First, let me start by apologizing for this being a week later than usual. The powers that be decided that they wanted to release the data on the year in review for 2014 before the December data. I guess that means it isn’t my fault since I had to wait on them, but since they took the time to release that other data, we can talk about that too.
Below you will find a chart detailing the 25 comics that this site reviews, along with the total sales for this month and several previous months. Numbers displayed are in the thousands.
[table “7” not found /]For those of you who are concerned about seeing your favorite books down at the bottom of the chart, I was asked to include some idea of which titles might be benefiting from the digital market. At this time, we don’t have numbers for these type of sales, but we are getting best seller lists so I can at least let you know who is doing better than this chart might indicate. Injustice and Earth2: World’s End seem to be consistently showing up at the top of the digital sellers lists. Other than that, it looks like the other titles in the 15-19k range are genuinely pulling in those kinds of numbers. World’s Finest has already been confirmed as getting cancelled. Red Hood, Justice League 3000, Batwoman, and Batman 66…..I’ve got my eyes on you guys.
In December, nobody had any climbs in sales, so lets point out the biggest drops. As I said last time, it is normal for comics to slowly bleed a couple thousand readers every month, but the biggest drop for the month of December was Gotham by Midnight. Midnight lost 10, 587 readers. Keep in mind however that this was a new number one issue to a number two, so that was just all the people who showed up just to buy the new number one that left. The other comics on our list that had a significant decrease in readership was: Batgirl, Grayson, and Gotham Academy. Each losing around 5,000. Gotham Academy and Batgirl are both within their 3 month window of either being new or introducing a new creative team, so seeing drops like that is still expected at this point. However, Grayson is another matter. We are now at 5 months into his new series and typically bleeds have tapered off by then. Seeing him still losing 5k a month might be an area of concern. If he loses that much again next month he will officially be selling less than when he had his Nightwing title. Considering DC cancelled Nightwing for Grayson, I’m sure they don’t want to see their new project underselling the one they scraped.
December saw a bunch of Annuals and specials. The chart below highlights these. Robin Rises Alpha actually outsold Batman&Robin. That is rather interesting.
[table “8” not found /]2014 in Review
I’m not going to post entire lists from the best sellers of 2014, this will just be relevant highlights. I was especially impressed with The Killing Joke. This book is 27 years old and is still showing up as #12 on the list of best selling Graphic Novels. Keep in mind, the sales aren’t cumulative since 1988; the book sold enough copies in 2014 alone to get it to the #12 spot. Talk about staying power. What other Batman Graphic Novels are still being bought in abundance years after their initial release?
Graphic Novels
[table “9” not found /]What were the top selling comics of 2014. Well, the top 13 were all Marvel #1 issues (Amazing Spider-Man, Rocket Racoon, Death of Wolverine, Thor, Original Sin, etc,etc,etc). What showed up after that between 14-32 you might ask? Batman! Batman #27-37 to be precise. That’s like the whole years run! It is quite impressive that the only thing that can beat Batman is specials/#1 issues, while just his regular ongoing title gets him up that high on the list. Go Batman!
Links
For your convenience, links to the top 5 best selling books from December that we review.
Batmanga also showed up as #7 on the top selling trades of December.
December 2014 – Top 50
[table “10” not found /]
