The start of Jonathan Hickman’s reinvention Marvel X-Men franchise helped comic book sales in July post positive gains over the same month last year, and now Direct Market sales for 2019 are just a fraction over 2018’s total through July.
According to figures released by Diamond Comic Distributors Friday morning, Hickman’s House of X #1 and Powers of X #1 were the two best-selling comic book titles of July, followed by Amazing Spider-Man #25, three of five Marvel titles in the Top 10 in terms of units shipped.
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead #193, the surprise final issue of the long-running Image Comics series, ranked #4 in units.
DC had the remaining four titles in the units Top Ten, all Batman titles, including Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman: The Last Knight on Earth #2 at #5.
Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s The Joker from DC’s Black Label imprint was July’s best-selling graphic novel by units.
As is now (and again) per usual, Marvel was July’s top publisher with a 41.38% dollar share and a 45.49% unit share. DC was their usual second with a 26.79% dollar share and a 27.63% unit share. Image was third with an 8.43% dollar share and a 8.64% unit share.
July’s 6.91% increase over July 2018 sales, powered by a 12.83% gain in graphic novel sales helped 2019 YTD sales leapfrog 2018, although that increases are aided by July’s five shipping weeks compared to last year’s four. Through July overall dollars sales are up 0.63% over last year, although down 4.50% in units.
What does John Jackson Miller of Comichron make of the more or less static nature of Direct Market comic book sales the last 19 months?
“Value judgments are tough to avoid in describing economic activity: one person’s ‘stable’ is another person’s ‘stagnant.’ Much depends on expectations: if you think comics stores should be proliferating like sandwich shops, then ‘flat’ is a bad word. If you think over-fast growth often leads to chaos, ‘steady’ sounds just fine.
“The Comichron position is often seen as defaulting toward the positive, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. For the last 20 years, monthly periodical sales in comics shops have oscillated around a mean of about 7 million copies a month — all while the dollar volume of the comics market overall has nearly tripled thanks to graphic novels collecting those monthly comics. If you believe that a desirable level of comics sales is ‘whatever allows Direct Market stores to subsidize the serialization of enough stories to keep the bookshelves full,’ then sales volume has clearly hit that level most years, and ‘unchanged’ is, very much, ‘stable.’ (Inherent in that is the strong belief that serialization is not just a necessary part of the publishers’ toolkit, but a valuable one; monthly comics amortize as they advertise, and feed a secondary market which many retailers also realize revenue from.) “
Check out Comichron‘s full take on July 2019 sales here.
The July 2019 Market Share, Comparative Sales Data, New Titles Shipped and Top 10 Comic Books Units and Dollars and Top 10 Graphic Novels Units and Dollars charts can be seen below:
TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS
|
|
DOLLARS |
UNITS |
|
JULY 2019 VS. JUNE 2019 |
||
|
COMICS |
15.75% |
12.25% |
|
GRAPHIC NOVELS |
5.58% |
4.42% |
|
TOTAL COMICS/GN |
12.93% |
11.72% |
|
TOYS |
48.78% |
61.20% |
|
JULY 2019 VS. JULY 2018 |
||
|
COMICS |
4.99% |
-0.73% |
|
GRAPHIC NOVELS |
12.83% |
0.08% |
|
TOTAL COMICS/GN |
6.91% |
-0.68% |
|
TOYS |
72.30% |
84.85% |
|
YEAR TO DATE 2019 VS. YEAR TO DATE 2018 |
||
|
COMICS |
0.97% |
-4.36% |
|
GRAPHIC NOVELS |
-0.25% |
-6.20% |
|
TOTAL COMICS/GN |
0.63% |
-4.50% |
|
TOYS |
32.17% |
35.90% |
NEW TITLES SHIPPED
|
PUBLISHER |
COMICS |
GRAPHIC NOVELS |
MAGAZINES |
TOTAL |
|
MARVEL COMICS |
105 |
45 |
0 |
150 |
|
DC |
86 |
24 |
0 |
110 |
|
IDW PUBLISHING |
45 |
20 |
0 |
65 |
|
IMAGE COMICS |
50 |
10 |
0 |
60 |
|
