December 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.

December 2020 was the sixth 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 — and it was the final month in which retailers could order from UCS. It had announced in October it would end its distribution relationship with DC by the end of the year, leaving only Lunar.

A year of crisis for the world and change for DC ended with Batman leading the way for the publisher. Comichron projects a close finish between Dark Nights: Death Metal #6 and Batman #103 for the lead in inital orders according to our retail order dataset, with the nod going to the latter. At $4.99, Death Metal #6 would have been the top dollar book by orders. Batman/Catwoman #1 was likely the top launch; we have it in third. Several Endless Winter and holiday special issues appeared; they landed in the middle of the chart.

Once variants are removed, DC had 51 new comics releases, up from November, when it had 46 new comics on the racks. Perhaps as a consequence, the number of units ordered in our retail order dataset rebounded. There were again a larger than normal number of graphic novel releases for the holiday season, including the hardcover for Wonder Woman: Dead Earth. The Wonder Woman 1984 movie, unable to open earlier in the year, released instead streaming on HBOMax on Christmas Day.

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, but it did get a consumer-facing website in the middle of December. It said nothing about sales, but it did at least say what was coming out.

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 December 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.

December 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 December appears to have been the Wonder Woman: Dead Earth hardcover. UCS reported that November's Batman: Three Jokers hardcover outsold it overall.

A list of all the graphic novels DC released appears below. DC released 31 new graphic novels in December, the same as in November.

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