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DC Comics wants comic book stores to order copies of DC's K.O. Knightfight #1 like it's half of an Absolute Batman
Posted in: Comics, DC Comics, Image, Marvel Comics | Tagged: absolute, comic shop, energon, invincible, ultimate
Comic Stores Are Booming Again As Readers Are Getting Younger
Comic book shops are booming again, as sales are up and the audiences for comic books in store are getting younger
In the UK, Circana BookScan is reporting a slight decline in print book sales in 2025 compared to last year. Up to the 4th of October, print sales have slipped 0.9% year on year so far. However, sales of graphic novels have risen 0.7% in that time span.
While in the USA, ICv2's CEO Milton Griepp discussed the outlook for the future at New York Comic Con last weekend, stating that growth returned in comic book sales last year, with comics and graphic novel sales totalling $1.935 billion. After growth in 2021 and 2022, with a fall in 2023, sales in 2024 are up 73% from 2019; they state that the trend is continuing through 2025. Indeed, while sales in graphic novels rose in UK bookstores, they dipped in US bookstores, while revenue in comic shops went up by about 13.3% in 2024. Graphic novel sales increased by 1.3%, while floppy comics sales grew by 12.2%.
The ComicHub POS system behind the Bleeding Cool Weekly Bestseller List which measured around 5-10% of the direct market, had reported that sales for 2025 were up 27% compared to the same period in 2024, when the 2023 to 2024 increase was 13.3% increase from 2023 to 2024. And they attribute this to new, younger readers coming into the direct market, with DC's Absolute line, Marvel's Ultimate comics, and Image's Energon and Invincible universes used as initial ways in. And those who grew up reading Japanese manga, American kids' comics like Dog Man or Korean webtoons, have been discovering comic shops. Gen X are the new Wednesday Warriors. Griepp states, "There is a problem, though, which is that the success is hampered by the fact that there's not always availability to comic stores of the graphic novels they want to get. And I think there are two reasons for that. One, obviously, the chaos in distribution that's been happening since the beginning of this year, and then also just the surprise that publishers are experiencing in how well some of their books are selling, and so they're not necessarily prepared in terms of the amount of inventory they have available."
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