Orders for BOOM! Studios’ BZRKR #1 came in at 616,841, a source close to the project told ICv2.  These are the second highest announced orders of the century, trailing only Marvel’s Star Wars #1, which had advance orders from Diamond North America (the BOOM! orders are worldwide orders) for 985,976 in 2015  (see “’Star Wars’ #1 Is Big”). They are likely the largest orders for a title not published by Marvel or DC since the early 90s, just as Image was launching.  Orders were all through the direct market comic stores serviced by Diamond Comic Distributors. 

The project comes to trade with major momentum; the Kickstarter for the graphic novel collections raised over $1.4 million, and was the top comic project on Kickstarter for 2020 (see “Comics on Kickstarter Up 59% in 2020”).

This comic was written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt with art by Ron Garney, colors by Bill Crabtree, and primary covers by Rafael Grampa and Mark Brooks, along with a raft of incentive variants, including a 1/1000 Reeves autograph variant.

Over 457,000 of the orders came from the two primary covers by Rafael Grampa and Mark Brooks (and the foil editions of each).  Variants accounted for the rest of the sales; 36 mostly short-run retailer variants accounted for less than 5% of the total orders.Retailers could order with confidence; the issue is sold returnable to qualifying retailers.