Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man #583 road President Obama’s coattails to a record-setting total of 352,953, making it the bestselling full-price periodical comic book since ICv2 began tracking sales through Diamond Comic Distributors in 2001. Previous high numbers belong to Marvel’s Civil War #3 and Captain America #25, which each sold 290K, but unlike those titles ASM #583’s performance was the result of not just multiple variant covers, but multiple printings--in fact it appears likely that the majority of ASM’s sales came from subsequent printings not its initial run. And, for anyone who thinks that the Obama cover was not the primary sales driver, please note that prior to the Obama story and cover image, the title had been selling south of the 70,000 mark. The sales for this title may not be all over--the fourth printing of ASM #583 shipped in February along with the fifth printing (see “ASM Gets 5th Printing”).
DC’s Final Crisis was one of only four titles that picked up circulation in January, and absent ASM #583, it would have finished a close second to Marvel’s Dark Avengers #1, the key book in Marvel’s Dark Reign event in which Norman Osborne takes over the Avengers (aka his Thunderbolts playing Avengers). After the Dark Reign-aided New Avengers #49, sales of subsequent titles dropped off quickly and remained weak down the list (see “Comic Sales Drop in January” for an analysis how the #10, #20, #50, #100, and #300 titles dropped versus similarly positioned comics in January of 2008). How long will it be before someone notices that the top five titles all have a $3.99 cover price, and start blaming the higher cost of the top tier of titles for the drop-off of the downlist books?
Overall 19 titles in the top 25 declined with only four posting gains. Obviously Amazing Spider-Man #583 posted the biggest gain, while Batman #685 declined the most after the end of the popular Batman R.I.P. storyline. Once again Marvel had 14 titles in the top 25, while DC had 10 and Dark Horse had one.
Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead Vol. 9 from Image was by far the bestselling graphic novel of the month. The Walking Dead series has been a terrific backlist seller for Diamond and this well-written zombie saga has begun to take off in the bookstore market as well. With the end of Y: The Last Man, Walking Dead, which topped Watchmen in January, is now clearly the top non-superhero graphic novel property in the direct market. Watchmen remains strong and sales should pick up as excitement (driven by an excellent TV marketing campaign) builds for the March 6th premiere of the movie adaptation directed by Zack Snyder.
Marvel’s Secret Invasion trade, which finished third, was actually the top-dollar graphic novel release thanks to its $29.99 cover price. Marvel deserves credit for getting this volume out quickly, and it should be noted that there were four other Secret Invasion volumes in the Top 25. The barrage of Secret Invasion titles helped Marvel place 11 titles among the Top 25 graphic novels. DC Comics was second with 9 books followed by Dark Horse with three, and Image Comics and Cartoon Books with one each. Dark Horse’s Berserk Vol.27, which finished at #11, was the highest rated manga title. Mention should be made of Brian Azzarello’s The Joker, which finished at #9 and has remained in the top 25 for 4 straight months, and of the first volume of Jeff Smith’s Rasl, which finished at #12, an exceptional performance for a self-published book.
Here are ICv2's estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 comic titles in January:
352,953 Amazing Spider-Man #583
118,579 Dark Avengers #1
110,892 Final Crisis #6 (of 7)
103,292 Final Crisis #7 (of 7)
90,040 New Avengers #49
73,184 Captain America #46
72,654 Batman #685
72,610 Astonishing X-Men #28
72,116 Justice League of
69,980 Buffy the Vampire Slayer #21
65,556 Green Lantern #37
63,754 Amazing Spider-Man #584
62,504 Uncanny X-Men Annual #2
61,385 Justice Society of
59,932 Amazing Spider-Man #585
59,286 X-Men Legacy #220
56,656 Detective Comics #852
52,747 Fantastic Four #563
52,703 Final Crisis Superman Beyond #2
51,940 Action Comics #873
51,817 X-Force #11
50,683
49,637 Ultimate Spider-Man #130
49,223 Invincible Iron Man #9
48,489 Superman #684
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 January, see "Comic Sales Drop in January."
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond
For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through January 2009, see "ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index."
