by John Jackson Miller
The event — along with Free Comic Book Day, attention from the second Avengers movie, and a boost from a repackager contributed to nearly $49 million in orders for new comic books, graphic novels, and magazines by North American comics shops in the month.
Periodical comic book unit sales were up 20% year-over-year against last May, while graphic novel sales were flat; the result was that overall sales were up 13.5%. (That makes sense, because periodicals are about two-thirds of Diamond's combined print comics sales, while graphic novels make up the other third.)
The aggregate changes:
| DOLLARS | UNITS | |
| MAY 2015 VS. APRIL 2015 | ||
| Comics | -10.58% | -9.60% |
| Graphic Novels | -21.11% | -19.41% |
| Total Comics & GNs | -13.81% | -10.38% |
| MAY 2015 VS. MAY 2014 | ||
| Comics | 19.94% | 19.53% |
| Graphic Novels | -0.29% | 9.90% |
| Total Comics & GNs | 13.49% | 18.78% |
| YEAR-TO-DATE 2015 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2014 | ||
| Comics | 16.48% | 16.90% |
| Graphic Novels | 3.41% | -1.13% |
| Total Comics & GNs | 12.31% | 15.35% |
Boom Studios has been publishing Bravest Warriors comics, based on the cartoon series, for several years; insertion in the May Loot Crate vaulted the Bravest Warriors one-shot Tales from the Holo John up to second place, topping Secret Wars #2.
Loot Crate subscriptions were already climbing toward 400,000 earlier in the year and could be higher now; we ought to get a good idea from the final numbers what the figure is.
Top Comic Books
| Title | Price | Vendor | |
| 1 | Secret Wars #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 2 | Bravest Warriors: Tales from the Holo John #1† | $4.99 | Boom |
| 3 | Secret Wars #2 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 4 | Star Wars #5 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 5 | Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | A-Force #1 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 7 | Old Man Logan #1 | $4.99 | Marvel |
| 8 | Darth Vader #5 | $3.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | Convergence #5* | $3.99 | DC |
| 10 | Convergence #6* | $3.99 | DC |
Comics with asterisks — here, Convergence — had their reported orders reduced slightly by Diamond owing to returnability. And the dagger stands for the Loot Crate entry. (Click to read more about the role of repackagers in the "asterisk era of sales charts.")
DC's Convergence issues placed ninth and tenth, whereas the debuts of A-Force and Old Man Logan placed sixth and seventh respectively. Star Wars kept two slots in the Top 10.
The Batman: Earth One Vol. 2 hardcover was the top graphic novel for the month:
Top Graphic Novels
| Title | Price | Vendor | |
| 1 | Batman: Earth-One Volume 2 HC | $24.99 | DC |
| 2 | Night Nurse | $7.99 | Marvel |
| 3 | Rat Queens Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles Of N'Rygoth | $14.99 | Image |
| 4 | Southern Bastards Volume 2: Gridiron | $9.99 | Image |
| 5 | Civil War | $24.99 | Marvel |
| 6 | Saga Vol. 4 | $14.99 | Image |
| 7 | Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past | $19.99 | Viz |
| 8 | Deadpool Vol. 8: All Good Things | $24.99 | Marvel |
| 9 | The Valiant | $9.99 | Valiant |
| 10 | Saga Vol. 1 | $9.99 | Image |
Market Shares
| Publisher | Dollar Share | Unit Share |
| Marvel | 40.17% | 41.11% |
| DC | 25.43% | 26.04% |
| Image | 8.89% | 10.28% |
| IDW | 5.06% | 3.82% |
| Boom | 3.96% | 7.16% |
| Dark Horse | 3.83% | 3.43% |
| Dynamite | 2.22% | 1.82% |
| Eaglemoss | 1.16% | 0.27% |
| Viz | 1.01% | 0.33% |
| Valiant | 0.85% | 0.92% |
| Other | 7.43% | 4.81% |
New releases by publishers
| Comics shipped | Graphic Novels Shipped | Magazines Shipped | Total Shipped | |
| Marvel | 71 | 35 | 0 | 106 |
| DC | 74 | 25 | 0 | 99 |
| Image | 58 | 10 | 0 | 68 |
| IDW | 42 | 21 | 0 | 63 |
| Dark Horse | 33 | 17 | 0 | 50 |
| Boom | 28 | 6 | 0 | 34 |
| Dynamite | 26 | 2 | 0 | 28 |
| Eaglemos | 0 | 0 | 27 | 27 |
| Viz | 0 | 19 | 0 | 19 |
| Archie | 11 | 2 | 0 | 13 |
| Other | 93 | 91 | 17 | 201 |
| Total | 436 | 228 | 44 | 708 |
The detailed estimates for the month will be along next week.
John Jackson Miller
has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a
decade editing the industry's retail trade magazine; he is the author of
several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books
for various franchises. He is the author of several novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Takedown, and Star Wars: A New Dawn, now available in paperback. See him at Superman Celebration Saturday, June 13 in Metropolis, Ill.Visit his fiction site at http://www.farawaypress.com. And be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook!
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment