Comic store sales of the top comic titles were overwhelmingly down on a piece basis in December, with 21 of the 23 continuing series in the top 25 showing issue-over-issue sales declines.  Infinite Crisis held at #1, with the third issue at 188,853 copies, only a modest 9% drop vs. the second.   Marvel published the only two titles showing increases, but one of those, X-Men, was an artifact of its shipment earlier in the month than the previous issue; sales were actually down vs. the issue that shipped around the same time in November.  So only Marvel Knights Spider-Man, of all the titles in the top 25, actually had sales that were anything to celebrate. 

 

DC had a great showing at the top of the chart, with four of the top five titles.  Still, DC had only nine of the top 25 titles, and remained in the #2 market share slot with 32% of the dollars, compared to roughly 37% for Marvel.

 

It took us a while to find the previous issue of Secret War; it shipped in March, nine months before Book Five.

 

The top graphic novel, DC's Villains United, sold only a modest 8,100+ copies.

 

Dark Horse's Samurai Executioner was the top manga graphic novel, edging out Naruto Vol. 8 by around 9%.   This is substantially different from the situation in bookstores, where Naruto was the runaway #1.  A shipping glitch did cause comic stores to receive the Naruto volume considerably behind the bookstores, which undoubtedly hurt reorders. 

 

The top 25 comic titles in December, with our estimates of the number sold to North American comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors, are:
 

188,853            INFINITE CRISIS #3 (Of 7)

162,993            ALL STAR BATMAN & ROBIN #3

124,300            NEW AVENGERS #14

113,369            JUSTICE #3 (Of 12)

102,248            SUPERMAN / BATMAN #23

100,947            ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS HULK #1 (Of 6)

  94,493            ULTIMATES 2 #9

  88,437            GREEN LANTERN #6

  81,282            UNCANNY X-MEN #467

  79,261            AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #527

  79,090            SECRET WAR BOOK FIVE (Of 5)

  77,189            X-MEN #179

  76,899            JLA #123

  75,598            X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS #2 (Of 6)

  74,537            ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #87

  74,386            X-MEN #180

  72,984            ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #88

  72,314            FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #3

  70,716            WOLVERINE #37

  68,323            ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #26

  68,045            MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #21

  67,155            TEEN TITANS #30

  64,490            GREEN LANTERN CORPS: RECHARGE #3 (Of 6)

  63,953            SPIDER-WOMAN: ORIGIN #1 (Of 5)

  63,719            SUPERMAN #224
 
We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores), using Diamond's published sales indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations), and using 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 accuracy.
 
For an analysis of the dollar trends in December, see '2005 Graphic Novel Sales in Comic Stores Up 33%.'
 

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 2005.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during December, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--December 2005.'

 

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 2005.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during November, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--November 2005.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through December 2005, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'