Marvel's Civil War #4 was the best-selling comic for September with an estimated total of 272,573 copies in sales to comic stores.  While sales of #4 represent an apparent decline from those of Civil War #3 (290K), its total is still considerably more than sales of Civil War #1 (260K) and Civil War #2 (253K). The fact that Marvel sold more than 20,000 each of Civil War #1 and #2 reprint issues in September provides further evidence of how potent the Civil War phenomenon really is.

 

Sales of Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America #2 suffered a major first-to-second issue decline from 212,000 to 143,412, but that was still enough to secure second place.  Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men #17 took third followed by two Spider-Man titles, Amazing Spider-Man #535 (a Civil War tie-in) and Ultimate Spider-Man #100 (a special milestone issue with a $3.99 cover price).

 

DC's weekly event comic 52 took the next four spots -- and along with five Marvel Civil War titles, event comics managed to take 9 of the top 25 spots.  With five titles each, Marvel and DC split the top 10.  Marvel managed to place 16 titles in the top 25 versus nine for DC, a dominance that was reflected in Marvel's substantial lead in unit (45.7% to 36%) and dollar (41.3% to 33.1%) market share.

 

Sixteen of the top 25 titles declined in sales, while seven were up in circulation, an indication that the mega-sellers at the top of the list are grabbing sales at the expense of other titles.

 

Brian K. Vaughan's Pride of Baghdad hardcover, published by DC/Vertigo, topped the graphic novel list with a substantial total of 10,734 copies, followed closely by Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead Vol. 5 from Image at 10,095 copies.

 

Brian Michael Bendis managed the unlikely feat of having two graphic novels from the same series in the Top 100, the paperback edition of New Avengers Vol.3 (at #4) and the hardcover version of New Avengers Vol. 4 (at #10). 

 

Don Rosa's Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge Companion from Gemstone was #5.  Overall DC had five graphic novels in the top ten and Marvel had three.  The best-selling manga title was Del Rey/Random House's Negima Vol. 11, which came in at #25.

 

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

 

272,573           Civil War #4

143,412           JLA #2

124,026           Astonishing X-Men #17

117,056           Amazing Spider-Man #535

116,197           Ultimate Spider-Man #100

111,830           52 Week #18

111,611           52 Week #19

111,099           52 Week #20

110,350           52 Week #21

107,865           Wolverine #46

105,289           Civil War Front Line #6 (of 11)

101,013           Wolverine Origins #6

  97,259           Ultimates 2 #12

  92,974           X-Men: Civil War #3

  91,357           Batman #657

  89,850           Uncanny X-Men #478

  82,230           Captain America #22

  82,048           X-Men #191

  78,101           Green Lantern #13

  75,497           Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways #3 (of 4)

  74,684           Civil War Files

  71,724           X-Men: Phoenix - Warsong #1 (of 5)

  68,874           Ultimate X-Men #74

  67,358           Supergirl #10

  66,663           Flash the Fastest Man Alive #4

 

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 September, see 'Graphic Novels Lead Q3 Growth.'
 
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 2006.'

 

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 2006.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books scheduled to ship during August, see 'Top 300 Comics Actual--August 2006.'

 

For our estimates of actual orders to Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels scheduled to ship during August, see 'Top 100 Graphic Novels Actual--August 2006.'

 

For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through September 2006, see 'ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 100 GNs Index.'