By John Jackson Miller on 4/24/2008 8:58 PM

I'll be saving the more lengthy analysis for the Newsarama column coming up, but the tables with my raw estimates for March can be found here. I will say here that while it is a soft month, it's one that's following a year after a blockbuster March — and the first quarter has historically been slow in most normal years. In the widest category, the quarter is only off by almost exactly $1 million — less than the revenue of a single product, last year's Captain America #25. And the five-year comparatives are way up.

So it's our first slower quarter in a while — but it takes two down quarters in a row in the general economy to make a recession. And in this business, I'd make that two not including the first quarter!

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
March 2008: 6.08 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -13%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +9%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -15%
YEAR TO DATE: 19.11 million copies, -6% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
March 2008: $19.14 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -15%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +22%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +10%
YEAR TO DATE: $64.14 million, -7% vs. 2007

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
March 2008: $4.33 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +5%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +17%
YEAR TO DATE: $12.47 million, +5% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
March 2008: $23.47 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -12%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 50 TPBs: +21%
YEAR TO DATE: $72.23, -5% vs. 2007

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
March 2008: $31.21 million ($34.67 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -7%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +27%
YEAR TO DATE: $98.3 million, -1% vs. 2007, +46% vs. 2003

By John Jackson Miller on 4/21/2008 7:38 PM

It will be a bit yet before the calculations appear here (New York Comicon took everyone's weekend, along with my voice) but for the curious, here are the vanilla rankings for the Diamond Top 300, released today. This is raw — no clean-up work, no formatting. The "ratio" is the number of copies sold per 100 issues of Detective Comics sold. (Edit: And the Newsarama preliminary report is here.) Check back for the full report, soon!

1) Dark Tower Long Road Home #1 (Of 5) • MAR • Ratio 250.56
2) New Avengers #39  • MAR • Ratio 208.49
3) Thor #7 • MAR • Ratio 197.25
4) Amazing Spider-Man #552 • MAR • Ratio 181.76
5) Uncanny X-Men #496  • MAR • Ratio 180.18
6) Buffy Vampire Slayer #12 • DAR • Ratio 179.93
7) Justice League O/America #19 • DC • Ratio 177
8) Amazing Spider-Man #553 • MAR • Ratio 167.22
9) Mighty Avengers #11 • MAR • Ratio 166.42
10) X-Men Legacy #209  • MAR • Ratio 166.4
11) Mighty Avengers #10 • MAR • Ratio 166.21
12) X-Force #2  • MAR • Ratio 165.33
13) Captain America #36 • MAR • Ratio 164.65
14) Amazing Spider-Man #554 • MAR • Ratio 164.03
15) All Star Superman #10 • DC • Ratio 148.86
16) Cable #1  • MAR • Ratio 138.9
17) Green Lantern #28 • DC • Ratio 137.73
18) Countdown To Final Crisis 8 • DC • Ratio 137.66
19) Countdown To Final Crisis 7 • DC • Ratio 137.62
20) Countdown To Final Crisis 6 • DC • Ratio 137.37
21) Countdown To Final Crisis 5 • DC • Ratio 136.95
22) Fantastic Four #555 • MAR • Ratio 136.4
23) Green Lantern #29 • DC • Ratio 134.62
24) Wolverine #63  • MAR • Ratio 130.45
25) Logan #1 (Of 3) • MAR • Ratio 128.05
26) Serenity Better Days #1 (Of 3) • DAR • Ratio 126.05
27) Ultimate Spider-Man #120 • MAR • Ratio 116.8
28) X-Factor #29  • MAR • Ratio 110.94
29) Avengers Initiative #10 • MAR • Ratio 110.11
30) Wolverine Origins #23 • MAR • Ratio 100.42
31) Angel After Fall #5 • IDW • Ratio 100.27
32) Detective Comics #842 • DC • Ratio 100
33) Incredible Hercules #115 • MAR • Ratio 99.82
34) Teen Titans #57 • DC • Ratio 99.36
35) Ultimate X-Men #92 • MAR • Ratio 99.17
36) Superman Batman Annual #2 • DC • Ratio 94.89
37) Green Lantern Corps #22 • DC • Ratio 94.56
38) Ultimate Human #3 (Of 4) • MAR • Ratio 92.34
39) Justice League New Frontier Special • DC • Ratio 87.5
40) Superman #674 • DC • Ratio 84.4
41) Daredevil #106 • MAR • Ratio 84.04
42) Ultimate Iron Man Ii #4 (Of 5) • MAR • Ratio 83.67
43) Ms Marvel #25  • MAR • Ratio 82.94
44) Wonder Woman #18 • DC • Ratio 82.49
45) Captain Marvel #4 (Of 5)  • MAR • Ratio 82.19
46) Thunderbolts #119 • MAR • Ratio 81.28
47) Ultimate Fantastic Four #52 • MAR • Ratio 77.18
48) Brave & Bold #11 • DC • Ratio 76.38
49) Batman & Outsiders #5 • DC • Ratio 74.45
50) Booster Gold #7 • DC • Ratio 73.12
51) Iron Man #27 • MAR • Ratio 72.86
52) Wolverine First Class #1 • MAR • Ratio 72.22
53) Flash #238 • DC • Ratio 72.04
54) Teen Titans Year One #3 (Of 6) ... Read More »

Comments (3)

By John Jackson Miller on 4/15/2008 9:54 PM

I'm off to New York Comicon (signing at the Dark Horse booth from 4-5 Friday, otherwise out and about, or at Marc Patten's booth) — which will be the answer to your question "Where are the March figures?" Diamond has not released them at this writing, but I would expect them to be out over the next few days.

By John Jackson Miller on 3/21/2008 8:25 AM

The new Overstreet Price Guide is out,  the first with yours truly as an Overstreet advisor — previously I'd worked exclusively for the competition. (Maggie Thompson is in the Overstreet group as well now — things change). My first contribution is a feature on Star Wars comics history, getting a bit into the scope and differentiated manner of its circulation in the 1970s.

It gets further into the copies that Western Publishing commissioned — the so-called "Whitman variants," which is an a propos term despite the fact that the Whitman logo does not appear on the comics themselves. As illustrated in my piece in Comics Buyer's Guide #1609, while these "fat diamond" copies of Marvel comics may at some point have been sold to direct market stores, the existence of this printing seems to spring strictly from Western/Whitman, as evidenced by the fact that the whole Marvel line was dumped by Whitman in late 1977 while they were printing more Star Wars reprints!

Fun stuff, and Overstreet is required reading in any event!

By John Jackson Miller on 3/19/2008 10:44 AM

My Newsarama feature for the month appears here (with lots of cool historical comparatives), and the charts and graphs here are updated, as well. X-Force #1 led the top-selling comics list in February:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
February 2008: 6.26 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -5%
Versus 5 years ago this month:+7%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -5%
YEAR TO DATE: 13.02 million copies, -2% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
February 2008: $19.62 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +19%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +25%
YEAR TO DATE: $40.65 million, -3% vs. 2007

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
February 2008: $4.01 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +7%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +13%
YEAR TO DATE: $8.14 million, +5% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
February 2008: $23.63 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -4%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 TPBs: +18%
YEAR TO DATE: $48.76, -1% vs. 2007

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
February 2008: $32.53 million ($36.85 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +1%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +48%
YEAR TO DATE: $67.09 million, +2% vs. 2007

The year-to-date figures are also available from anywhere on the site, on the Comichrometer at upper left.

As you can see, we are only up year- ... Read More »

Comments (0)