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June 2018 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops

Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

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June 2018 lacked the major anniversary issues that had propelled April and May to positive months, and was further up against June 2017, the second-best month of its year, with a couple of major hits. But while Justice League #1 and its 200,000 copies was no Action #1000 or Amazing Spider-Man #800, eight titles topped 100,000 copies, and the month's sales were enough to ensure that the second quarter was the first growth quarter, year-over-year, since the summer of 2016, during DC's Rebirth launch. Retailers ordered $42.11 million in comic books, graphic novels, and magazines from Diamond Comic Distributors, bringing the quarterly total to $137 million, up a little over 1% over the same quarter in the previous year, and the highest dollar value seen since the fourth quarter of 2016.



The quarter brought the year to $251.45 million, down less than 4% against the first half of 2017. Second-quarter sales were up 20% over those from the first quarter, underlining how much less material is in the system in wintertime; still, the quarter was a significant improvement, even accounting for that.



We have a video walkthrough of the month's preliminary sales report here:











Sales comparisons were further affected by a smaller number of new comics releases: this June saw 30 fewer comics released, and IDW in particular had its smallest slate in several years, only 19 new comics. But graphic novels had a better month than usual, thanks to the Dark Nights collections.



Magic Order #1, an Image title from Mark Millar and Netflix, had reported orders of 157,731 copies in North America; that figure had been reduced by Diamond by 10% for being fully returnable, meaning its actual number of copies shipped was closer to 175,000 copies. All retailers were given a 60% discount on the title, suggesting that North American retailers paid Diamond a bit over $250,000 for the issue (closer to $280,000 before the reduction for returnability), or about $1.60 per copy. But Diamond does not appear to have taken in that much money, because of a large purchase of variants made by the C2E2 convention at-cost or lower; the number of copies actually circulating in the Direct Market was significantly lower.



Finally, a liquidation sale resulted in a large number of older Marvel issues returning to the charts.



Read more in our preliminary and final analysis posts for the month. You can see the archived reorder charts for the weeks ending June 3, 10, 17, 24, and July 1. You can also click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month.



—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 500 charts, plus any post-#500 items from its Top 50 Indy and Small Publisher charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.

Items marked with asterisks [*] had their reported orders reduced by 10% due to returnability.

Items marked with daggers [†] received a large portion of their orders from outside the comic shop market.

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 2018 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops

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

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 500 charts, plus any post-#500 items from its Top 50 Indy, Manga, and Small Publisher charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it.

The links lead to details about each title on Amazon. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

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The Dark Nights Metal collections propelled the category to one of its better months, and Infinity Gauntlet piled up more sales, making it the top-selling graphic novel of the year so far.



