During Q2, when DC was pursuing a more aggressive release strategy than Marvel Comics, DC beat Marvel by over 10 points (see "Direct Market Shares – Q2 2020"). In Q3 the ranks of the Big Two returned to the norm, although the difference in shares was much less than normal. Marvel released more comics in Q2 than DC did, although the difference in releases was likely less than a year ago, and the total releases were down for both.
Image Comics holds down its traditional #3 slot and has now held an average market share over 10% for the past half year. BOOM! Studios holds the #4 slot for the period, moving ahead of IDW, which is usually at that rank.
We are calculating Direct Market publisher market shares based on POS data quarterly for now, until the number of monthly comic releases stabilizes.
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Comic Store Market Share (Dollars) - Q3 2020 |
||
|
Rank |
Publisher |
Market Share |
|
1 |
Marvel Comics |
33.31% |
|
2 |
DC Comics |
31.24% |
|
3 |
Image Comics |
10.02% |
|
4 |
BOOM! Studios |
4.64% |
|
5 |
IDW Publishing |
3.90% |
|
6 |
Dark Horse Comics |
3.27% |
|
7 |
VIZ Media |
2.32% |
|
8 |
Dynamite Entertainment |
1.63% |
|
9 |
Oni Press/Lion Forge |
0.76% |
|
10 |
First Second Books |
0.56% |
|
All Others |
8.34% |
|
The data on which these market share percentages are based is from sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American graphic novels around the world. During the period for which these reports were generated, there were roughly 85 stores using the ComicHub system. As this is a small, non-random sample of over 3,000 stores selling American comics worldwide, these rankings may not be typical for all stores, but do represent a variety of locations and store emphases.
The differences in how the data behind these charts is collected compared to market share charts based on sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores are many. Here are some:
- Sell-in charts show all the launch sales happening on the same day, while sell-through sales happen over time, moving sales into different periods.
- Sell-in shows what retailers think they will sell, while sell-through shows what they actually do sell.
- Sell-in sales are influenced by incentive variants, which increase the number of copies ordered (to get a variant that can be sold at a premium price), but may not increase the number of copies sold at retail by the same amount.
For monthly sales rankings based on ComicHub POS data, see "Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Rankings Based on Comic Store POS Data Index."
