Diamond Comics released their April 2012 sales figures today. The Avengers vs. X-Men event picked up where it left of in March by being the best selling comic. Marvel place 4 comics in the top 10 slowly clawing back from the drubbing it was taking a few months ago when DC shut them out of the top 10 completely.
Marvel Comics was April’s leading publisher in both Retail Dollar and Unit Market Shares with 34.64% and 39.07% respectively. DC Entertainment, which had six of the month’s top-ten best-selling comics, was second in both Retail Dollar and Unit Market Shares with 30.12% and 34.06% respectively. It’s great to see the other publishers with over 35% of the dollar share. Though the big two only controlled 64.76% of the dollar share they controlled a healthy 73.13% of the unit share. This discrepancy is mostly due to Image’s stranglehold of the graphic novel market. Unit and Dollar Share chart below.
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye, the first volume of his best-selling zombie series from Image Comics, was the top-selling graphic novel to comics retailers for the second month in a row. Seven volumes of The Walking Dead placed in the top ten, and all fifteen volumes of the Image Comics series ranked in the top twenty. I don’t see this as a good sign for graphic novel sales in comic shops! There were some strong releases last month, were they selling at the book stores first? Top 10 Graphic Novels for April 2012 chart below.
DCnU flops hard! DC’s unit and dollar share was LOWER in April as opposed to July and August right before the reboot! They have been selling LESS books for 3 months in the row now compared to what they were selling last summer. Instead of gaining new readers DC alieanated the fan-base and the worse is yet to come!