Marvel SVP David Gabriel told ICV2 "We had a great June and yet people try to change the market share reports to report how we actually lost the June market share because they were figuring out other ways to calculate it. That was a new one for us."

Shouldn't be that new, David, we had been doing it for a wee while. But yes, while in June, Marvel had a greater marketshare than DC Comics that's because they published more titles. The average market share per title for Marvel was below DC. Taken individually, DC's titles outperformed Marvel's in June.

And in July, when DC beat Marvel's marketshare with 2/3 the amount of titles, they really outperformed them. But it's not the only way this calculation changes the chart. Here's how it broke down for July. Here's the publisher market share charts, as supplied by Diamond Comic Distributors.

Based on Total Unit Sales of Products Invoiced in July 2016

RETAIL MARKET SHARE PUBLISHER SHARE DC ENTERTAINMENT 35.36% MARVEL COMICS 34.20% IMAGE COMICS 8.15% IDW PUBLISHING 4.49% DARK HORSE COMICS 2.83% BOOM! STUDIOS 2.05% ARCHIE COMICS 1.36% DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT 1.19% ONI PRESS INC. 1.14% VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC 1.06% VIZ MEDIA 0.98% TITAN COMICS 0.82% RANDOM HOUSE 0.59% ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT INC 0.43% AFTERSHOCK COMICS 0.42% ACTION LAB ENTERTAINMENT 0.40% AVATAR PRESS INC 0.28% JOE BOOKS INC. 0.24% UDON ENTERTAINMENT INC 0.24% AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY PRODUCTIONS 0.14% OTHER NON-TOP 20 3.64% UNIT MARKET SHARE PUBLISHER SHARE DC ENTERTAINMENT 40.96% MARVEL COMICS 35.69% IMAGE COMICS 7.56% IDW PUBLISHING 3.00% DARK HORSE COMICS 1.98% BOOM! STUDIOS 1.68% ARCHIE COMICS 1.26% VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC 1.03% DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT 0.95% ONI PRESS INC. 0.84% TITAN COMICS 0.69% AFTERSHOCK COMICS 0.40% ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT INC 0.37% VIZ MEDIA 0.34% ACTION LAB ENTERTAINMENT 0.34% JOE BOOKS INC. 0.29% UDON ENTERTAINMENT INC 0.19% AVATAR PRESS INC 0.18% RANDOM HOUSE 0.17% AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY PRODUCTIONS 0.16% OTHER NON-TOP 20 1.94%

And here's how many actual new comics they sold in July.

PUBLISHER COMICS SHIPPED GRAPHIC NOVELS SHIPPED MAGAZINES SHIPPED TOTAL SHIPPED MARVEL COMICS 97 33 0 130 DC ENTERTAINMENT 63 31 0 94 IMAGE COMICS 61 11 1 73 IDW PUBLISHING 37 13 0 50 DARK HORSE COMICS 21 18 0 39 BOOM ENTERTAINMENT 21 10 0 31 DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT 19 7 0 26 VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC 11 5 0 16 ONI PRESS INC. 13 2 0 15 ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS 10 1 0 11 OTHER NON-TOP 10 102 144 23 269

Now we do the thing that David Gabriel hates the most – apart from the Essentials line. We divide the marketshare by the number of titles published, to work out their average marketshare per title. Then multiplied by a hundred for comparison sake. And a lot changes. First, retail marketshare, the amount of dollars brought in, divided by titles published.

PUBLISHER COMICS TOTAL DC COMICS 561 376 MARVEL 353 263 ARCHIE COMICS 136 123 DARK HORSE 135 73 IMAGE 134 112 IDW 121 90 BOOM 97 66 VALIANT 96 67 ONI 88 76 DYNAMITE 62 46

DC is even further in front of Marvel. Archie Comics is in third place – it make only have 1.35% marketshare but it took only ten titles to get it there. Dark Horse also beats Image on comics, though not when you include collections, knocking them back into fifth place. And Valiant and Oni also do better, knocking Dynamite back down

And Unit marketshare, basically how much marketshare per title based on how many actual copies were sold regardless of price, tells a similar story, though Valiant and Image both do better here.

PUBLISHER COMICS TOTAL DC COMICS 650 436 MARVEL 368 275 ARCHIE COMICS 126 115 IMAGE 124 104 VALIANT 95 64 DARK HORSE 94 51 IDW 81 60 BOOM 80 54 DYNAMITE 50 37 ONI 65 56

And again that is a shockingly good performance from Archie. The power of Betty & Veronica…