Comic Book Sales by Month
Preorders and/or Final Orders Placed By Comics Shops With Distributors
The monthly sales data for comics on Comichron comes from comic book distributors who serve comics shops in North America.
These figures come in two varieties: Preorders, for information before February 2003, and Final Orders, for information from February 2003 and later.
The rankings of comics preordered from Capital City Distribution, one of the largest distributors of the 1980s and 1990s, appear here beginning with...
The rankings of comics preordered from Diamond Comic Distributors appear here, beginning with...
My analysis combining the preorders retailers placed with Diamond Comic Distributors and those they placed with Heroes World Distribution (Marvel's exclusive sales agent from 1995-1997) is hosted here:
From April 1997 to June 2020, one distributor handled the vast majority of comics sales to comic shops. My analysis of orders retailers placed solely with Diamond Comic Distributors during the Diamond Exclusive Era is hosted here:
Starting in April 2020, DC comic books became available through two new distributors. Our projected rankings and relative sales levels for comics ordered from DC comics' distributors, UCS Comic Distributors and Lunar Distribution, can be found here through June 2021, when we stopped reporting them separately:
Beginning with July 2021, you can find our DC rankings with the all-industry rankings, further below.
Starting in April 2020, Diamond was no longer DC's exclusive distributor — and beginning in July, it was no longer possible to get DC comic books exclusively and graphic novels from Diamond. Our projected rankings and relative sales levels for comics ordered from Diamond Comics Distributors in this period can be found here:
Our combined projected rankings and relative sales levels for comics ordered from Diamond Comics Distributors and DC's distributors, UCS Comic Distributors and Lunar Distribution can be found here, as well as pages recounting known reorders, advance reorders, and second-printing information for months for which sales data has not been released:
Diamond Comics Distributors stopped publishing monthly sales charts after April 2022, but it continued to release weekly reorder and advance-reorder reports. These appear on the following pages:
New (and old) months will be added to the site in the future. Click to skip to a selection of distributor sales by year.
DISTRIBUTOR SALES BY YEAR
There are also annual pages for all the years from 1989 onward here on site, aggregating unit and dollar sales and depicting the top-selling comic book from each month. These pages are linked below. More coming soon!