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April 2017 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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April marked 20 years since Marvel Comics returned to Diamond Comic Distributors, ending the distribution wars and launching the Diamond Exclusive Era. While the move helped to reduce instability, the market was far from healthy, and Marvel itself was still going through Chapter 11. In April 2017, the comics market was far better shape than it was 20 years earlier, and Marvel's fortunes had vastly improved — yet Marvel had started the year slowly, and the impact of that could be seen in the overall numbers. Diamond's shipments of comics and graphic novels to comics shops in North America were off a little more than $10 million year-to-date at full retail, 5.74% — but shipments of Marvel titles to that market were off closer to $13 million at full retail, and half of that shortfall came in April. Direct Market orders apart from Marvel were actually up 2.5% year over year; had Marvel's sales to date been flat, the market would have still been up 1.5%.





To be precise, April found Marvel up against a very strong comparative month in 2016. Only five times in the 21st Century had the full retail value of Diamond's shipments of Marvel products topped $20 million; the previous April, which included Black Panther #1, was one of them. And while around the same number of Marvel periodicals made the Top 300 in April 2016 and April 2017 — 94 versus 92 — ten of 2017's issues were True Believer books, priced at one dollar. It cost $386.06 to buy one of every Marvel comic book in April 2016's Top 300; only $344.18 to do the same in April 2017. So while there's the appearance that Marvel's slate is the same size, there's less money in play; even if ordering levels were completely static (which they aren't) topping the earlier total would still be a harder climb.



Marvel's Secret Empire #0 was the nominal leader with more than 162,700 copies shipped in North America — although readers will note that there are two entries which have their orders divided: Batman #21 and Flash #21. The two issues each have a lenticular-cover version priced at a dollar more, and Diamond's practice is to merge all variants except for those with different cover prices. Merging the entries would put Batman in first place with more than 219,000 copies, and Flash second with more than 174,000 copies. It appears Marvel's issue would still be the #1 book in dollar terms.



Read more in our preliminary and final analysis posts for the month. You can also click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month.





This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 charts, plus any post-#300 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.

Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.

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

April 2017 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 300 charts, plus any post-#300 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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A significant headwind continued to blow from the graphic novel sector; orders were down 17%. The Top 300 Graphic Novel sales for the year, while still down, look a lot better than Diamond's reported figure for the overall — but that doesn't necessarily mean the fault lies in the titles in the "long tail," as Top 300 sales numbers are regularly inflated by deep discounting.



