More comic titles showed growth in sales in October than in September, with nine of the top 25 comics, eight Marvels and one DC, growing vs. their previous month sales.  The Marvels in the top 25 showing increases were Wolverine, Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Thor; the only DC in those ranks that grew was JLA.  Marvel had 18 of the top 25 titles, and 7 of the top 10.  The rest were all DCs.

 

At the top of the charts was Identity Crisis #5, which sold over 125,000 copies in October.  The property also showed strength further down the chart, where the second printing of #1 sold over 27,000 copies, and issues 2 through 4 all sold mid-four figure numbers. 

 

Green Lantern: Rebirth #1 failed to crack 100,000 with its October sales, but will definitely do a lot more when the second and third printings ship.

 

In graphic novels, two books, Dark Horse's Alien vs. Predator: Thrill of the Hunt and DC's Batman: Hush Vol. 2, topped 10,000 copies.  Marvel's 1602 Vol. 1 hardcover was the top dollar book; it sold over 8,000 copies at $24.99 each. 

 

In manga, Rurouni Kenshin Vol. 7 was the top piece seller, although two Dark Horse titles and two Tokyopop titles sold more dollars due to their higher cover prices. 

 

The top 25 comic titles in October, with our estimate of the number sold to comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors during the period are:

 

125,637          Identity Crisis #5

116,831          Wolverine #20

113,480          Superman #210

109,745          Secret War Book Three

101,506          Uncanny X-Men #450

  97,498          Uncanny X-Men #451

  95,917          Ultimate Spider-Man #66

  95,092          Green Lantern: Rebirth #1  

  95,071          Ultimate Spider-Man #513

  93,833          Ultimate X-Men #52

  89,615          Amazing Spider-Man #513

  88,615          X-Men #163

  83,585          Wolverine #21

  83,208          Ultimate Nightmare #3

  75,073          X-Men: The End Bk One Dreamers & Demons #4

  69,946          Batman #633

  69,918          Marvel Knights Spider-Man #7

  65,225          JLA #107

  63,154          Teen Titans #17

  59,293          Teen Titans Legion Special #1

  53,138          Daredevil #66

  51,159          Spectacular Spider-Man #20

  49,368          Thor #85

  49,298          Ultimate Elektra #3

  48,410          Strange #2
 

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 an analysis of the dollar trends in October, see 'Comics and Graphic Novels Skid 16% in October.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during October, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--October 2004.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during October, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--October 2004.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during September, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--September 2004.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during September, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--September 2004.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through October 2004, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'