DARK HORSE COMICS |
18 |
20 |
0 |
38 |
|
BOOM! STUDIOS |
15 |
16 |
0 |
31 |
|
VIZ MEDIA LLC |
0 |
23 |
0 |
23 |
|
DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT |
16 |
5 |
0 |
21 |
|
ARCHIE COMICS |
13 |
3 |
0 |
16 |
|
ONI PRESS |
4 |
5 |
0 |
9 |
|
OTHER NON-TOP 10 |
143 |
150 |
23 |
316 |
|
TOTAL |
495 |
321 |
23 |
839 |
TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED
|
RANK |
DESCRIPTION |
PRICE |
VENDOR |
|
1 |
HOUSE OF X #1 |
$5.99 |
MAR |
|
2 |
POWERS OF X #1 |
$5.99 |
MAR |
|
3 |
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 |
$7.99 |
MAR |
|
4 |
THE WALKING DEAD #193 (MR) [*] |
$3.99 |
IMA |
|
5 |
BATMAN: LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #2 |
$5.99 |
DC |
|
6 |
BATMAN: CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #1 |
$4.99 |
DC |
|
7 |
THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #7 |
$4.99 |
DC |
|
8 |
BLACK CAT #2 |
$3.99 |
MAR |
|
9 |
IMMORTAL HULK #20 |
$3.99 |
MAR |
|
10 |
BATMAN #74 |
$3.99 |
DC |
TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED
|
RANK |
DESCRIPTION |
PRICE |
VENDOR |
|
1 |
HOUSE OF X #1 |
$5.99 |
MAR |
|
2 |
POWERS OF X #1 |
$5.99 |
MAR |
|
3 |
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 |
$7.99 |
MAR |
|
4 |
BATMAN: LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #2 |
$5.99 |
DC |
|
5 |
THE WALKING DEAD #193 (MR) [*] |
$3.99 |
IMA |
|
6 |
BATMAN: CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #1 |
$4.99 |
DC |
|
7 |
THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #7 |
$4.99 |
DC |
|
8 |
BLACK CAT #2 |
$3.99 |
MAR |
|
9 |
IMMORTAL HULK #20 |
$3.99 |
MAR |
|
10 |
VAMPIRELLA #1 [*] |
$3.99 |
DE |
TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY UNITS SHIPPED
|
RANK |
DESCRIPTION |
PRICE |
VENDOR |
|
1 |
THE JOKER TP |
$14.99 |
DC |
|
2 |
BAD WEEKEND HC (MR) |
$16.99 |
IMA |
|
3 |
DEADLY CLASS VOL. 8: NEVER GO BACK TP (MR) |
$16.99 |
IMA |
|
4 |
THEY CALLED US ENEMY TP |
$19.99 |
IDW |
|
5 |
ADVENTURE ZONE VOL. 2: MURDER ON ROCKPORT LIMITED GN |
$19.99 |
FIR |
|
6 |
DEAR JUSTICE LEAGUE TP |
$9.99 |
DC |
|
7 |
CONAN THE BARBARIAN VOL. 1: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CONAN BOOK ONE TP |
$19.99 |
MAR |
|
8 |
MILES MORALES VOL. 1: STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN TP |
$17.99 |
MAR |
|
9 |
DIE DIE DIE VOL. 1 TP (MR) |
$19.99 |
IMA |
|
10 |
DAREDEVIL BY CHIP ZDARSKY VOL. 1: KNOW FEAR TP |
$15.99 |
MAR |
TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED
|
RANK |
DESCRIPTION |
PRICE |
VENDOR |
|
1 |
CONAN THE BARBARIAN: ORIGINAL MARVEL YEARS OMNIBUS VOL. 2 HC |
$125.00 |
MAR |
|
2 |
THE JOKER TP |
$14.99 |
DC |
|
3 |
MONSTRESS VOLUME 1 HC (MR) |
$49.99 |
IMA |
|
4 |
BAD WEEKEND HC (MR) |
$16.99 |
IMA |
|
5 |
DC UNIVERSE: BRONZE AGE OMNIBUS BY JACK KIRBY HC |
$150.00 |
DC |
|
6 |
ADVENTURE ZONE VOL. 2: MURDER ON ROCKPORT LIMITED GN |
$19.99 |
FIR |
|
7 |
THEY CALLED US ENEMY TP |
$19.99 |
IDW |
|
8 |
SUPERMAN: THE GOLDEN AGE OMNIBUS VOL. 6 HC |
$125.00 |
DC |
|
9 |
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 11 HC |
$75.00 |
MAR |
|
10 |
THANOS BY DONNY CATES HC |
$34.99 |
MAR |
TOP 10 BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED
|
RANK |
DESCRIPTION |
PRICE |
VENDOR |
|
1 |
OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE VOL. 49 SC |
$29.95 |
GEM |
|
2 |
GEARS OF WAR RETROSPECTIVE HC |
$49.99 |
UDO |
|
3 |
OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE VOL. 49 HC |
$35.00 |
GEM |
|
4 |
THE ART OF TEKKEN: A COMPLETE VISUAL HISTORY HC |
$39.99 |
DE |
|
5 |
I AM SHE-RA LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK |
$4.99 |
RAN |
|
6 |
I AM HE-MAN LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK |
$4.99 |
RAN |
|
7 |
DARK SOULS DESIGN WORKS VOL. 1 HC |
$39.99 |
UDO |
|
8 |
ART OF DARKSIDERS III |
$49.99 |
UDO |
|
9 |
BIG BIG OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE VOL. 49 |
$49.50 |
GEM |
|
10 |
AVENGERS: BATTLE ON THE MOON LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK |