Nine of the top 25 comics were new Marvel titles in March, helping the company achieve a highly dominant 23 of the top 25 books. DC's promotionally priced Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1 sold nearly 200,000 copies and was the top piece seller in March.
Over-all numbers on the top books were up, with one more title over 100,000 than last month, and higher numbers throughout the top 25. But on a title by title basis more books were down than up, with twelve books dropping and only three increasing vs. their previous issues. Those two phenomena together tell the story of new titles taking sales from existing titles.
An amazing 13 of the top 25 comic titles in March were X-Men books.
On the graphic novel list, the $17 re-packaged Sin City trade paperbacks wee selling briskly, with over 9000 copies of Vol. 2 selling to comic stores in March. Between Sin City and Star Wars, Dark Horse had a very good month, with three of the top five trade paperbacks, and five of the top ten.
The top 25 comic titles in March, along with our estimates of the numbers sold to North American comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors, are as follow:
199,704 DC Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1
155,113 New Avengers #4
138,753 Ultimate Iron Man #1
132,295 Astonishing X-Men #9
105,984 Wolverine #26
105,255 Ultimates 2 #4
100,943 Superman #214
95,902 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #1
93,702 Secret War Book Four
86,777 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #2
86,736 Ultimate Secret #1
86,365 Uncanny X-Men #457
84,021 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #3
83,979 X-Men #168
83,943 Ultimate Spider-Man #73
83,835 Ultimate X-Men #57
83,817 Ultimate Spider-Man #74
81,862 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse One Shot
81,808 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #4
80,798 X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #5
78,705 X-Men: Phoenix--Endsong #4
77,025 Amazing Spider-Man #518
76,666 Young Avengers #2
73,987 Ultimate Fantastic Four #16
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 Batman (the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations), 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 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 accuracy.
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 2005.'
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 2005.'
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during February, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--February 2005.'
For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during February, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--February 2005.'
For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through March 2005, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'