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November 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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The Direct Market's momentum, begun in spring, hit a bump in November due, in part, to significantly smaller slates from comics publishers. Already at a disadvantage against November 2017, which had one more shipping week, November 2018 saw 121 fewer comics released, a drop of 22% and the smallest new comics slate since April 2016, before the DC Rebirth event began. Marvel's 79 new comic books was its lowest number of new releases since October 2015 — and DC's 67 new comics were down from 95 the previous year.



Despite the month's drop overall and its smaller slate, Marvel actually had a better month than it did the year before; its overall dollar sales were up 3%. The publisher had the top comic book in dollar and unit sales in Uncanny X-Men #1, priced at $7.99; it had North American orders topping 176,000 copies.



It was also a big month for Venom. In addition to the surprising strong performance of the character's film in theaters, Marvel had the top graphic novel in Venom by Donny Cates Vol. 1 and a top-three new-comics finisher in Web of Venom: Carnage Born #1. Amazing Spider-Man #10 did better than #9 thanks to a J. Scott Campbell variant, seen at right.



It was a much softer month for DC comparatively, year-over-year, largely because of the aforemetioned smaller slate, but also because November 2017 saw the launch of Doomsday Clock. It did have a significant launch in The Green Lantern #1. Image was off single-digits year-to-year after a big graphic novel month, and Dark Horse was up substantially.



Graphic novel sales were off dramatically. Graphic novel slates were 12% smaller than in the previous November, but the 840-title October-November slate in 2018 was actually 5% larger than 2017's total number of offerings. With Halloween being a New Comic Book Day in 2018, a big chunk of releases in advance of the holidays landed in October, instead.



And while October's comics chart saw multiyear highs at some of the middle tier benchmarks on the charts, the small number of releases meant that the 200th, 300th, and 400th-place comics hit six-year lows. If Halloween had fallen on a Tuesday, the two months would have looked much more normal.



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









Read more in ourandposts for the month. You can see the reorders that were placed during the month on our pages for reorders and advance reorders for the year. You can also click to skip to thefor the month.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 500 charts, plus any post-#500 items from its Top Independent 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 listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.

November 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 Independent and Manga 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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Graphic novel dollar sales were down a colossal 30% year-over-year. Twelve percent fewer were released than in November 2017.



