Ultimate FF Best-Selling Regular Marvel Since Origin

Based on December Numbers

Published: 01/13/2004
#1 for December

Ultimate Fantastic Four #1 came in at 173,441 copies sold by Diamond U.S. in December, the best-selling performance by a regular Marvel title since the final issue of Origin nearly two years ago (FF #60 was promotionally priced, and JLA/Avengers was a DC/Marvel co-production).  This number represents just initial U.S. direct shipments of the book, which shipped the last week of December.  Marvel announced that it had printed over 200,000 copies (see 'Ultimate FF #1 Breaks 200K Barrier'), a number that includes United Kingdom orders and copies for other channels, as well as any left over after the first week's shipment. 

 

Over-all, orders slipped vs. November, with 18 of the top 25 titles down vs. the previous month's issues. 

 

Marvel continued to use its key franchises to dominate the top slots, taking 20 of the top 25.  Seven of those twenty were two X-Men titles:  four issues of X-Treme X-Men and three of Uncanny.  DC had the other five top 25 slots. 

 

On the other hand, Marvel was shut out of the top ten slots on the graphic novel list, where Dark Horse took five of the top ten, and DC three, including the #1 graphic novel of the month, Batman Hush Vol. 2, with nearly 13,000 copies sold. 

 

The top 25 comics, with our estimates of the number sold during December, are:

 

173,441   Ultimate Fantastic Four #1

115,517   Marvel 1602 #5

110,591   New X-Men #150

109,819   Ultimate Spider-Man #50

104,572   Ultimates #12

104,443   Ultimate X-Men #40

102,725   Superman/Batman #4

100,289   Ultimate Six #5

  96,990   Ultimate Spider-Man #51

  96,420   Superman/Batman #5

  91,899   Batman #622

  90,484   Amazing Spider-Man #502

  90,318  Uncanny X-Men #434

  89,767  Uncanny X-Men #435

  89,105  Uncanny X-Men #436

  74,659  Wolverine #9

  70,321  Supreme Power #5

  69,255   Teen Titans #6

  62,721   Spectacular Spider-Man #8

  61,030   X-Treme X-Men #35

  58,981   JLA #91

  58,512   X-Treme X-Men #36

  58,043   X-Treme X-Men #37

  57,814   Avengers #75

  57,804   X-Treme X-Men #38
 
We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores) rather than pre-orders (as we did for the past several years) because Diamond recently changed its reporting and began basing its indexes on actual sales (see 'ICv2 Kicks Off New Top 300 Reporting').  We use those indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title diamond uses in its calculations), and use that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond's sales on the remaining titles.  We can check the accuracy of our numbers by comparing the Batman number that we calculate using multiple data points; our numbers for Batman are within 1/10 of 1% of each other, ensuring a high degree of accurcy.
 
Because of that change, we will not be able to do year over year comparisons until February of 2004, but in general, it's an improvement to have actual numbers to work with rather than preorders, which have significant differences from sales. 

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during December, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--December 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during December, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual--December 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during November, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--November 2003.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during November, see 'Top 50 Graphic Novels Actual--November 2003.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through December 2003, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 50 GNs Index.'