ICv2: market shares of comic book store publishers

Marvel Comics’ market share increased to 38.8% in the first quarter of 2022, based on sales of comic books and graphic novels tracked at the point of sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comic books in the worldwide, and provided to ICv2. This is a sharp increase from 31.7% in Q4 2021. DC Comics’ market share fell to 24.3% from 27.1% in Q4 2021 (see “Publisher Market Shares”). from Comic Store – Q4 2021”). Marvel’s push pushed their combined market share to 63.1%, up from 58.8% in Q4 2021.

Image Comics was the only other publisher to gain market share, rising from 11.5% to 11.9%, still below its record of 15.% in the second quarter of 2021. All other publishers lost share market with the exception of Dynamite, which remained stable at 1.4%. BOOM! Studios fell from 6.0% to 4.4% and Dark Horse Comics fell from sixth to fifth place, even as its share fell from 3.5% to 3.2%. The “All Others” category also lost market share, dropping from 10.4% to 8.5%, suggesting that the long tail has narrowed a bit.

The data on which these market share percentages are based comes from sales tracked at the point of sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American graphic novels around the world. During the period for which these reports were generated, over 100 stores were using the ComicHub system. As this is a small, non-random sample of over 3,000 stores selling American comics worldwide, these rankings may not be typical for all stores, but represent a variety of locations and markets. emphasis of stores.

The differences in how the data underlying these charts is collected from previous market share charts based on sales from Diamond Comic distributors to comic book stores are numerous. Here is some:

Sales charts show all introductory sales taking place on the same day, while sales sales take place over time, shifting sales over different time periods.

Selling shows what retailers think they will sell, while selling shows what they actually sell.

Selling sales are influenced by incentivized variants, which increase the number of copies ordered (to obtain a variant that can be sold at a higher price), but may not increase the number of copies sold at retail by the same amount.

For monthly sales rankings based on ComicHub POS data, see “Comic Book and Graphic Novel Sales Rankings Based on Comic Store POS Data Index”.