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2015 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops

Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors





OVERALL North American Dollar Sales for

Diamond's Comics, Graphic Novels, and Magazines for the year

around $579 Million

(up 7.17% year-over-year)

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January saw the release of the best-selling comic book in nearly 20 years in the Direct Market, Marvel's Star Wars #1. British sales and reorders took the comic's sales over a million copies. February saw another Loot Crate variant boosting the sales of a single issue by several hundred thousand copies, giving IDW its first chart-topper in Orphan Black #1, boosted again by Loot Crate's orders. March saw Marvel's Princess Leia #1 leading the market in a weaker month for graphic novels. The first quarter closed out up 10% overall.



April orders set another Diamond Exclusive Era record, assisted by strong graphic novel sales and DC's Convergence launch. May saw strong sales from Marvel's Secret Wars event launch — and more distortion in the sales charts from Loot Crate, with Bravest Warriors taking second place with half a million copies shipped. The second quarter closed out strongly in June; at $154.32 million in comics and graphic novel orders, it was the strongest quarter to that point in the Diamond Exclusive Era.



In part because of lower new release volume, sales in July slipped for the first month year-over-year since May of 2014. August saw sales increases, mostly on the graphic novel side. New comics sales slumped considerably in September, but graphic novels remained positive.



The Marvel relaunch drove sales in October, but many fewer products were released than had been issued in the previous October. DC scored a major win with the third Dark Knight series launch in November. December finished the year off very strong, with a month that was up 22% overall.



The end result was a year that was up 7.17% overall, with comics outperforming graphic novels, although both categories were up. Diamond sold 98 million comic books in the year, up from 92 million.



The final rankings for all comics and trade paperbacks during the year appear below.

Enough information about sales is known from past monthly rankings, actual publisher sales reports, and other sources to enable some educated guesses. Readers will find that the estimated final orders in the year for these comics exceed what was visible in the monthly charts; that's because we're making allowances for months in which reorders for items were not high enough to make the Top 300 lists.



You can find the first-month sales for these issues in the monthly charts; click one of the months at the bottom of the page or use the search tool at the top of the page to find the specific issue. Click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the year. You can also check out our Industry-Wide Report for 2015, including sectors outside the comics shop market.



—John Jackson Miller

Items marked with daggers [†] included 350,000 to 450,000 copies from the online reseller Loot Crate.

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

2015 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 end-of-year chart.

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



#1 #2 #3 #4

My analyses of final orders from Diamond Comic Distributors for individual months can be found here:



