May 2021 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

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

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

Unsurprisingly, 2021's new comics orders were a tremendous improvement over those from the year before, when Diamond Comic Distributors only released two weeks' worth of abbreviated comics shipments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While new release counts were still not up to pre-pandemic levels, stores nonetheless placed initial orders with Diamond and Lunar Distribution for between 6 and 7 million comic books, worth between $30 and 31 million.

May 2021 saw publishers release 329 new comic books, versus 91 in the same month in the previous year. May 2019, meanwhile, saw 486 new comics release, though that month benefited from one more shipping week.

Our retail order dataset found Batman #108 (its Artgerm variant appears at right) as the top comic book by units and dollars in initial orders, with a close run for second place between Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters Alpha and Heroes Reborn #1.

Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point #1, underordered by retailers in April, would have surely charted again in May in a traditional Diamond chart; as designed, however, our tracking looked only at retailer initial orders.

Lunar did not release any sales reporting, and by June, Diamond was in the seventh month of its second pause in monthly report releases. 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 250th 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 May 2021. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The DC release dates are from Lunar.

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.

May 2021 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.