Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America #1 was the top comic in August, with estimated sales in comic stores over 212,000.  It's been a good month for Meltzer; his new novel, The Book of Fate, is #1 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List.  This is certainly the first time the same writer has been at the top of the fiction and comic bestseller lists at the same time. 

 

There was room at the top of the chart because Marvel's Civil War, which has been selling like gangbusters over the last few months, is late and did not ship an issue in August. 

 

Regardless, event comics made up the bulk of the sales in the top 25 comics, with Marvel's Civil War event accounting for six of the top 25 titles, and DC's 52 accounting for another five. 

 

DC had six of the top ten comics in August, an unusually strong performance at the top of the chart for the company. 

 

Sales on 13 of the top 25 titles went down, and up on 11 of the top 25.

 

Hardcovers were the story at the top of the graphic novel list, with the top four titles all in hardcover.  Absolute Kingdom Come and Absolute Dark Knight were the top dollar books, with Marvel's Marvel Zombies and Top Shelf's Lost Girls roughly tied for #3.  Marvel Zombies was also the graphic novel with the top piece sales in comic stores in August. 

 

Marvel's Halo accomplished the amazing feat of being a top ten graphic novel title in comic stores two months running. 

 

The top 25 comics in August, with our estimates of the number sold to North American comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors, are:

 

212,581          Justice League of America #1                  

154,262          New Avengers #23                          

120,448          Wolverine Origins #5          

120,371          Astonishing X-Men #16     

119,507          52 Week #13                      

119,411          52 Week #15                      

118,259          52 Week #14          

117,472          52 Week #16                      

116,637          52 Week #17          

111,435          Civil War Front Line #5

109,746          All Star Superman #5                     

108,680          Wolverine #45         

106,866          Justice #7     

  99,073          Civil War X-Men #2

  95,982          Batman #656           

  90,665          Superman/Batman #29                  

  89,676          Fantastic Four #539

  89,225          Uncanny X-Men #477        

  84,618          Wonder Woman #2

  84,407          Ultimates Annual #2

  82,084          X-Men #190 

  80,730          Ultimate Fantastic Four #32

  78,600          Civil War Young Avengers & Runaways #2

  77,304          Ultimate Spider-Man #98

  76,075          Ultimate Spider-Man #99

 
We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores), using Diamond's published sales indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations), and using that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond's sales on the remaining titles.  We can check the accuracy of our numbers by comparing the Batman number that we calculate using multiple data points; our numbers for Batman are within 1/10 of 1% of each other, ensuring a high degree of accuracy.
 
For an analysis of the dollar trends in August, see 'Graphic Novels Pace Growth.'
 
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during August, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--August 2006.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during August, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--August 2006.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during July, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--July 2006.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during July, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--July 2006.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through August 2006, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'