November 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 Overall charts and those from Diamond.

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

November 2020 was the fifth full month in which retailers had to order DC comics from Lunar Distribution or UCS Comic Distributors or one of those firms' subdistributors, such as Universal Distribution in Canada. But change was coming again, as UCS had announced in October it would end its distribution relationship with DC by the end of the year, leaving only Lunar, but November still had a full slate of DC titles at UCS.

As they had all autumn long, Batman and Death Metal-related titles dominated retailer orders from the two distributors: Comichron projects a very close finish between Dark Nights: Death Metal #5 and Batman #102 for the lead in inital orders. At $4.99, Death Metal would have been the top dollar book by orders according to our retail order dataset, which depicted a very narrow lead for that issue among units as well.

Once variants are removed, DC only had 46 new comics releases, its smallest non-pandemic slate since May 1991, when it had 45 new comics on the racks. Perhaps as a consequence, the number of units ordered in our retail order dataset was smaller for DC than it had been in any month since July. Offsetting that was a larger than normal number of graphic novel releases for the holiday season, including the hardcover for Batman: Three Jokers.

With the end nearing for UCS as a distributor, its sales charts, always of limited use, provided almost no information about new comics orders. They mostly depicted comics that had already shipped, suggesting that UCS was filling one of the roles that its sister company Midtown Comics always had: serving as a reorder source for other comics shops. Lunar, meanwhile, released no data at all; it would be another month before it would get beyond a minimal consumer-facing website.

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; only initial orders for periodicals were examined. 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, comics like October's Batman: Three Jokers #3, which might have charted again on a Diamond-style report, do not reappear.

The chart below features every new comic book released by DC in November 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.

DC offered 15 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. Dollar rankings are based on the combined sales of the component variants.

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.

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 list includes all DC items released by its distributors in the month.
Differently priced variants appear fused together by default near where they'd have ranked if together.
The component variants are sorted to the bottom of the chart by default.
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.

November 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 new items on UCS's charts appearing in October and November, the top graphic novel that shipped for the first time in November appears to have been the Batman: Three Jokers hardcover.

A list of all the graphic novels DC released appears below. DC released 31 new graphic novels in November, an increase from October.

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