Comic store sales of the top comic titles were overwhelmingly down on a piece basis in December, with 21 of the 23 continuing series in the top 25 showing issue-over-issue sales declines.  Infinite Crisis held at #1, with the third issue at 188,853 copies, only a modest 9% drop vs. the second.   Marvel published the only two titles showing increases, but one of those, X-Men, was an artifact of its shipment earlier in the month than the previous issue; sales were actually down vs. the issue that shipped around the same time in November.  So only Marvel Knights Spider-Man, of all the titles in the top 25, actually had sales that were anything to celebrate. 

DC had a great showing at the top of the chart, with four of the top five titles.  Still, DC had only nine of the top 25 titles, and remained in the #2 market share slot with 32% of the dollars, compared to roughly 37% for Marvel.

It took us a while to find the previous issue of Secret War; it shipped in March, nine months before Book Five.

The top graphic novel, DC's Villains United, sold only a modest 8,100+ copies.

Dark Horse's Samurai Executioner was the top manga graphic novel, edging out Naruto Vol. 8 by around 9%.   This is substantially different from the situation in bookstores, where Naruto was the runaway #1.  A shipping glitch did cause comic stores to receive the Naruto volume considerably behind the bookstores, which undoubtedly hurt reorders.