British Comics Sales Figures - a quick snapshot

How healthy is the UK comics market? With fierce debate raging among British fans about whether titles like Titan's CLINT, the brainchild of Mark Millar, will be a success, here's a rundown of some of Britain's comic sales on the UK news stand, sourced from ABC, the official auditing body for UK magazines.

The figures listed are the Total Average Net Circulation / Distribution Per Issue between 1st January 2010 and 30th June 2010. (Doctor Who Magazine is included as it features comic strip).

These figures do not include sales in comic shops - where many of these titles aren't stocked, anyway.

• The Simpsons - 81,862 (ABC Data here)
• VIZ - 76,408 (ABC)
• Ben 10 - 74,013 (ABC)
• Simpsons Comics Presents - 63,172 (ABC)
• Doctor Who Adventures - 53,559 (ABC)
• In the Night Garden - 60,060 (ABC)
• The Beano - 46,656 (ABC)
• TOXIC - 40,235 (ABC)
• Doctor Who Magazine - 35,374 (ABC)
• BeanoMAX - 29, 067 (ABC)
• Spectacular Spider-Man - 28,504 (ABC)
• Transformers Comic - 24,617 (ABC)
• Lazy Town - 22,604 (ABC)
• Dandy Xtreme - 14,355 (ABC Data)

Neither 2000AD or Judge Dredd: The Megazine, and many other comics titles (Commando and many of the Panini US reprint digests, for example) are ABC rated.

Estimated sales of 2000AD and Judge Dredd: The Megazine vary but given that they aren't licensed titles - which today, are the most successful products on the news stand - we would not expect them to be huge. (They're still enough to make money for Rebellion, obviously).

But will CLINT, which now has a sneak preview of Issue 1 live on its official website, be bought by traditional comic fans or will the majority of its audience come from a potential new audience, more used to buying SFX (31,342), Nuts (147,134), FHM (192,586) or, perhaps, titles like Metal Hammer (44,034)?

If so, sales of comics, with which readers of this web site will be looking at, are moot, and this new Titan title may well open up a whole new market for a new wave of comics. Let's hope so...

• Discuss this on the downthetubes forum (membership required)

Tube Surfing: Alternative Press, Bryan Talbot, Comic Sales Figure and more Mackie!

• The Alternative Press Fair is back! Taking place in London on 13th February, this is a free event celebrating all things self-published and DIY: Comics and Zines, Radical Literature, Poetry, Printmaking, Book Arts and even a bit of DIY Fashion come together in this carnival of modern cottage industry!

There will be a huge variety of things to see and do, including collaborative drawing and live screen printing where you can make your own poster of the day. Plus, in the evening there will be a party to celebrate the first birthday of the Alternative Press Fair with an open mic night for all comers to try, also featuring poetry, spoken word and music. Get along and help the organisers blow out the candles! More info at www.alternativepress.org.uk

• Talking of events, Bryan Talbot and Denise Mina will be attending Glasgow's Aye Write Festival on Friday 12th March at 7.30-21.00. Bryan will of course be well known to most readers as the creator of Luther Arkwright, Alice in Sunderland, hailed by the Guardian as one of the ten best graphic novels ever and, more recently, Grandville, inspired by the work of the nineteenth-century French illustrator Gerard. Denise Mina is well known as a crime writer but recently worked with Leonardo Manco on John Constantine: Hellblazer: Empathy Is the Enemy, set in Glasgow. They'll be discussing graphic novels in a specially illustrated event with Stuart Kelly. Tickets are £7/£6 and you can find more info here on the Festival web site.

• (via Bugpowder): British independent Unico Comics is on the look out for British artists who can complete books they intend to publish in 2011! Unico's plans include a series of 22 page one shots published in b/w or using grey scale. Paul H Birch has the story at speechballoons.

