September 2020 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

September 2020 was the third full month in which DC retailers had to order comics from Lunar Distribution or UCS Comic Distributors or one of those firms' subdistributors, such as Universal Distribution in Canada. And again, the Joker — and the "Joker War" titles — dominated retailer orders from them.

Comichron projects that the $6.99 Black Label title Batman: Three Jokers #2 was the top-ordered comic book from DC's distributors in the month in units, with the anniversary issue Detective Comics #1027, priced at $9.99 with many variants, the top dollar comic book. The expense of the latter issue helped propel the average comic retailers ordered from DC's distributors above the $5 mark for the first time since we began tracking the publisher separately.

Batman continued to chart highly in advance of its 100th issue in October — and three new Death Metal releases made DC's top ten. Superman #25 also made the top ten, placing ninth.

The performance of Three Jokers #2 followed the success of its first issue, which continued to appear atop the Best Sellers section on the UCS website through September.

As in previous months, the charts in that section co-mingled both preordered items and those that had not shipped yet; that can be seen from the September 28 snapshot at right, which had no September issues at all in the Top 4. UCS did not include information about what specific timeframe was being measured in the rankings, and the titles listed updated dynamically through the month. Lunar, meanwhile, released no data at all.

Given the lack of official information, 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.

Note, further, that our process only looks at first-month orders for comics, so no reordered titles from the month before or reprints appear in the chart below. Thus, Batman: Three Jokers #1, which surely would have charted again on a Diamond-style report, does not reappear.

The chart below features every new comic book released by DC in September 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 #53, which has been chosen as the order index issue for DC's distributors this month, as well as for Diamond. Note that a Death Metal crossover made it a much better seller than the other Justice League issue of the month.

For example, for every 100 copies of Justice League #53 in the order set, there were 79 copies of Nightwing #74.

DC offered 12 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, or by sorting by "Units" to see where its variants would have placed. Dollar rankings are based on the fused title's sales and account for the two different prices.

Things to remember: A difference of a single point on the chart may not be meaningful, due to rounding; projections for issues at the lower extremes are 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 18, 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 #53s that were ordered.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

September 2020 DC Graphic Novel Sales

Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Ordered and Preordered by 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, but UCS Comic Distributors did break out graphic novels in its bestsellers page on its website.

As mentioned above, the UCS charts appear to include both items which had shipped and had not yet shipped.

Based on UCS's charts appearing in July, August, and September, the top two graphic novels that shipped for the first time in September appear to have been Batman: Curse of the White Knight hardcover and the Joker: Killer Smile hardcover.

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