Our analysis of sales to comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors during April has dollars up nearly 5% over March and more titles up than down, with Batman sales by Diamond topping 150,000 copies.  Comic dollars were up over 5% vs. March, graphic novels up about 1.4%, and comics and graphic novels cumulatively up about 4.6% over March.  This is in line with normal seasonal trends.  Twelve titles of the top 25 comic titles were up and nine down (with four not having comparables in March). 

 

Marvel  had 13 of the top 15 titles, with DC and Dreamwave taking the first two slots with Batman and Transformers Generation One Vol. 2, respectively.  Twenty of the top 25 titles were Marvels, with four DCs and one Dreamwave.  The top 25 comics sold by Diamond during April with our estimates of the quantities are:

 

153,129    Batman #614

111,355    Transformers Generation One Vol. 2 #1

103,531    Ultimate Spider-Man #39

  96,624    Amazing Spider-Man #52

  95,981    New X-Men #139

  94,925    New X-Men #140

  90,484    Ultimate X-Men #32

  90,086    Ultimate X-Men #31

  86,503    Uncanny X-Men #421

  85,890    Uncanny X-Men #422

  61,282    Wolverine #189

  60,517    Daredevil #46

  60,272    Daredevil #45

  60,164    JLA #80

  59,092    X-Treme X-Men #24

  58,312    Avengers #66

  57,837    Incredible Hulk #53

  57,684    Incredible Hulk #52

  55,280    Green Arrow #23

  53,565    Green Arrow #24

  52,569    Marvel Universe The End #4

  51,804    Captain America #12

  51,559    Marvel Universe the End #3

  51,405    Fantastic Four #68

  47,562    Mystique #1

 

We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores) rather than pre-orders (as we did for the past several years) because Diamond recently changed its reporting and began basing its indexes on actual sales (see 'ICv2 Kicks Off New Top 300 Reporting').  We use those indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title diamond uses in its calculations), and use that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond's sales on the remaining titles.  Because of that change, we will not be able to do year over year comparisons until February of 2004, but in general, it's an improvement to have actual numbers to work with rather than preorders, which have significant differences from sales. 

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual -- April 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual -- April 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during March, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--March 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during March, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual -- March 2003.'

 

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through April 2003, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 50 GNs Index.'