• News that Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders' S.W.O.R.D. series from Marvel, which guest-starred Death's Head in its first two issues, is to meet an untimely demise has prompted a flurry of debate over on the Marvel UK-inspired It Came from Darkmoor blog. #3 came out this week, to be rewarded with the news that #5 will now be the final issue, and the Darkmoor editor has joined others campaigning for its continuation, offering several insights into the state of US comic publishing. It's worth checking out the comments on the piece, where we learn the success threshold of a US comic is, apparently, some 27,000 copies. (#1 of S.W.O.R.D. sold 21,988, according to ICV2)

• A much longer living comic was Britain's weekly title Film Fun, which celebrated its 90th anniversary last week. One of the most successful comics from Amalgamated Press, it ran from 1920 to 1962, compiling over 2,000 issues before it merged into new kid on the block Buster and Lew Stringer has published an affectionate tribute on his always-entertaining Blimey! It's another blog about comics blog...

• And finally... comic creator Simon Mackie, who kindly dropped us a line about his new blog devoted to The Beezer earlier this week, is certainly keeping busy. He's currently working on 'digitalising' an old comic strip he drew with Ben Rowdon Called 'Ride Your Horse Cowboy' and you can view the first two pages over on the Drunk Duck web comics portal. Also, look out for an autobiographical story of his coming out very soon in the mature readers only US comic Satyr, in #10, available from Dimestore Productions and other online stores.

(Compiled with thanks to John Owens and Matthew Badham)

Good News on Comic Sales?

While this report primarily concerns US comics, news that the US comic book industry, boosted by the success of films such as The Dark Knight has helped maintain growth for graphic novel sales is welcome with 2009 looking otherwise gloomy.

Hub Entertainment reports that total comics sales remained "strong" and the graphic novel category grew by five per cent in 2008 according to Steve Geppi, CEO of Diamond Comics Distributors, which services more than comic book stores in the US and the UK.

"We remain optimistic about the comic-book industry heading into 2009," he says.

Sales figures show Marvel Comics' Secret Invasion #1 was the best-selling comic book of 2008. The eight-issue miniseries about the takeover of superheroes by shape-shifting Skrulls took the first six spots. Only Uncanny X-Men #500" and DC Comics' Final Crisis #1 (No. 9) also cracked the Top 10. Diamond did not release actual sales figures, but best-selling comic books (priced at $2.99 or $3.99) normally sell more than 100,000 copies.

DC Comics dominated top sales of graphic novels taking seven of the top 10 positions, with a reprint Watchmen the top seller. The number of reprint titles in this chart is of note, reinforcing the longevity of graphic novel titles on the bookshelves, in direct contrast to many other book genres which tend to depend on early sales for their success.

Diamond notes Marvel and DC continue to dominate the US comics industry: Marvel took in 41 percent of retail sales, DC 29 per cent and Dark Horse 6.5 per cent.

Top Ten US Comics 2008

1. Secret Invasion #1 (Marvel)
2. Secret Invasion #2 (Marvel)
3. Secret Invasion #3 (Marvel)
4. Secret Invasion #4 (Marvel)
5. Secret Invasion #5 (Marvel)
6. Secret Invasion #6 (Marvel)
7. Uncanny X-Men #500 (Marvel)
8. Secret Invasion #7 (Marvel)
9. Final Crisis #1 (DC)
10. Secret Invasion No. 8 (Marvel)

Top Ten Graphic Novels 2008

1. Watchmen (DC)
2. Batman: The Killing Joke (DC)
3. Joker (DC)
4. Y: The Last Man Vol. 10 (DC)
5. Walking Dead Vol. 8 (Image)
6. Batman: Dark Knight Returns (DC)
7. Fables: The Good Prince (DC)
8. Wanted (Image)
9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You (Dark Horse)
10. Y: The Last Man Vol. 1 (DC)

Source: Diamond Comics Distributors

Marvel Revenues Double

US comics publisher Marvel Entertainment has reported a huge growth in its operating results for its second quarter and six months ended 30th June 2008, with licensing and film revenues helping to swell its coffers - but comic sales have declined after a strong start to the year.

Its earnings estimate for the rest of 2008 proved a disappointment and despite a 60 per cent rise in profits, shares in the company dropped in price, although still better than this time last year, an indication perhaps of just how difficult things are in the publishing world at present, and, indeed, the wider economy.

Net sales across all its operations for the second quarter of 2008 are reported as $156.9 million, with a net income of $46.7 million (nearly £24 million), compared to net sales of $101.5 million and net income of $29.1 million (£14.8 million) in the first quarter.

