to know what portion of the overall population of store orders it represents, particularly as many stores were closed, had their accounts on hold, or had not established accounts with DC's distributors. Only periodicals were examined, and order totals are believed to be as of Final Order Cutoff. No statistical adjustments have been made for returnability and no later returns have been subtracted out.
The chart below features every new comic book released by DC in July 2020. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The release dates are from UCS. We make no attempt here to distinguish between the distributors DC sold through; the intent is to describe DC's business in the Direct Market.
The order volumes are expressed in relation to Justice League #48, which has been chosen as the order index issue for DC's distributors this month, as well as for Diamond. (There are Justice League issues without cardstock variants in the May and June lists for both Diamond and DC's distributors, so it's a good choice if you're trying to refer between charts.) For example, for every 100 copies of Justice League #48 in the order set, there were 119 copies of Batgirl #47.
DC offered 10 comic books with cardstock variants at a different price; their sales have been fused by default below. You can find the component versions at the bottom of the chart.
Things to remember: The retail order subset represents a sizable number of copies, but it is not possible at present to know what portion of the overall population of store orders it represents, particularly as many stores were closed, had their accounts on hold, or had not established accounts with DC's distributors. For example, Justice League had been seeing Diamond orders of more than 40,000 copies per issue in North America the first quarter of 2020, but we do not advise using that number to extrapolate overall sales for other titles — not until we have a better idea how the market size has changed.
We're sticking with whole numbers until we have a better handle on the margin of error. As such, note that a difference of a single point on the chart may not be meaningful, due to rounding. Projections for issues at the lower extremes are thus subject to more error due to the small quantities involved. Projected relative sales levels here are likely most reliable for regular series issues in the middle of the chart: orders for the highest sellers and first issues may tend to show more variation.
Rankings in these charts should also be expected to differ — often significantly — from the sales-to-consumers charts available at other outlets. Those report sell-through and not sell-in, and different retailers are sampled in each, with no known overlap in reporting stores as of the generation of the below charts.
As is the case with all data on Comichron,
it is subject to revision without notice in the event more authoritative and complete information about orders becomes available.
—John Jackson Miller
Updated March 17, 2021
This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 500 charts, plus any post-#500 items from its Top Independent Publisher charts.
If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.
The Order Index Number by each comic book indicates how many copies were ordered within the sample for every 100 Justice League #48s that were ordered.
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.
Unit | Dollar | Comic-book Title | Issue | Price | On sale | Publisher | Order Index |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | Batman | 95 (All) | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 408 |
2 | 3 | Batman | 94 (All) | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 378 |
3 | 1 | Dark Nights Death Metal | 2 | $4.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 369 |
4 | 6 | DCeased Dead Planet | 1 (All) | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 309 |
5 | 7 | Detective Comics | 1023 (All) | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 198 |
6 | 4 | Detective Comics | 1024 (All) | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 154 |
7 | 8 | Nightwing | 72 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 135 |
8 | 5 | Strange Adventures | 3 | $4.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 131 |
9 | 9 | Batgirl | 47 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 119 |
10 | 10 | Batman The Adventures Continue | 2 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 106 |
11 | 13 | Justice League | 48 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 100 |
12 | 14 | Justice League | 49 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 99 |
13 | 15 | Action Comics | 1023 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 98 |
14 | 16 | Superman | 23 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 97 |
15 | 11 | Batman Superman | 10 (All) | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 97 |
16 | 19 | Flash | 757 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 94 |
17 | 20 | Flash | 758 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 94 |
18 | 17 | Green Lantern Season 2 | 5 (All) | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 91 |
19 | 18 | Batman's Grave | 8 (All) | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 90 |
20 | 22 | Catwoman | 23 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 88 |
21 | 21 | Wonder Woman | 759 (All) | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 85 |
22 | 24 | Justice League Dark | 24 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 84 |
