June 2020 DC Comic Book Sales

Projections for DC Comics Ordered by North American Comics Shops

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

On June 5, DC announced that it was cutting ties with Diamond Comic Distributors altogether, forcing retailers who wanted its comics to go through Lunar Distribution or UCS Comic Distributors, and to go through Random House for its graphic novels.

June 30 was further declared a skip week to give more retailers time to set up accounts. So while June had five Tuesdays — and so technically, one more ship week for DC — it was effectively just four, the same as all the other publishers at Diamond.

In the meantime, Diamond continued to ship DC titles through the month. Comichron projects that when orders across all three distributors are combined, Dark Nights: Death Metal #1 was likely the top comic book in units and dollars for DC.

During June, UCS had a Best Sellers section on its website, including sections for comic books, graphic novels, magazines, books, and promotional items. They were simple top ten lists, without any indexed sales figures, and appeared to co-mingle both preordered items and those that had shipped. (For example, the June 1, 2020 snapshot, seen at left, included items that had not shipped yet.)

UCS did not include information about what specific timeframe was being measured in the rankings, and the titles listed updated dynamically through the month. As such, while Comichron archived several instances of the reports, the UCS data on comic books was too limited in detail to be of much use to retailers.

With UCS and Diamond releasing little official information about their DC sales and Lunar releasing none at all, Comichron has drawn upon a subset of known retail orders both to determine approximate rankings and to project the relative order volumes of comic-book releases. The 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. 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.

The chart below features every new comic book released by DC in June 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 the distributors DC sold through; the intent is to describe DC's business in the Direct Market.

The order volumes are expressed in relation to Justice League #46, which has been chosen as the order index issue for DC's distributors this month, as well as for Diamond. (There are Justice League issues without cardstock variants in the May and June lists for both Diamond and DC's distributors, so it's a good choice if you're trying to refer between charts.) For example, for every 100 copies of Justice League #46 in the order set, there were 118 copies of Strange Adventures #2.

DC offered 10 comic books with cardstock variants at a different price; their sales have been fused by default below. You can find the component versions at the bottom of the chart, or by sorting by "Units" to see where its variants would have placed. Another cardstock comic book, Flash #754, appears without a regular variant because that version shipped in May. Its sales can be found there.

Things to remember: 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. For example, Justice League had been seeing Diamond orders of more than 40,000 copies per issue in North America the first quarter of 2020, but we do not advise using that number to extrapolate overall sales for other titles — not until we have a better idea how the market size has changed.

We're sticking with whole numbers until we have a better handle on the margin of error. As such, note that a difference of a single point on the chart may not be meaningful, due to rounding. Projections for issues at the lower extremes are thus subject to more error due to the small quantities involved. Projected relative sales levels here are likely most reliable for regular series issues in the middle of the chart: orders for the highest sellers and first issues may tend to show more variation.

Rankings in these charts should also 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 known 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
Updated March 17, 2021

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 the sample for every 100 Justice League #46s that were ordered.
"Fused" combines differently priced-variants; click the "Unit" arrow to do a sort separating them.
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.

June 2020 DC Graphic Novel Sales

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

DC's Direct Market distributors did not release monthly totals of their graphic novel sales, but it is known that the publisher released 27 new graphic novels to the Direct Market in June.

The Doomsday Clock Part 2 Hardcover with Slipcase, released June 16 at UCS, is a good bet to have been the top ordered new graphic novel in initial-ordered units.

Comichron did not sample retailer sales data for DC's Direct Market graphic novel sales, but UCS did break out graphic novels in its bestsellers page on its website. The title was UCS's top June-shipping graphic novel as of the May 18 snapshot.

This list includes all items on UCS's Top 10 chart as of a snapshot taken May 18, 2020.
If you don't see a book, UCS 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.