Income from licensing deals and and initial contributions from film production, with foreign pre-sales of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk helping spur the year-over-year improvement, much to the delight of Marvel executives. These latest figures do not include box-office receipts for the two films, totaling at over $800 million to date worlwide.

"Revenue from Marvel's film production segment commenced in the second quarter with the release of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk," commented Morton Handel, who has been has been the Chairman of Marvel's Board of Directors of Marvel since October 1998 and seen the company go through difficult times. Although analysts have expressed disappointment at the figures, Hanel remains biullish.

"We're very pleased with the success of these films, which have generated $817 million in global box office receipts," he said, " $571 million [£396 million] from Iron Man and $246 million [£126 million] from The Incredible Hulk -- with Iron Man still to open in Japan.

"Because of the timing of our distributors' revenue reporting, our Q2 results did not reflect any revenue from the films' box office performance. We did, however, record initial revenues in Q2 from the foreign pre-sales of both movies. In addition, the high level of media and consumer interest in these two films helped to drive strong results in our domestic and international licensing divisions in the period."

Forbes. com reports that Marvel expects its film production arm to add sales in a range of $65 million to $80 million in 2008 while licensing is expected to contribute $260 million to $270 million, and publishing is expected to bring in $130 million to $135 million.

"With growing international sales to complement our already strong domestic licensing program and a focus on generating higher value from online and interactive activities, we believe Marvel is well positioned as we develop our pipeline of future self-produced feature films," Handel feels.

Upcoming feature film projects include Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Despite the success of the company's licensing and film arms, comic sales apear to have fallen, but Marvel puts the decline down to strong sales in the first quarter, such as limited edition comic book series The Dark Tower and The Death of Captain America, which have skewed results.

Marvel still commands a strong position in the monthly Top 300 comic sales lists of comics sold via Diamond Distributors, pulished by icv2.com, with even mid-range titles, such as Captain Britain& MI13, written by British author Paul Cornell selling some 37,900 copies, far higher than Virgin's Dan Dare title which sold just over 6,400 copies in May. But outside the comics retail industry last month, only two titles in the Top 20 Graphic Novels sold in US bookstores were published by Marvel, with manga publishers Viz and TokyoPop taking the lion's share of the top spots.

• View Top 300 Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Figures
• Visit the Marvel web site

US Comic, Graphic Novel Sales Down

Comics trade site ICV2 reports sales of periodical comics in the US declined in May - the fourth month sales have dropped in a row, posting a 6% drop compared with sales in May of 2007 when, led by the Death of Captain America, some 15 titles sold over 100,000 copies (versus just 7 in May 2008).

Marvel's Secret Invasion series topped the sales charts, although orders were down on #1 by 27%.

Although this may sound like bad news, periodical comics have still posted a 7% gain from April, though it was not enough to compete with May 2007.

ICV2 also reports that for the second month in a row graphic novel sales declined and actually dropped more precipitously than periodical comics, dropping 17% when compared with May 2007, which was a very strong month for graphic novel releases led by Y: The Last Man Vol. 9, Walking Dead Vol. 6, five various Civil War-related trades plus DC’s 52 Vol. 1, Archaia Studios’ Mouseguard and Dynamite Entertainment’s The Boys.

Top Ten US Comics
Thesw figures are based on ICv2's estimates of the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the top 25 comic titles in May

182,443 Secret Invasion #2 (of 8)

144,826 Final Crisis #1 (of 7)

109,185 New Avengers #41

108,136 Avengers/Invaders #1 (of 12)

105,864 Invincible Iron Man #1

105,508 Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1

105,039 Batman #676 RIP

96,890 Mighty Avengers #13

96,116 Batman #677 RIP

95,281 Mighty Avengers #14

• Read the full IVC2 report
• For the top 300 comics in May, see ICVc2's Top 300 Comics Actual--May 2008 • For the top 100 graphics novels in May, see ICVc2's Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--April 2008."
• For an overview and analysis of the best-selling comics and graphic novels in May, see ICVc2's feature 'Secret Invasion' on Top Again