November 2020 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

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

This data combines orders from all Direct Market distributors. Click to see only Diamond and DC's distributors.

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

Yet another gyration in data reporting, as Diamond Comic Distributors, which had resumed data reporting in late summer following the pandemic, once again paused its chart releases — a pause that would continue well into 2021. Meanwhile, DC was in its next-to-last month shipping through UCS Comic Distributors, soon to leave only Lunar Distribution.

Initial orders for comic books from all publishers (including DC) appear to have been around 7 million copies, for a value of between $29 million and $30 million. That is more than a million comics units higher than initial orders for comic books in November 2019, with 474 new comics versus 339 in November 2020. The number of new graphic novels released increased from 380 in November 2020 to 410.

Our retail order dataset found Dark Nights Death Metal #5, as the top comic book in initial orders in both unit and dollar terms, with Marvel's Thor #9 in second place in units and Punchline Special #1 the second-place comic book in dollars.

Lunar and UCS did not release any sales reporting, and in a new move, Diamond paused the data releases that it had only begun a few months before. As we did during the first pause in 2020, Comichron has drawn upon a retailer initial order sample to determine approximate unit and dollar sales rankings. The dataset represented a sizable number of copies, from which Comichron was able to determine relative sales volumes — but only the rankings are being shared at this time, and no attempt has been made to rank items beyond 200th place.

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.

The charts feature every new comic book released by Diamond and Lunar in November 2020. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The DC release dates are from UCS.

Things to remember: As we're not characterizing order levels at this time, ranked comics could be separated by thousands of copies or as little as a single issue. Rankings are 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. Comichron tracks copies in circulation, a category which includes both copies on retail shelves and in consumers' hands.

You can see the reorders that were placed during the month on our pages for reorders and advance reorders for the year. We also have a page breaking out ship dates for second printings.

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 the two lists below include all comic books released by Direct Market Distributors in the month.
Rankings are based on Comichron's retailer inital order sample and do not include reorders.
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.

The list below includes all the other comics released by Diamond and Lunar for which Comichron is not projecting rankings at this time. They appear in alphabetical order by publisher and then by title; use the arrows to sort by any column.

The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

November 2020 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Comichron did not examine graphic novel orders, but you can see what graphic novels were receiving retail attention at Diamond in the month by looking at its reorders.