Estimated sales of the top comic titles to comic stores by Diamond Comic Distributors were up in March, with 14 of the top 25 titles showing increases in sales over the previous issues.  DC had a stronger month than usual, with 10 out of the top 25 titles, led by Superman/Batman #8 (which has now gone through two sold-out printings) at #1, and the Superman family of books, which is riding the red-hot Godfall story arc.  Both Superman/Batman and the entire Superman family were up over sales on previous issues.

 

The final Avengers/JLA, #4, came in at over 143,000 copies, a little down from sales on #3, but still a very strong finish for this popular cross-over.

 

For Marvel, New X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate Spider-Man were up over sales in February, and Marvel was strong at the top with seven out of the top ten titles.

 

In graphic novels, Dark Horse's Hellboy, pumped by the strong box office performance of the film, had six of the top 25 slots.  The property is also selling well in other channels, see 'Hellboy Top American Graphic Novel in Bookstores.' 

 

The top 25 comics, with our estimates of the quantities sold during March, are:

 

146,908            Superman/Batman #8

143,565            Avengers/JLA #4

117,253            New X-Men #154   

108,791            Superman/Batman #7

106,873            Ultimate Fantastic Four #4

101,329            Ultimates #13

  97,002            Ultimate X-Men #43

  93,025            Ultimate Spider-Man #54

  91,525            Ultimate Spider-Man #55

  86,431            Uncanny X-Men #441

  83,613            Amazing Spiderman #505

  83,371            Batman #625

  83,096            Superman #203

  76,134            JLA #94

  69,898            JLA #95

  69,815            Wolverine #12

  69,056            Teen Titans #9

  66,438            Adventures of Superman #626

  66,038            Action Comics #813

  64,429            Supreme Power #8

  59,685            Wolverine/Punisher #1

  55,533            Avengers #80

  54,400            Daredevil #58

  54,066            Spectacular Spider-Man #11

  53,549            Spectacular Spider-Man #12                
 
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 March, see 'Comic Dollars Up 15% in March.'

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through March 2004, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 50 GNs Index.'