August 2020 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

This data combines orders from all Direct Market distributors. Click to see only Diamond and DC's distributors.

Covers and issue links on this page lead to current eBay listings. This site may be compensated if you make a purchase.

Comics retailers in August 2020 could only get all comics in the Direct Market by ordering both from Diamond Comic Distributors and from one of DC's exclusive distributors, Lunar Distribution or UCS Comic Distributors (or one of those firms' subdistributors, such as Universal Distribution in Canada).

Comichron's founder began reporting merged rankings and relative sales levels for Heroes World Distribution and Diamond in September 1996; the report below similarly brings together estimates for the various Direct Market distributors. Click to see the month's reports just for Diamond and just for DC's distributors.

There were four Tuesdays and four Wednesdays in the month, meaning that Diamond and DC's distributors each had an equal number of New Comic Book Days. DC nonetheless had the blockbuster Batman: The Three Jokers #1 and the "Joker War" storyline in Batman and related titles; between those and Dark Nights: Death Metal #3, we project that once all versions of the comics were merged, the publisher took the top five slots in our combined charts. Diamond and Marvel's top seller Venom #27 likely came in sixth. Marvel, its slate still working its way back to pre-pandemic levels, had 13 of the Top 25 comics.

DC's Jim Lee said in an interview that in August that Three Jokers #1 had sales over 300,000 copies (presumably including UK sales), and Comichron's projections, published below, would appear to support that if it's assumed that the retail base is not substantially smaller than it was this past winter. Our retail order subset suggests the issue had at least seven times as many copies ordered of the month's non-anniversary issue of Justice League, and that series was selling in the 40,000-copy range just in North America before the Coronavirus pandemic and its associated shutdowns.

Venom #25, projected by Comichron as the market's May 2020 leader, continued to pile up reprint sales, making the Top 20 thanks to the Mark Bagley cover third printing, released in August, and the Ryan Stegman sketch variant, at left, one of which was offered for every 25 copies of the Bagley version that retailers bought. (Click to see a list of second- and later-printings of comics published in 2020.)

Strong launch performances were seen for several series, including Horizon Zero Dawn #1 from Titan, ranking 22nd in our projected rankings, and Seven Secrets #1 from Boom, which we believe likely ranked 46th once all versions were combined.

New release volume continued to grow at Diamond but remained well behind where its publishers were at the same time in 2019. Diamond had 300 new comic books on the market; even after adjusting for the loss of DC, that put it at about 82% of the previous year's levels. Marvel, still building back up, was at 70%.

CHANGES TO THE CHARTS: Diamond released unit and dollar sales rankings for comic books and graphic novels, but did not publish overall market size data, market shares, or order index numbers for its titles. A major reason why could be found in the charts that did appear: many comics were returnable (all of Image's and Boom's) and major discounting could be found all over the charts, greatly complicating the underlying math going into market size and market share calculations.

Returnable comics, marked with asterisks in the chart below, represented 118 entries out of Diamond's Top 500, a major chunk of the month's output. Each usually receives a pre-chart reduction of 10% in units, so already many entries are out of place compared with what really went to market. Meanwhile, there was a lot of discounted comics and graphic novels on offer: comics dating back years made the list, including many liquidated comics from Marvel's 2017 Legacy event. The average dollar sales ranking for an item in the Diamond Top 500 was 18 slots lower than its unit sales ranking, as compared with 10 slots in March before the shutdown.

In the absence of Diamond's order index numbers — or any detailed information from DC's distributors — Comichron has supplemented the chart with its own projections, drawing upon a subset of known retail orders to project the relative order volumes of comic-book releases for a portion of the chart. 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. No statistical adjustments have been made for returnability and no later returns have been subtracted out.

In their absence, 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 DC comic book released into the Direct Market in August 2020, as well as Diamond's Top 500. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The DC release dates are from UCS.

The order volumes are expressed in relation to Avengers #35, which we've chosen as the order index issue this month for Diamond. (Avengers usually corresponds fairly well to the title we use for DC's distributors, Justice League.) For every 100 copies of Avengers #35 ordered in the subset, for example, we believe there were around 80 copies of Fantastic Four #22.

Publisher offered 15 comic books with variants at a different price which sold well enough to merit their own entries; their sales have been fused by default below. You can find the component versions on the individual August 2020 pages for Diamond and DC's distributors. Dollar rankings can be found there as well: actual ones in Diamond's case, and projected ones for DC.

Market shares: Diamond did not release market shares. We project Marvel to have been responsible for about six times the dollars attributed to its nearest competitor, Image; DC is likely to have led overall this month.

Things to remember: Projections for issues at the lower extremes are subject to more error due to the small quantities involved; while we rank such titles, we mark them with "no estimate" for that reason. Here, projections are made for about a quarter of the chart — enough to allow us to place the majority of DC's titles in a merged list. 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.

Below the level where estimates are made, the ordinal ranking that follows is Diamond's — with a small number of DC low-selling issues sorted where we believe they likely wound up. Note that Diamond's list includes reorders and DC's does not, so DC in fact would have more entries on the chart, should Lunar or UCS ever supply the relevant data.

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. Both are worth knowing, of course, though sell-in tends to be of relatively greater importance in comics than in other publishing markets, given their nonreturnable nature and comics' status as a collectible. Orders by retailers represent the "first sale" and are a major determinant of publishing revenue.

You can click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month. And you can see the reorders that were placed during the month on our pages for reorders and advance reorders for the year. We also have a page breaking out ship dates for second printings.

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 new comic books released by DC's Direct Market Distributors and all comics in Diamond's Top 500 chart for the month.
Generated by Comichron, the Order Index by each comic book, indicates how many copies were ordered within a known subset of retailer orders for every 100 Avengers #35s that shipped.
"No est." appears where we're making no Order Index estimate, but entries are still ranked.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
Title links below lead to current listings for the issues on eBay. As an eBay Partner, this site may be compensated if you make a purchase.

August 2020 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Diamond's graphic novel sales for the month can be found here. There is also some information from UCS on our DC page