July 2020 Comics Sales through Diamond

Projections for Comics Ordered by North American Comics Shops
from Diamond Comic Distributors

This data refers to sales by Diamond. Click to see those from DC's distributors, and for the Overall market.

Covers and issue links on this page lead to current eBay listings. This site may be compensated if you make a purchase.

July 2020 was the first time since April 1997 that a retailer could not order all major publishers' comics from Diamond Comic Distributors. As of its July 7 ship-date releases, DC required 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.

But Diamond's retailers got a helpful boost right away in the month, thanks to Robert Kirkman and Image, who delivered a July Surprise for the third year in a row. The July 2018 surprise was the stealth-released Die Die Die #1; in July 2019, retailers got another shock when Walking Dead #193 turned out to be the final issue of that series. Kirkman did it again on July 1, releasing the $4.99 special Negan Lives #1 for free to a retail base beleagured by the Coronavirus pandemic and its shutdowns.

Free shipments were matched to retailers' sales to date of that Walking Dead finale, with two Silver Variants and one Gold Variant additionally sent to each storefront. An option to reorder was also made available. That resulted in the issue edging past Marvel's X-Men #10 for first place at Diamond in our projections below, although its projected dollar ranking was far lower, based as it was only on the reordered copies. (Another Kirkman production, Fire Power Vol. 1: Prelude released on July 1 in support of the comics series that also launched that day; at $9.99 it's sure to have led the graphic novel charts.)

Marvel's Empyre #1 appears to have been the top new comics release in dollars.

The number of new comics releases extended past 300 for the first time since the shutdowns began, but the slate remained lighter than the winter averages for Marvel, which had only 44 comics out to Image's 47. In addition to the changing volume of new offerings, many comics were made returnable or deeply discounted by their publishers during the month — all of which would have greatly complicated the chart-generation procedures Diamond has employed for decades. Traditional charting under such conditions would have been both more dificult logistically, and less likely to yield clear-cut results. As such, the distributor has yet to release monthly sales charts for July.

In their absence, 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 Diamond into the Direct Market in July 2020. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The release dates are from Diamond; note that many titles had already been released earlier by DC's distributors. (See the DC distributors' July 2020 orders in isolation here.)

The order volumes are expressed in relation to Avengers #34, which we've chosen as the order index issue this month for Diamond. (Avengers usually corresponds fairly well to the title we've chosen for DC's distributors, Justice League.) For every 100 copies of Avengers #34 ordered in the subset, for example, there were 137 copies of Immortal Hulk #35.

Diamond offered three comic books with variants at a different price that sold well enough to merit their own entries; their sales have been fused by default below. You can find the component versions at the bottom of the chart, or by sorting by "Units" to see where its variants would have placed.

The dollar rankings are based on the totals of the fused entries.

Market shares: The market share charts, seen in the column at left, are of a variety that has long appeared on Comichron: they refer only to the Top 300 comics, with no graphic novels included. Further, they resemble the charts that appeared before 2003 in that the charts look only at initial and same-month orders for new releases; reorders and reprints of previous months' comics are not included.

Marvel sold roughly half the new comics that Diamond offered in July 2020, and those sold for about half of the new comics revenue. Marvel's slate of new comics offerings was still considerably smaller than had been usual for the publisher during a summer month. But variants (defined by Comichron as any first or later printing with a cover different from the first one in any solicitation) — were almost back to March levels, with 685 different ones on offer.

To underscore, graphic novels are not included in these projected shares. Actual market shares would differ considerably, most especially in the case of Dark Horse, which had only one comic book release out in July.

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; while we rank such titles, we usually mark them with "no estimate" for that reason. 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

This list includes all comic books released by Direct Market Distributors in the month.
The Order Index by each comic book indicates how many copies were ordered within a known subset of retailer orders for every 100 Avengers #34s that were ordered.
"No est." appears beside titles where we're making no Order Index estimate, but titles are still ranked.
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.

July 2020 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Diamond did not release monthly totals of its graphic novel sales, but it is known that the number of graphic novels released to the Direct Market, already huge in June, grew even more in July.

At least 516 new graphic novels were released, which was far over number of new comic books released. Book distributors had not paused during the initial Coronavirus outbreak, leading to a bottleneck of graphic novels shipping to the Direct Market during the spring.

Another Robert Kirkman production, Fire Power Vol. 1: Prelude released on July 1 in support of the comics series that also launched that day; at $9.99, it's very likely to have led the charts.

Some more information about Diamond's graphic novel sales can be found in its reorders for the month.