The first issue of Stephen King’s Dark Tower: The Long Road Home from Marvel was the #1 book in comic stores in March, selling in at around 124,000 copies. But this was a significant drop from the first issue of the last Stephen King adaptation, Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, which sold in at over 172,000 copies in February 2007. In fact, the first issue of The Long Road Home was even below the second issue of Gunslinger, which sold in at around 136,000 copies one year ago in March.
DC’s Countdown is picking up as it approaches the climax, with significant upticks vs. the month-ago issues.
Other than Countdown, there wasn’t a lot of happy news in the Top 300 comics, where only two other issues, Buffy The Vampire Slayer #12 and Green Lantern #29, gained sales vs. the previous issues.
Marvel had 16 of the top titles, Dark Horse one (the aforementioned Buffy issue), and DC had eight titles.
In the Top 100 Graphic Novels list, Batman: The Killing Joke Special Edition Hardcover was the top unit and dollar title, selling in over 10,600 copies in its first month of release. DC continues to do well with 20 year-old material; Watchmen continues to sell both in comic stores and in bookstores in the run-up to the move.
Naruto Vol. 28, the beginning of the Shippuden storyline topped Fruits Basket in comic stores, an unusual circumstance; Fruits Basket is normally the top manga in the direct market in its first month of release. The difference was a relatively small 100+ copies, however.
Here are ICv2's estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 comic titles in March:
123,839 Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #1 (of 5)
103,046 New Avengers #39
97,491 Thor #7
89,835 Amazing Spider-Man #552
89,054 Uncanny X-Men #496
88,930 Buffy the Vampire Slayer #12
87,482 Justice League of
82,648 Amazing Spider-Man #553
82,253 Mighty Avengers #11
82,243 X-Men Legacy #209
82,149 Mighty Avengers #10
81,714 X-Force #2
81,378 Captain America #36
81,072 Amazing Spider-Man #554
73,574 All Star Superman #10
68,651 Cable #1
68,073 Green Lantern #28
68,038 Countdown to Final Crisis 8
68,019 Countdown to Final Crisis 7
67,895 Countdown to Final Crisis 6
67,688 Countdown to Final Crisis 5
67,416 Fantastic Four #555
66,536 Green Lantern #29
64,475 Wolverine #63
63,289
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 Detective Comics (Batman is normally the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations, but no Batman title shipped in March), 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 Detective Comics number that we calculate using multiple data points; our numbers for Detective Comics 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 Slip in Q1."
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 March 2008, see "ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index."