April 2021 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

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

No matter what happened, April 2021's new comics orders were going to look colossal compared to those from the year before, when Diamond Comic Distributors had paused new comics shipments due to the COVID-19 pandemic and only three new comics came out, all from DC's substitute distributors Lunar Distribution and UCS Comic Distributors. So other comparatives are necessary to measure April's performance, which appears from Comichron's retail initial order sample to be between 6.5 and 7 million copies, worth between $29 and $30 million.

March 2021 had something like a million more comics initially ordered — including the colossal BRZRKR #1 from Boom — but that month also had an additional shipping week. March 2020, however, had the same number of shipping weeks, and April 2021's initial orders appear to have handily beaten that month's total.

April 2021's performance was based on just 335 new comics, exactly the same number as in March 2021, which had one additional shipping week. DC's output was just 38 new comics, two more than its March count but still historically very low. March 2020 saw 458 new comics released, so slate sizes were still not back up to pre-pandemic levels.

Our retail order dataset found BRZRKR #2, the second issue of the series cowritten by actor Keanu Reeves, as the top comic book by units and dollars in initial orders, although the margin was far narrower than it was in March with the series' first issue. Publisher Boom had announced that initial orders were 148,000 copies, though that figure likely includes copies outside the North American market. Comichron's dataset suggests that the top sellers were relatively tightly packed, in another contrast to March 2021.

Because our retail order sample only looks at initial orders, Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point #1, which was underordered by retailers, placed eleventh in our tracking. A traditional Diamond chart would have likely ranked it higher.

Lunar did not release any sales reporting, and by late May, Diamond was in the sixth month of its second pause in monthly report releases. As we did during the first pause in 2020, Comichron has drawn upon a retailer initial order sample to determine approximate unit and dollar sales rankings. The dataset represented a sizable number of copies, from which Comichron was able to determine relative sales volumes — but only the rankings are being shared at this time, and no attempt has been made to rank items beyond 250th place.

No statistical adjustments have been made for returnability and no later returns have been subtracted out. Note, further, that our process only looks at first-month orders for comics, so no reordered titles from the month before or reprints appear in the chart below.

The charts feature every new comic book released by Diamond and Lunar in April 2021. Variant editions have been merged into single entries, following longtime industry practice. The DC release dates are from Lunar.

Things to remember: As we're not characterizing order levels at this time, ranked comics could be separated by thousands of copies or as little as a single issue. Rankings are 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. Comichron tracks copies in circulation, a category which includes both copies on retail shelves and in consumers' hands.

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 the two lists below include all comic books released by Direct Market Distributors in the month.
Rankings are based on Comichron's retailer inital order sample and do not include reorders.
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.

The list below includes all the other comics released by Diamond and Lunar for which Comichron is not projecting rankings at this time. They appear in alphabetical order by publisher and then by title; use the arrows to sort by any column.

The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

April 2021 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

Comichron did not examine graphic novel orders, but you can see what graphic novels were receiving retail attention at Diamond in the month by looking at its reorders.