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.
290,514 Captain America #25
141,288 Mighty Avengers #1
137,730 Amazing Spider-Man #539
137,658 Civil War: Initiative
136,338
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
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.'
