For the fifth straight month Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen topped BookScan’s list of the Top 20 graphic novels sold in bookstores, but for the first time the traditional paperback edition was joined in the Top 10 by a new hardcover version that finished in the sixth position.  Manga still mustered a majority in the Top 20 with twelve titles, but traditional graphic novels increased their presence from five in October to eight in November. 

Joining the two Watchmen editions in the Top 10 were Brian Azzarello’s The Joker, the closest graphic novel equivalent to Christopher Nolan’s wildly popular film The Dark Knight, which rocketed to number 4, and Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Vol.3, which finished at number 10.  Del Rey’s graphic novel based on Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files slipped from #3 in October to #12 in November, while Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke ended up at #20.  The other non-manga titles on the list were two deluxe coffee-table volumes about comics, Running Press’s The DC Vault, and DK Publishing’s Marvel Chronicle.

UPDATE:  This chart was updated to show Dark Tower: The  Long Road Home HC as if all four covers were counted as a single title (putting it at #8).  The Killing Joke Spec. Ed. HC was the #20 title before that update.

These rankings, provided by Nielsen BookScan, track the bestselling U.S. graphic novels in major book chains, mass merchants, online retailers, and some independent bookstores using POS data from November.

The top manga title in November was Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket Vol. 21 from Tokyopop, which was in stores longer than Naruto Vol. 32, its closest competitor.  Naruto was the only manga title with two volumes in the Top 10 (#3 and #7).  Another Viz Media release Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Vol.2 did extremely well in November demonstrating that Yu-Gi-Oh! remains a potent mass market franchise.  Two manga horror sagas, Dark Horse’s Hellsing Vol. 9, and Tokyopop’s Chibi Vampire also made the top ten.

Once again Viz Media was the top publisher with eight titles in the Top 20 (down from 12 in October), while DC Comics was second with four, followed by Dark Horse, Del Rey, and Tokyopop with two each and Running Press and DK Publishing with one.

For our index to our reports on the BookScan Top 20 Graphic Novels for April 2008 through the present, see "BookScan Top 20 Index."