Astonishing X-Men reclaimed the top spot on the comic charts with its fourth issue, the first time it's led the pack since #1 was released in May.  Estimated sales by Diamond were over 145,000.  Superman and Identity Crisis continued their strong performances, with over 129,000 and 124,000 in sales, respectively. 

 

Of the six titles over 100,000 in August, four were X-Men titles in whole or in part, and the other two were Superman and Identity Crisis.  

 

Marvel ended up with eight of the top ten titles, and 19 of the top 25. 

 

There were more titles down than up, not that unusual for August -- 14 down vs. 6 up.

 

On the graphic novel front, the second collection of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sold over 10,000 copies in August, a good comic store performance for a $14.95 trade paperback. 

 

Diamond sold almost 6,000 copies of the JLA/Avengers oversized slipcover hardcover set  at $75.00, making it nearly a half-million dollar product.  

 

The top 25 comic titles in August, with our estimates of the numbers sold to comic retailers by Diamond Comic Distributors, are as follow:

 

145,543            Astonishing X-Men #4

129,256            Superman #208

124,601            Identity Crisis #3

109,587            X-Men End Bk 1 Dreamers & Demons #1

103,154            Ultimate X-Men #50

102,655            Ultimate Nightmare #1

  98,578            X-Men End Bk 1 Dreamers & Demons #2

  96,279            Ultimate Spider-Man #63

  95,838            Uncanny X-Men #447

  94,682            Ultimate Spider-Man #64

  91,790            X-Men #160

  90,670            Ultimate Fantastic Four #10

  88,118            Amazing Spider-Man #511

  75,562            Marvel Knights Spider-Man #5

  72,287            Batman #631

  68,340            Ultimate Elektra #1

  66,620            X-Force #1

  65,304            Wolverine #18

  63,894            Teen Titans #14

  61,798            Supreme Power #12

  61,719            JLA #103

  60,750            JLA #104

  56,153            Excalibur #4

  52,271            Spectacular Spider-Man #18

  52,090            Daredevil #63
 

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 August, see 'August Comics and GNs Up 10% Over '03.'

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through August 2004, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'