April 2020 DC Comic Book Sales

Projections for DC Comics Ordered by North American Comics Shops from Lunar Distribution and UCS Comic Distributors

This data refers only to sales by DC's distributors. Click to see the Overall charts and those from Diamond.

In April 2020, during the pause in new comics distribution caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, DC Comics left its 25-year-old exclusive agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors and began shipping through Lunar Distribution, a sister company to mail-order firm DCBS (Digital Comic Book Service) — and UCS Comic Distributors, sister company to retailer Midtown Comics.

In the initial announcement from DC, Lunar sold to the western part of North America, and UCS the east, including all of the Gulf States and Texas. Later, DC would allow shops to buy from either distributor — but it's likely that the early signups for both distributors broke down on the suggested geographical lines.

DC launched its new program with a very limited schedule. Just five comic books were released through Lunar and DC on April 28 — though that was of some historical moment, as it codified DC's switch of New Comic Book Day from Wednesday to Tuesday, in order to match the book trade. There were three new issues — one a repackaging of a Walmart release — as well as two reprints. No new DC graphic novels released by Lunar or UCS in the month.

The chart below features every new comic book released by DC in April 2020. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The release dates are from UCS. We make no attempt here to distinguish between sales through Lunar and UCS; the intention is to reflect DC's Direct Market business outside Diamond.

Neither DC, Lunar, nor UCS has yet released any meaningful information about sales to retailers during the month, so Comichron has drawn upon a subset of known retail orders both to determine approximate rankings and to project the relative order volumes of releases.

The order volumes are expressed in relation to the the top-selling title: for every 100 copies of Daphne Byrne #4 in the order subset, there were 47 copies of Batman Giant #4. We're sticking with whole numbers until we have a better handle on the margin of error. Only periodicals were examined, and order totals are believed to be as of Final Order Cutoff. No statistical adjustments have been made for returnability and no later returns have been subtracted out. Further, no attempt has been made to project the orders for the reprints, though we expect both would have fallen below the orders of the new comics.

The retail order subset represents a sizable number of copies, but it is not possible at present to know what portion of the overall population of store orders it represents, particularly as many stores were closed, had their accounts on hold, or had not established accounts with DC's distributors.

Rankings in these charts should be expected to differ — often significantly — from the sales-to-consumers charts available at other outlets. Those report sell-through and not sell-in, and different retailers are sampled in each, with no overlap in reporting stores as of the generation of the below charts.

As is the case with all data on Comichron, it is subject to revision without notice in the event more authoritative and complete information about orders becomes available.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all DC items released by its distributors in the month.
The Order Index Number by each comic book indicates how many copies were ordered within a known subset of retailer orders for every 100 Daphne Byrne #4s that were ordered.
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.

April 2020 DC Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

No graphic novels were part of the April 28 releases at DC's two new Direct Market distributors, but retailers who ordered from Random House, its book channel distributor, would have been able to get DC material.