In May three titles topped 175K in sales while in June no title even made it within sniffing distance of 175K.  Seven of the top ten titles in June actually showed declines in sales compared with previous months, but June's dollar total up substantially from May (and from June of 2003).  The $3.95 price tag on Identity Crisis #1 helped and the Ultimate Spider-Man titles and Amazing Spider-Man #509 registered solid gains (a certain movie can take some of the credit), but solid performances from the middle tier of comic titles kept June numbers rising.

 

DC took the top two spots with Identity Crisis #1 and Superman #206, but Marvel took the next 14 slots and 24 out of the top 30.  Seventeen of the top 25 titles declined and only six scored gains.

 

Graphic novel sales declined slightly from May's totals, but still represented a gain versus June of 2003.  With the debut of Spider-Man 2 in the offing, Marvel took the top two spots with Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. #9 and Essential Spider-Man Vol. 6 with the Spider-Man 2 movie trade grabbing the seventh spot.  Dark Horse, Gemstone, and DC had two titles each in the top 10, while Viz grabbed the last spot.  Dark Horse's Hellsing 3, which recently topped the BookScan list of graphic novel sales in bookstores, was the highest rated manga title at #5.  There were two manga titles in the top 10.

 

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

 

163,111                       Identity Crisis #1 (of 7)

162,095                       Superman #206

133,784                       Astonishing X-Men #2

104,789                       Ultimate Spider-Man #60

101,159                       Ultimate Spider-Man #61

100,972                       Ultimate Fantastic Four #6

  99,485                       Ultimate Fantastic Four #7

  98,660                       Uncanny X-Men #445

  96,759                       X-Men #158

  96,694                       Ultimate Fantastic Four #8

  95,254                       Ultimate X-Men #47

  94,238                       Ultimate X-Men #48

  88,289                       Amazing Spider-Man #509

  83,947                       Wolverine End #4 (of 6)

  82,715                       Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #3

  82,268                       Amazing Spider-Man #508

  75,434                       JLA #100

  72,020                       Batman #629

  67,519                       Wolverine #16

  66,424                       Teen Titans #12

  60,468                       Amazing Fantasy #1

  59,791                       Excalibur #2

  58,855                       New X-Men #2

  57,083                       Avengers #84

  53,770                       Daredevil #61
 
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 June, see 'Comics Up 15% in June.'

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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