Posted in: Comics | Tagged: 2011, Comics, dc, marketshare, marvel, october

DC Comics Smashes Marvel Marketshare In October, Takes 51% Of Sales

Back in March this year, Marvel Comics had a 40% share of money spent on comics through Diamond Comic Distributors, and a 45% share of the number of comics sold. DC had only 27.62% and 31.5% share respectively.

Well what a change half a year can make. After taking Marvel on marketshare for the month of September, albeit only by half a percent in dollar marketshare, in October DC Comics has soared ahead, buoyed by sales of second prints from September's issues, and from many of their October titles maintaining or surpassing their initial order numbers for September.

Which means in October DC Comics has 42.47% of dollars spent on comics, to Marvel's 29.1% share, turning that half a point gap into thirteen and a half points. And on actual numbers of products sold, DC has taken 50.97% of sales to Marvel's 20.29%.

Which means more than one in every two comics sold by Diamond in October was a DC comic.

And overall comics sales that were up in September continue to rise in October, by just under 7%. To a figure that is over 30% what is was October last last. That's right folks, in one year, comics sales have risen by a third.

The last two months' performance has seemingly done the impossible and turned the tanker right around, to the extent that in August, overall comics sales of the year were well below that of 2010 at the same point. Now they are above where 2010 was at this point.

It's an incredible performance that can be laid at the feet of DC Comics, and specifically that they haven't increased their sales at the expense of other publishers, rather everyone's sales have either been maintained or are rising, as the DC promotional plan have brought in new readers or brought back lapsed readers – who have then gone on to try other non-DC comics.

Graphic novels have suffered however. They were down last month, they are down again, this time falling 11%, or a third compared to October last year.

Chartwise, DC have taken the top 6 selling books on Diamond's lists, Justice League, Batman, Action Comics, Green Lantern, Flash and Detective Comics with the Marvel's own relaunches of Hulk and X-Men butting into the top ten, along with the last issue of Fear Itself.

Here's the data for October just issued by Diamond. It does not include UK sales.

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS

TOP 10 TOYS

TOP 10 GAMES

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