Nearly all the partners have changed, three years after the pandemic caused Diamond to shut down for several weeks, prompting DC comics to ultimately take its distribution elsewhere. Image announced today it was moving to Lunar as its exclusive distributor effective in September — though Diamond also announced that it would continue to supply those comics as a wholesaler. That’s a first, because while it had such a deal to carry Marvel, IDW, and Dark Horse comics supplied by Penguin Random House, it had no such arrangement with Lunar for DC’s titles. The upshot is that while 84% — five comics ..read more

  The 2021 Comichron/ICv2 report is out — and it’s a blockbuster. Comics and graphic novel sales rose 62% to $2.075 billion; up 70% vs 2019. All formats grew in what was the the industry’s biggest year ever in dollar terms, even when adjusted for inflation. Graphic novels exploded, with manga having an enormous year. Traditional comic books also rose dramatically, surpassing 2019’s pre-pandemic level. Digital grew less, but still far ahead of 2019. Graphic novels sent the book channel over $1 billion, while comic shops topped $700 million in nominal dollars for the first time. Crowd ..read more

April 2022 comics order estimates are online at Comichron. They find TMNT: The Last Ronin #5 from IDW topping 100k copies, with Brzrkr and Something Is Killing the Children placing third and fourth once their variants are combined. Amazing Spider-Man #1 would’ve been by far the market leader were all Marvel’s sales at Diamond. Diamond’s share suggests more than 250,000 copies were moved market-wide, with three more Marvels in the Top 5. Comichron’s chart defaults to Diamond’s original rankings, leaving variants unmerged — but there’s a column you can sort by to see where Marvel’s projected ..read more

We’ve posted the monthly estimates for February and March 2022, and there’s a lot of good news to them. It looks like the Direct Market had a $145 million first quarter, which beats the same three months of 2020 — our last winter with data from Diamond — by $28 million. The Marvel adjustments are in there — and I also took a look at how the independent comics are doing compared with what they did when Marvel and DC were fully at Diamond. The news is startling. There were 737 indie comics that charted in the first quarter of 2020; looking at the Top 737 indies in 2022 in the same period shows a ..read more

X-Men Red #1 was the April-shipping comic book most reordered by Diamond retailers last week ..read more

January 2022 estimates are online. Scorched #1 from Image sold over 257,000 copies to retailers in the first monthly list since the majority of Marvel’s distribution went to Penguin Random House. Total Direct Market orders likely $45 million: see the charts here. For the latest batch of changes, we consolidated lists into a single page, where the Diamond chart appears by default, but there’s an option to project Marvel overall orders based on what we believe Diamond’s share to be. In this month’s case that puts She-Hulk #1 in second. The order defaults to Diamond’s original; click on the “Pro ..read more

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Over decades, comics historian Robert Beerbohm has accumulated the largest private collection of advertising and magazines related to comics distribution in the early days of the market. With his cooperation, Comichron.com  is pleased to provide a public home for some of these rare materials, beginning with an archive of comics shipping schedule pages from Newsdealer and Bestsellers magazine. Launching in 1946, Newsdealer and its successor publication Bestsellers served retailers at least until 1970 with content about selling comic books. Among its regular features was its Comics Directo ..read more

A huge tranche of data available now at Comichron! First, we have the Top 1000 comics and graphic novels from Diamond on our 2021 page. News since Friday: with variants merged, House of Slaughter #1 moved into first by 29 copies. A photo finish or a dead heat — it’s really just a snapshot in time at Diamond, where a week of reorders or damage returns or just about anything could have reversed the order. Less than a case of copies separating them! Merging BRZRKR #1 variants also improved its position. Rankings are fun, but here’s the important stuff. Based on Diamond’s Top 4000 comics and Top ..read more

Over decades, comics historian Robert Beerbohm has accumulated the largest private collection of advertising and magazines related to comics distribution in the early days of the market. With his cooperation, Comichron.com  is pleased to provide a public home for some of these rare materials, beginning with an archive of comics shipping schedule pages from Newsdealer and Bestsellers magazine. Launching in 1946, Newsdealer and its successor publication Bestsellers served retailers at least until 1970 with content about selling comic books. Among its regular features was its Comics Directo ..read more