April 2019 sales

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Newsarama has given us a preliminary look at comics sales for April 2019.

https://www.newsarama.com/45123-apri...es-charts.html

As expected, sales were down compared to March due to the absense of Detective 1000, among other reasons. Also, as expected, the War of the Realms event took the top slot.

Marvel Comics relcaimed the top publisher spot with 45.50% dollar share and 50.70% unit share.
DC followed with 23.73% and 25.89% respectively,
then Image Comics in at third with 7.93% and 7.60%.

According to John Jackson Miller of Comichron, the big takeaway from the April 2019 figures are DC's cutbacks to its comic book line are taking affect - not just for the publisher, but the entire market.

"It would be a down month year-over-year even with Action Comics #1000 excised from the charts last April," Miller told Newsarama. "Marvel is filling some of those empty rack slots (presuming any store had a spot for everything), but not all of them."

Marvel shipped 106 comic books in April 2019, to DC's 52. That's DC's lowest title count since 1991, and is 29 fewer than it released in April 2018. Comparitively, Marvel released 86 comic books in April 2018, but has exceeded 106 on several occasions - it's last being June 2016.

"I’m sure Marvel did double DC’s output in terms of number of titles some months in 1974, but I can’t find much evidence that it’s happened since," Miller explained. "DC, meanwhile, doubled up on Marvel often in the post-bankruptcy years."

However, it's interesting to note that even though DC's numbers were half of Marvel's, DC also published about half the number of comics that Marvel did (106 comics for Marvel vs. 52 for DC). This might mean that the average DC title sold just as well as the average Marvel title. It will be interesting to see if this bears out when the full figures are released. Does this mean it was smart of DC to cut its line?

These are the Top 10 Comics sold by units in April 2019:

1 WAR OF THE REALMS #1 $5.99 MAR

2 SYMBIOTE SPIDER-MAN #1 $4.99 MAR

3 THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #4 $4.99 DC

4 THE IMMORTAL HULK #16 $3.99 MAR

5 BATMAN #69 $3.99 DC

6 BATMAN #68 $3.99 DC

7 THANOS #1 $4.99 MAR

8 HEROES IN CRISIS #8 $3.99 DC

9 WEB OF VENOM: CULT OF CARNAGE #1 $4.99 MAR

10 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #20 $3.99 MAR

[ChrisG]

Dc's hope's are all pinned on the year of the villain, they expect that it will changed the sales downfall.

[Johnny]

Hulk outsold Batman? Damn. Reminds me when GL used to outsell almost anything Marvel put out. Good times.

[Digifiend]

Looks like Marvel readers have finally learned how good Hulk writer Al Ewing is. Meanwhile fans are cancelling their pulls for Tom King's Batman. This is the result.

[Robotman]

Reminds me of the 90s when Batman was DC’s only marketable character. Morrison on GL, Bendis on Superman, and Johns on Shazam and none of them can break the top 10.

[Lee Stone]

Reminds me of the 90s when Batman was DC’s only marketable character. Morrison on GL, Bendis on Superman, and Johns on Shazam and none of them can break the top 10.

They only have themselves to blame for that.

[Confuzzled]

Reminds me of the 90s when Batman was DC’s only marketable character. Morrison on GL, Bendis on Superman, and Johns on Shazam and none of them can break the top 10.

There weren't so many #1's every month in the 90s either.

[SebastianS]

Reminds me of the 90s when Batman was DC’s only marketable character. Morrison on GL, Bendis on Superman, and Johns on Shazam and none of them can break the top 10.

This is nothing like the 90s. In fact, DC could learn a lot from the 90s. Heck, sales-wise, DC can only wish it would be the 90s.

But going back to those writers... I feel a big, big "Meh". Morrison has always been associated with Kyle Rayner, not Hal Jordan, and even though his GL run has been a massive improvement over the previous volumen, I think it is still far from what most readers are interested in a GL title. Johns is way past his primer, and Bendis is a miss more often than a hit (but when he hits, oh boy...).

[madmodpoetgod]

Reminds me of the 90s when Batman was DC’s only marketable character. Morrison on GL, Bendis on Superman, and Johns on Shazam and none of them can break the top 10.

Such sad (and obvious) point you've just made. But then it seems to me that Top10 is now only for events and specials, not for floppies.
And yes, DC is making mistakes, but also, can they fight back with Marvel -considering Marvel's constant flooding of market.

[MajorHoy]

Looks like Marvel readers have finally learned how good Hulk writer Al Ewing is. Meanwhile fans are cancelling their pulls for Tom King's Batman. This is the result.

Was there any information on the number of copies sold (ordered through Diamond) to verify that "fans are cancelling their pulls for Tom King's Batman", and how much of a difference there was between March and April on King's Batman?

[Aahz]

Was there any information on the number of copies sold (ordered through Diamond) to verify that "fans are cancelling their pulls for Tom King's Batman", and how much of a difference there was between March and April on King's Batman?

At least it is safe to say that the numbers keep going down. During Snyders Run Batman sold usually more than 100K copies. Last month the Batman issues sold only 84,463 and 83,102 copies.

[Jekyll]

Hulk outsold Batman? Damn. Reminds me when GL used to outsell almost anything Marvel put out. Good times.

This new run on the Hulk is phenomenal! Highly recommend and this is coming from someone who has never picked up a solo hulk series before.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I think Tom King's sales are ok given that the story is controversial and you have to commit to it 2x a month.

It shows how Batman is basically bulletproof.

But, of course DC would have loved it if TK could deliver 100k 2x a month, but only the 52 miniseries was able to deliver that level of sales more than once a month post-90s bust. Even 52 fell below 100k in the last few months.

[married guy]

I think Tom King's sales are ok given that the story is controversial and you have to commit to it 2x a month.

It shows how Batman is basically bulletproof.

But, of course DC would have loved it if TK could deliver 100k 2x a month, but only the 52 miniseries was able to deliver that level of sales more than once a month post-90s bust. Even 52 fell below 100k in the last few months.

Which is STILL incredible as 52 shipped WEEKLY at $2.50 an issue!

[Lee Stone]

It will take years of DC cultivating fans to get them to where they don't dip so far down when there's not some event launch or special issue.
But they can't seem to wrap their head around the terms 'cultivating' and 'fans'.