May 1992 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Preordered by North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

Todd McFarlane's Spawn #1 released in May, giving Image Comics its first comic book to top the Direct Market — although the comic was solicited through Malibu, which would handle Image's business for much of 1992. Direct market orders through all distributors were more than 1.25 million copies, according to Diamond Comic Distributors' June 1992 edition of Diamond Dialogue; additionally, 250,000 copies were purchased by Anco for sale in collector's set prepacks in department stores, and another 200,000 copies were sent to newsstand distributors three weeks after the Direct Market release. The 1.7 million copy sale set an immediate record for a creator-owned comic book.

Malibu's dollar market share went to 4.46% at Diamond, placing it in fourth — although at the time Diamond reported that calculation, it only figured on a 700,000-copy sale of Spawn #1 to the Direct Market. Capital City Distribution's preorders for the issue were at 204,760 copies, so that 700,000-copy figure looks like a preorder number; a market share computed to include later orders might have found Malibu larger. The below chart suggests an initial Diamond sale of around 400,000 copies; later sales must have expanded well beyond that to make the 1.25 million Direct Market figure Diamond reported in June work.

Diamond had given Spawn significant coverage, including one of the two covers of Previews that month; the other featured Unity at Valiant. (The catalog wasn't a flip-book yet; there were twe editions with different covers.)

Batman Returns was set to release in June, and DC's section in the catalog included ten pages of Batman material, including a preview of the new Batman: Shadow of the Bat series. That title launched with two issues in the month; a polybagged version with both #1 and #2 in it for $2.50 placed third in the charts, while the loose copies placed 13th and 15th. That means the real order index number for #1 would have been 281.2, enough to move the book into second place behind Spawn; the second issue would have been in third place.

The raw version of the chart below was published in Diamond Dialogue (May 1992). We've added ship dates. The dates shown below are the dates the comics were scheduled to have shipped from the printer, according to Diamond Previews (March 1992, for May 1992-shipping product).

Diamond reported almost all dates as Tuesdays, which corresponded to when the printer Ronald's released its comics — but World Color Press wasn't releasing its books until 12:01 a.m. on Thursdays, and Diamond's catalog seems to have grouped everything together under the earlier day, regardless of which printer a comic came from. (Capital's Advance Comics uniformly announced dates that were two days later. Its dates appeared in Comics Buyer's Guide and Comic Shop News.) We've adjusted the dates on the comics known to have come from World Color Press to Thursday. Specific on-sale dates were rarely announced in advance for smaller publishers' titles as they could seldom guarantee printer times.

In some cases, comics were delayed; where available, the correct later dates have been included from Diamond's Dateline and Capital City Distribution's New Weekly Releases newsletters. Punisher/Captain America: Blood and Glory #2 was listed in the Diamond chart, but it was rather the first issue that was solicited; it's unclear whether the ranking below relates to new orders for #1 or previous cancelled orders for #2.

Further, in this era, distributor catalog dates for all publishers did not synch up exactly with the calendar month, so Diamond's January charts included a week's worth of DC comics from February — and are missing the first week's DC comics, which appeared in Diamond's December charts. This would continue until March 1995, when DC would realign its solicitations with the Direct Market's calendar month (that chart only included three weeks of DC sales). Because Diamond did not report indexed sales, there is no way to know where those comics would have landed in this month's chart.

The charts included order index numbers, keyed to sales of Amazing Spider-Man #364; Capital sold 72,000 copies of that comic book, so one order index point may represent somewhere in the 1,200-1,500 copy range at Diamond. Remember that other distributors would have added more to the totals, and that how certain comics fared did vary from one distributor to the next based on the discounts they offered. Comichron will report more definitive data when it becomes available.

Click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 chart.
Items marked (resolicitation) were offered in an earlier month but never shipped; disregard any previously reported figure, as earlier orders were canceled when the books were resolicited.
Click to read the methodology for this table's estimates.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

May 1992 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Preordered by North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top Graphic Novel charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.

The links lead to title details on Amazon (paid links). You can also find the books at your comics shop.

DC's Batman/Dracula: Red Rain book led the chart in a month in which graphic novels made up for 6% of Diamond's sales.