Diamond shipped over 230,000 copies of Superman #204 to North American comic stores in April, the best single-copy piece sale since Batman #619 last September.  Superman/Batman #9 came in second, with over 145,000 copies sold.

 

Marvel owned the rest of the top 15, and 18 of the top 25.  The top title by a publisher other than Marvel and DC was Dark Horse's Conan #3, which at #34 sold over 48,000 copies.   

 

Piece sales on top comics dipped somewhat vs. March, with 17 of the top 25 titles down, and only five up.  The bottom of the list was also weaker than March -- the bottom book in March sold 1901 copies; in April, only 950. 

 

Ultimates Volume 2, at around 8,500 copies, and Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, at around 7,800, both sold more pieces than the top books last month, despite their higher price points. 

 

The top 25 comics, with our estimates of the number sold by Diamond to North American comic stores are as follow:

 

231,411            Superman #204

145,072            Superman/Batman #9

137,314            Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1

103,213            Marvel 1602 #8

102,648            Ultimate Fantastic Four #5

100,088            New X-Men #155

  98,785            New X-Men #156

  96,264            Ultimate X-Men #44

  93,131            Wolverine: The End #3

  91,663            Ultimate Six #7

  91,585            Ultimate Spider-Man #56

  90,784            Ultimate Spider-Man #57

  86,975            Uncanny X-Men #442

  86,002            Uncanny X-Men #443

  83,152            Amazing Spider-Man #506

  78,519            Batman #626

  71,060            Wolverine #13

  70,377            JLA #96

  69,874            Wolverine #14

  68,359            Teen Titans #10

  68,170            JLA #97

  66,050            Daredevil: Father #1

  65,791            Punisher: The End #1

  64,284            Supreme Power #9

  56,714            Action #814  
 
We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores) rather than pre-orders (as we did for the past several years) because Diamond recently changed its reporting and began basing its indexes on actual sales (see 'ICv2 Kicks Off New Top 300 Reporting').  We use those indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title diamond uses in its calculations), and use 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 accurcy.
 
Because of that change, we will not be able to do year over year comparisons until February of 2004, but in general, it's an improvement to have actual numbers to work with rather than preorders, which have significant differences from sales.

 

 

For an analysis of the dollar trends in April, see 'Comic Dollars Up Again in April.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--April 2004.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--April 2004.'

 

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 2004.'

 

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 2004.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through April 2004, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 50 GNs Index.'