Mayo Report for 2019-10
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Top Comics List Top Comics Breakdown Top Trades List Top Trades Breakdown
October 2019 had 7,961,142 units in the top 300 comics list, an increase of 1,043,607 units from last month. Seven issues sold over 100,000 units. Three were first issues. Two were the final issues of House of X and Powers of X. One was Spawn #301 which dropped by 30.57% and still sold 186,031 units. The other issue over 100,000 units was DCeased #5 with sales split across two price points putting the two items lower in the rankings. The total sales for DCeased #5 was 107,472 units which would have been in seventh place in the rankings. Lower on the list was DCeased #6 with a total of 93,310 units split across two price points.
This is the highest sales level for the top 300 comics list since the 8,793,842 units for October 2016. It is also the 11th highest total for the top 300 comics list since Diamond first started reporting invoiced sales back in February 2003. Clearly sales for October 2019 were stronger than usual.
The total of $35,765,767.37 retail dollar is the highest dollar total of the top comics list during that time. The retail dollars are a stronger increase over time than the units because of the increasing cover price over time.
This chart shows both the average price for the top 300 items on the list and the weighted average price. The average price is calculated by adding up the price for each entry on the list and dividing by the number of entries. The weighted average price is calculated but adding the retail dollar amount for each entry which is the price multiplied by the number of units and then dividing that by the total number of units for the top 300. The result from this second calculation reflects the price of items which sold more units more than the price of items which sold fewer units. In other words, the price of items at the top of the list influence the weighted average more than the price of the items at the bottom of the list. Interestingly, for ten months the two calculations resulted in the same average value while in a few extreme cases the impact of top selling items at higher than average prices can clearly be seen with the difference between the two values being as much as about 50 cents.
The premiere publishers accounted for 98.52% of the total units for the top 300 comics this month while all of the other publishers with items in the top 300 accounted for 1.48% of the total units for the top 300 comics. Perhaps more importantly, Marvel and DC gained in sales in the top 300 while all of the other publishers lost sales.
Marvel Comics placed 4,009,905 units in the top 300 comics, an increase of 690,976 units and accounted for 50.37% of the total units. DC Comics placed 2,801,747 units in the top 300 comics, an increase of 576,948 units and accounted for 35.19% of the total units. Image Comics placed 481,756 units in the top 300 comics, a decrease of 52,668 units and accounted for 6.05% of the total units.
The up-swing of 2,892,853 units from new and increased sales was enough to compensate for the down-swing of 1,849,246 units from lost sales for the net increase of 1,043,607 units.
New titles added 1,854,564 units making it the most influential category this month in term of the month-to-month change in sales for the top 300 comics. Continuing titles which lost sales decreased by -795,543 units from last month to 2,828,715 units this month and formed the largest part of the unit sales for the month.
The 18 titles across the 4 publishers in the continuing titles which gained sales category accounted for 743,966 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 85,291 units. Marvel Comics accounted for 92.12% of the change in this category with Venom and Black Cat at the top of this category. Red Sonja and Red Sonja and Vampirella/Betty and Veronica had the highest number of covers for the items in the category which were solicited with 12 covers and 11 covers respectively.
Even with four shipping weeks in September and five in October, only four titles shipped more issues in October than in September. The 4 titles across the 3 publishers in the continuing titles which shipped more issues category accounted for 428,191 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 160,873 units. Marvel Comics accounted for 74.94% of the change in this category. Immortal Hulk was saw the largest increase in the total units sold for the title in this category.
The 6 titles across the 3 publishers in the continuing titles with reasonably stable sales category accounted for 101,657 units in the top 300 comics with a downswing of 891 units.
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl just barely stayed in this category which cuts off at a decrease of 250 units. I'm considering dropping this category and merging these items into the continuing titles which lost sales category but that category usually has over a majority of the titles in I making it rather crowded. Another option would be to shift the categories for titles with decrease sales into groups based on the percentage drop with a category for "standard attrition" of up to some threshold, another for largest drop and a third category for massive drops over some threshold, perhaps 50%. Email me at John.Mayo@ComicBookResources.com is you have constructive suggestions on this topic.
The 5 titles across the 2 publishers in the continuing titles which shipped fewer issues category accounted for 358,426 units in the top 300 comics with a downswing of 263,243 units.
Marvel Comics accounted for 96.83% of the change in this category. The final issues of House of X and Powers of X were both up in sales but since only a single issue of each title shipped in October versus the two in September, the sales for the titles were down for the month. Every issue of both titles placed in the top 500 comics this month. House of X and Powers of X give Marvel a great foundation for launching this Dawn of X round of titles as we saw this month with X-Men which topped the list. House of X and Powers of X will move to the defunct titles category next month but hose lost sales should be morethan compensated for by the other Dawn of X titles launch in November.
The 120 titles across the 12 publishers in the continuing titles which lost sales category accounted for 2,828,715 units in the top 300 comics with a downswing of 795,543 units. As I mentioned above, this category gets rather crowded.
Marvel Comics accounted for 43.40% of the change in this category, DC another 30.68% and Image another 12.63%.
