Captain America #25, the major event book of March with its 'death of Cap' storyline, more than doubled the sales of Mighty Avengers #1, the #2 book, with over 290,000 shipped to comic stores.

Sales on Cap were also sky high relative to sales on the previous issue; sales on Captain America #25 (featuring 2 covers -- 50/50 ratio) in March were over three and a half times the sales on #24 in November.

Captain America missed having the #1 first month sales of any Civil War title by a whisker; the only Civil War title that sold more in the first month was Civil War #3, which sold 195 more copies than Captain America #25 in its first month on sale.

Marvel's Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #2 held up well, with only a 21% drop between first month sales of the first issue and the second.  The title is looking like it will have a long tail, as Diamond sold over 8,900 reorder copies of #1 to comic stores in March, the month after its release.

Dark Horse had a rare top ten comic title with its Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1, at around 110,000 copies.  Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness #1, the Marvel Comics and Dynamite Entertainment crossover miniseries, was the next tile with (at least some) IP from a non-Big Two company, at #21, with around 77,000 sold.

The top graphic novel sale in comic stores in April was a backlist title--the movie-driven 300 hardcover from Dark Horse sold about 8,700 copies to comic stores.  Naruto Vol. #13 came in second with a little over 6,200 copies.

Here are ICv2's estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 comic titles in March:

290,514          Captain America #25
141,288          Mighty Avengers #1
137,730          Amazing Spider-Man #539
137,658          Civil War: Initiative
136,338          Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #2
130,099          Justice League #6
119,514          New Avengers #28
112,422          Civil War Confession
109,919          Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1
  95,276          Wolverine #52
  94,246          52 Week #44
  94,085          52 Week #45
  93,513          52 Week #46
  92,676          52 Week #47
  84,449          Justice Society of America #4
  82,043          Uncanny X-Men #484
  80,497          Batman #664
  78,823          Fantastic Four #543
  77,905          Superman / Batman #32
  77,390          Moon Knight #8
  76,875          Marvel Zombies / Army of Darkness #1
  75,184          X-Men #197
  74,750          Wolverine Origins #12
  73,880          Fantastic Four #544
  73,832          Ultimate Spider-Man #106

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 March, see 'Comics Up 14% in Q1.'

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 2007.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during March, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--March 2007.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during February, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--February 2007.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during February, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--February 2007.'

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through March 2007, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'