Posted in: Comics | Tagged: charlie adlard, Comics, image, robert kirkman, skybound, walking dead

The Walking Dead's 383,612 Sales In Perspective: 13 Covers In 2012 Vs The Darkness #11's 11 Covers In 1997 Vs Obama Vs Justice League

Published Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:16:58 -0500

Last updated Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:53:16 -0500

Bleeding Cool has been telling you for awhile that it looked like The Walking Dead #100 would be one of the highest-ordered comics in many years. As whispers about this spread in recent weeks, a common response I saw around the net was "yeah, but… 13+ covers!". Well, it turns out that the last comic to beat it (in initial order) — from 15 years ago — had an unusually large number of variants as well.

There's a couple interesting things worth pointing out about the official Image pr about this matter:

The Darkness #11 had 11 covers. 10 "regular" variants plus a chromium chase variant, the method of attaining it I don't recall (Retailers who remember, was it orders based? Or a Diamond Retailer Summit variant? John Jackson Miller mentioning 11 covers in his comment on the month makes me think it may have been orders-based)
Miller estimated that Darkness #11 did 357,006 — which, obviously, is less than 383,612. Longtime numbers-watchers will know that those numbers are calculated and are not hard numbers from Diamond (in recent years they haven't included UK numbers, for example) — and being 9 percent or so off wouldn't be a huge surprise — but it's worth noting in this case because this book is all that stands in the way of Walking Dead #100 being the best-selling initial-order book in the one-distributor / Diamond era, before which reasonable estimates would be much harder (if not outright impossible now) to calculate. It's also possible that additional store-exclusive variants come into play (and I believe many publishers had to distribute those through Diamond to the specific store at that point due to the terms of exclusive distro agreements), but most sources I can find are only citing 11 covers, though Omnicomic says there were 15. Presumably Image got the actual Darkness #11 number from Diamond or their own records, it'd be interesting to know what the real number was in this case.
It's also worth mentioning in this conversation, perusing John Jackson Miller's numbers, that there are a couple other comics that are past this level of sales which went through multiple printings over several months: Amazing Spider-Man #583 (the Obama issue) went through at least 5 printings and he's estimated it at 530,500 in total. Though again, it's important to point out that Walking Dead #100 is using a different standard (initial orders and therefore single-month figures), it's useful for putting the Walking Dead #100 number in some additional context.
Justice League #1 is another special case. DC has kept it in print for at least 10 months and 8 printings. After the 7th printing came out, John Rood told newsarama that sales across all platforms (which presumably include digital) topped 400,000. So plus or minus including the digital, plus or minus an additional printing, it's in the conversation regarding the best selling comics in the Diamond-centric era.
Honorable mention in the conversation is Marvel's Civil War from 2006, which ultimately saw multiple issues get above 300,000, and I believe it did so with fewer variants/printings than most of the above (Civil War #2 got to a 3rd print for example).

But again, keep in mind that Image is using a different measuring stick (initial orders) than the books that went through multiple-printings over many months. I'm providing those to give us some context regarding what the best-selling comics during the Diamond-centric-distribution era have been. In any case, with Marvel NOW and the Uncanny Avengers now in the on deck circle, it'll be interesting to see if we're having this conversation again in October.

Robert Kirkman's Eisner Award-winning The Walking Dead comic series for Image Comics/Skybound reached its milestone 100th issue and instantly sold out of its 383,612 initial orders on July 11th, the same day it was released, effectively becoming the best-selling comic book in initial orders for any publisher since 1997, when Image Comics/Top Cow's The Darkness #11 was released. The Walking Dead, created and written by Kirkman with art by Charlie Adlard, featuring 13 variant covers for the 100th issue — all sold out — has been the talk of San Diego Comic-Con with a series of events celebrating its release. Kirkman is a partner in Image Comics, the first person invited to join the comic book industry's premier publisher of creator-owned comics since its inception twenty years ago.

"This is a remarkable achievement," said Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson. "It's extremely uncommon, if not flat-out rare, for a comic book to see a sustained increase in sales following its first issue, but The Walking Dead steadily climbed up and up since its launch in 2003, and we couldn't be more proud of Robert, Charlie and the whole Walking Dead team."

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