Sales of both periodical comics and graphic novels continued their stellar start to 2007 with comics posting a healthy 15% year-over-year gain and graphic novels a solid 9% boost.  The total dollars spent on both comics and graphic novels rose by 14% over February of 2006.

The strong February performances were accomplished without the fifth week of shipping that helped boost January totals (see '2007 Off to a Strong Start'), but what did help was the final volume of Marvel's Civil War event along with various Civil War tie-ins and the first comic in the House of Ideas' adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower.

The highly popular Civil War event also played a role in the growth of graphic novel sales since the first Civil War trade paperback, Civil War: Road to Civil War, was the best-selling graphic novel release, although DC's Justice Vol. 2 hardcover was actually the top dollar graphic novel release by small margin.  The third best-selling graphic novel release of February was Dark Horse's 300, which is likely to boost graphic novel numbers in March as well, since Zack Snyder's movie adaptation of 300 opened on March 9th.

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 the top 300 comics in February, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--February 2007.'

For the top 100 graphics novels in February, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--February 2007.'

For an overview and analysis of the best-selling comics and graphic novels in February, see ''Civil War' Finale Tops the Charts.'

For the top 300 comics in January, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--January 2007.'