23 | 23 | Wonder Woman | 758 (All) | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 78 |
24 | 25 | Legion of Super-Heroes | 7 (All) | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 75 |
25 | 28 | Harley Quinn | 74 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 70 |
26 | 26 | Shazam | 13 (All) | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 69 |
27 | 29 | Young Justice | 16 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 68 |
28 | 12 | Joker Harley Criminal Sanity Secret Files | 1 | $5.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 68 |
29 | 30 | Plunge | 5 | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 64 |
30 | 31 | Suicide Squad | 7 | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 64 |
31 | 32 | Lois Lane | 12 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 57 |
32 | 33 | John Constantine Hellblazer | 8 | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 55 |
33 | 34 | Batman Beyond | 45 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 51 |
34 | 35 | Daphne Byrne | 6 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 50 |
35 | 36 | Aquaman | 61 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 50 |
36 | 38 | Justice League Odyssey | 22 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 46 |
37 | 39 | Teen Titans | 43 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 46 |
38 | 40 | Hawkman | 25 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 43 |
39 | 41 | Red Hood Outlaw | 47 | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 41 |
40 | 42 | Batman And The Outsiders | 14 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 39 |
41 | 37 | Last God | 7 | $4.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 37 |
42 | 43 | Supermans Pal Jimmy Olsen | 12 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 34 |
43 | 44 | Metal Men | 8 | $3.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 33 |
44 | 27 | DC Cybernetic Summer | 1 | $9.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 29 |
45 | 48 | DC Classics The Batman Adventures | 2 | $1.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 25 |
46 | 45 | Amethyst | 4 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 25 |
47 | 46 | Books of Magic | 21 | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 23 |
48 | 47 | Doom Patrol Weight of the Worlds | 7 | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 21 |
49 | 49 | Looney Tunes | 255 | $2.99 | 07/14/20 | DC | 6 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman | 94 Regular | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 236 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman | 94 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 142 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman | 95 Regular | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 256 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman | 95 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 152 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman Superman | 10 Regular | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 74 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman Superman | 10 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 23 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman's Grave | 8 Regular | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 67 |
n.a. | n.a. | Batman's Grave | 8 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 23 |
n.a. | n.a. | DCeased Dead Planet | 1 Regular | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 126 |
n.a. | n.a. | DCeased Dead Planet | 1 Card Stock | $5.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 183 |
n.a. | n.a. | Detective Comics | 1023 Regular | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 150 |
n.a. | n.a. | Detective Comics | 1023 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 48 |
n.a. | n.a. | Detective Comics | 1024 Regular | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 105 |
n.a. | n.a. | Detective Comics | 1024 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 49 |
n.a. | n.a. | Green Lantern Season 2 | 5 Regular | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 71 |
n.a. | n.a. | Green Lantern Season 2 | 5 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 20 |
n.a. | n.a. | Legion of Super-Heroes | 7 Regular | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 55 |
n.a. | n.a. | Legion of Super-Heroes | 7 Card Stock | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 20 |
n.a. | n.a. | Shazam | 13 Regular | $3.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 53 |
n.a. | n.a. | Shazam | 13 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/21/20 | DC | 16 |
n.a. | n.a. | Wonder Woman | 758 Regular | $3.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 46 |
n.a. | n.a. | Wonder Woman | 758 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/07/20 | DC | 32 |
n.a. | n.a. | Wonder Woman | 759 Regular | $3.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 52 |
n.a. | n.a. | Wonder Woman | 759 Card Stock | $4.99 | 07/28/20 | DC | 33 |
July 2020 DC Graphic Novel Releases
Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Released to North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from UCS Comic Distributors
Comichron did not sample retailer sales data for DC's Direct Market graphic novel sales; a list of all the graphic novels it released appears below. Advance reorders taken at Diamond indicated strong presales of Green Lantern Vol. 2: The Day the Stars Fell; the Flash Forward collection would've been another highlight for the month.