April Comics Up Over March (original) (raw)

Our analysis of sales to comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors during April has dollars up nearly 5% over March and more titles up than down, with Batman sales by Diamond topping 150,000 copies. Comic dollars were up over 5% vs. March, graphic novels up about 1.4%, and comics and graphic novels cumulatively up about 4.6% over March. This is in line with normal seasonal trends. Twelve titles of the top 25 comic titles were up and nine down (with four not having comparables in March).

Marvel had 13 of the top 15 titles, with DC and Dreamwave taking the first two slots with Batman and Transformers Generation One Vol. 2, respectively. Twenty of the top 25 titles were Marvels, with four DCs and one Dreamwave. The top 25 comics sold by Diamond during April with our estimates of the quantities are:

153,129 Batman #614

111,355 Transformers Generation One Vol. 2 #1

103,531 Ultimate Spider-Man #39

96,624 Amazing Spider-Man #52

95,981 New X-Men #139

94,925 New X-Men #140

90,484 Ultimate X-Men #32

90,086 Ultimate X-Men #31

86,503 Uncanny X-Men #421

85,890 Uncanny X-Men #422

61,282 Wolverine #189

60,517 Daredevil #46

60,272 Daredevil #45

60,164 JLA #80

59,092 X-Treme X-Men #24

58,312 Avengers #66

57,837 Incredible Hulk #53

57,684 Incredible Hulk #52

55,280 Green Arrow #23

53,565 Green Arrow #24

52,569 Marvel Universe The End #4

51,804 Captain America #12

51,559 Marvel Universe the End #3

51,405 Fantastic Four #68

47,562 Mystique #1

We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores) rather than pre-orders (as we did for the past several years) because Diamond recently changed its reporting and began basing its indexes on actual sales (see 'ICv2 Kicks Off New Top 300 Reporting'). We use those indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title diamond uses in its calculations), and use that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond's sales on the remaining titles. Because of that change, we will not be able to do year over year comparisons until February of 2004, but in general, it's an improvement to have actual numbers to work with rather than preorders, which have significant differences from sales.

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual -- April 2003.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during April, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual -- April 2003.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during March, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--March 2003.'

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during March, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual -- March 2003.'

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through April 2003, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 50 GNs Index.'