Spider-Man was the title with the largest drop in this category. Spider-Man #2 had the second largest issue-to-issue drop this month with a 64.72% drop of 112,395 units behind Marvel Comics #1001 which had a 75.72% drop of 168,679 units. The key difference between the two titles is Spider-Man was telling a continued story while Marvel Comics #1000 and Marvel Comics #1001 were more like anthologies and while there was some continued story threads, they weren't parts of the same story in the way the issues of Spider-Man were.
The largest drop by percentage was the 84.55% drop of 37,724 units on Bloodshot #2. Perhaps the upcoming Bloodshot movie will have an impact on the comic book sales but history tells us that is unlikely to happen.
As mentioned above, Spawn #301 had a 30.57% drop of 76,568 units and sold 186,031 units. The ten covers and the promotional push around the title exceeding the 300 issue run of Cerebus helped sustain the high level of sales from last issue. Spawn #302 has three covers all of which seem to be open-to-order so a large drop in sales to back around the usual sales level for the title is highly likely.
The 44 titles across the 11 publishers in the new titles category accounted for 1,854,564 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 1,854,564 units.
Marvel Comics accounted for 56.29% of the change in this category. The Dawn of X titles launched well. X-Men accounted for 13.79% of the change in this category with 255,724 units. Clearly those are sustainable sales but the sales could drop significantly and the second issue could still be the top seller next month. Marauders launched with 86,830 units and Excalibur launched at 83,023 units.
All four issue of Mark Millar's Chrononauts Futureshock were released on October 30th. The title sold 46,427 units overall. Every copy ordered initial by by the final order cutoff was fully returnable according to the solicitations from August 2019. Given the returnability and the series all being released on the same day it would make sense to see little difference in sales between the four issues. But that isn't what happened. The firs issue sold 16,522 units, the second sold 10,275 units, the third sold 9,872 units and the final issue sold 9,758 units. This is a reflection of the orders from retailers and may or may not reflect how the title sold to readers. It will be interesting to see how a trade or hardcover sells if they are eventually released.
The 12 titles across the 5 publishers in the returning titles category accounted for 400,965 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 400,965 units.
DCeased accounted for 50.07% of the change in this category. The DCeased: A Good Day To Die one-shot was released last month instead of a regular issue of DCeased.
The 45 titles across the 15 publishers in the suspended titles category accounted for a downswing of 467,085 units. DC Comics accounted for 33.19% of the change in this category with Doomsday Clock topping the list by a wide margin followed by SHAZAM!. Both titles have been had significant delays.
The 28 titles across the 10 publishers in the defunct titles category accounted a downswing of 259,848 units. Marvel Comics accounted for 30.06% of the change in this category and Image another 23.27% of it.
The 9 titles across the 2 publishers in the annuals/specials category accounted for 208,055 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 201,356 units, a downswing of 9,095 units for a net an increase of 192,261 units. With five week months often comes a number of annuals and October was no exception. DC had 128,510 units of annuals while Marvel had a net increase of 63,751 units for the month.
The 67 titles across the 2 publishers in the non-series category accounted for 962,762 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 946,191 units, a downswing of 747,292 units for a net an increase of 198,899 units.
DC had a net increase of 154,980 units in this category this month units compared to the 43,919 unit increase for Marvel. But Marvel had 571,076 units sold this month in this category versus the 391,686 units sold for DC. Marvel has a lot more momentum and activity in this category but DC is starting to get more active in it with things like the Dollar Comics line.
The 11 titles across the 3 publishers in the reorders category accounted for 73,841 units in the top 300 comics with an upswing of 47,728 units, a downswing of 110,364 units for a net a decrease of 62,636 units.
Marvel had strong reorders on Spider-Man #1 while reorders on House of X and Powers of X cooled off with the conclusion of those titles. Every issue of both House of X and Powers of X placed in the top 500 comics this month indicating continued interest in those titles even if the number of units reordered were dropping overall for the title. That should be expected as the titles wrap up and people start shifting attention towards the collected edition.
We've been seeing a generally upward trend in unit sales since February and hopefully this trend continues next month. There are some challenges to overcome in order for that to happen. House of X and Powers of X have both ended taking 345,354 units off the board for Marvel next month. Many of the Dawn of X titles have launched so we might seen second issue drops on those next month. Spawn will probably drop down to the normal sales level for the title now that it is past issue #301. DCeased has ended for DC taking 200,782 units off the board going into next month. These sorts of challenges are nothing new. With the short lifespan of many titles, this sort of rebuilding of sales from month to month is commonplace.
For a more in-depth discussion of the sales data, check out the Mayo Report episodes of the Comic Book Page podcast at www.ComicBookPage.com. The episode archived cover the past decade of comic book sales on a monthly basis with yearly recap episodes. In addition to those episodes on the sales data, every Monday is a Weekly Comics Spotlight episode featuring a comic by DC, a comic by Marvel and a comic by some other publisher. I read around 100 new comics a month so the podcast covers a wide variety of the comics currently published. If you are looking for more or different comics to read, check out the latest Previews Spotlight episode featuring clips from various comic book fans talking about the comics they love. With thousands of comics in Previews every month, Previews Spotlight episodes are a great way to find out about new comic book titles that may have flown under your comic book radar.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at John.Mayo@ComicBookResources.com.
