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May 2019 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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May's orders of comic books and graphic novels in the comics shop market were higher than in any month since the previous October, but not quite good enough to beat May 2018, which had Amazing Spider-Man #800 among other blockbusters in the mix. Retailers ordered almost exactly $47 million in comic books and graphic novels from Diamond Comic Distributors, including 7.27 million comic books; both those figures were down 4% year-over-year versus the previous May, and the year-to-date total slipped slightly into the red for the first time in 2019.



DC's DCeased #1 led new comics periodicals with more than 242,000 copies sold to retailers, making it the year's second-best seller to that point. DC took four of the top five slots on the charts and saw its sales to retailers increase 5% in dollar terms, despite shipping 14 fewer comics than it did in the same month in 2018.



DC's 25-cent Year of the Villain #1 was counted toward its unit market share, which is part of why the unit gap between DC and Marvel was narrow; the market share tables appear to been calculated based on a data set that included as many as a million copies that do not appear in the regular comics charts; the DC issue likely accounts for most of them.



Marvel shipped 118 new comic books to market, an increase of 26 comics over May 2018 and a figure higher than any since Diamond began reporting monthly release counts in 2013. (Second and later printings are not counted as new titles, but $1 reprints like the True Believers books are counted as new and distinct publications. Variants are only counted separately if they're at a different price point as the "regular" version.) While the number of new comics Marvel shipped was likely higher than any in the 21st Century to date, it wasn't an all-time record, as at the peak of the early 1990s comics boom, Marvel shipped 126 new comic books to retailers in August 1993.



Image, meanwhile, cut its offerings even more than DC did versus the previous May, releasing 38 new comic books in the month. Down from 65 comic books in May 2018, it was the publisher's smallest slate since at least 2013. Dark Horse, meanwhile, benefited from Umbrella Academy's Netflix show, placing fourth in dollar market share and landing three of the series' collections in the Top 10 Graphic Novels by units.



Several of the internal benchmarks showed growth year-over-year, with the 50th, 200th, 400th, and 500th place comics all seeing increases versus the books in the same slot in May 2018.



Graphic novel units were down versus the previous May by the same percentage that dollars were up — 5.36% — a gap explained partially by the fact that the $7.99 Tag and Bink Were Here #1 was classified as a graphic novel that month. It led the charts then with more than 16,000 units but didn't translate to as many dollars.



War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas #1 received a promotional overship, with retailers receiving one copy free for each one they bought. Since Diamond's dollar statistics are based on what retailers paid in, those added copies have zero influence on the publisher's dollar market shares or the issue's dollar ranking. (Units are counted, of course: Diamond's chart is not a scoreboard, but a commodity report detailing how many books are on the market.)



Some publishers are bundled together in Diamond's market shares by the distributors from which it obtains the books. St. Martin's shares include books listed below as being from First Second and Seven Seas; Random House's shares includes Kodansha and Vertical; Hachette includes Disney Hyperion; and SCB includes One Peace.



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. And you can see the reorders that were placed during the month on our pages for reorders and advance reorders for the year.



—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.

May 2019 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.

#1 #2 #3 #4

The DC Ink title Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale was the top-seller in a month in which the top seven were all in the 4,000-5,000 copy range.



