Mayo Report for 2018-12
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Top Comics List Top Comics Breakdown Top Trades List Top Trades Breakdown
December 2018 had 5,847,391 units in the top 300 comics list, an decrease of 238,672 units from last month. This was the third lowest sales for a December since Diamond first started reporting invoiced sales in early 2003. December 2010 was the lowest level with 5,564,198 units with December 2017 being the next lowest with 5,726,608 units.
Marvel Comics placed 2,714,205 units in the top 300 comics and was down 131,250 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 46.42% of the total units for the top 300 comics.
DC Comics placed 1,912,753 units in the top 300 comics and was down 44,991 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 32.71% of the total units for the top 300 comics.
Image Comics placed 528,454 units in the top 300 comics and was up 56,135 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 9.04% of the total units for the top 300 comics.
The premiere publishers accounted for 97.53% of the units in the top 300 comics this month while all of the other publishers with items in the top 300 accounted for 2.47% of the units.
The up-swing of 2,246,734 units from new and increased sales was enough to compensate for the down-swing of -2,485,406 units from lost sales.
The continuing titles which gained sales category added 24,061 units compared to last month. Over 85% of the gains were on Marvel titles.
The continuing titles which shipped more issues category removed 69,354 units compared to last month. There was very little activity in this category this month.
Uncanny X-Men released four issue this month compared to the three last month. The first issue of this volume sold 182,033 units followed by a second issue drop to 63,180 units and the third issue sold 58,282 units. The combined total of the four issues released this month was 218,468 units
The continuing titles with reasonably stable sales category removed 2,142 units compared to last month. In some cases the attrition is minor like with Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur while in other cases like Skyward and Walking Dead the drop is closer to the arbitrary 250 units cut-off point.
The continuing titles which shipped fewer issues category removed 464,009 units compared to last month. December had four weeks but one of them was essentially a skip week. In every case, two issues were released in November and only a single issue in December.
While Fantastic Four was down 62,266 units for the month, the Fantastic Four Wedding Special was released in December and sold 64,495 units to retailers more than making up for the drop on the Fantastic Four title.
The continuing titles which lost sales category removed 458,440 units compared to last month. Marvel accounted for 38.85% of this category, DC another 27.24% and Image 10.29%.
The largest unit drop was on Green Lantern which was down 43.58% from the 113,651 units sales on the first issue sales of sales of 64,127 units on the second issue.
The new titles category added 1,273,414 units compared to last month.
Batman Who Laughs was the top seller in December with 220,055 units. SHAZAM! launched with 66,950 units.
A number of one-shots fell into this category such as the various Defenders: Best Defense and the Star Wars: Age of the Republic issues. My system uses the series code to determine if an item is part of an ongoing series or not and these items were all given individual series codes as if there would be more issues of them. The takeaway is around 329,724 units in this category probably should be in the non-series category as they are sales which aren't likely to carry over into future months. That would reduce the total units in this category to 943,690 units.
The returning titles category added 620,584 units compared to last month.
Batman Damned and Doomsday Clock returned to the list and accounted for 42.29% of this category.
The suspended titles category removed 871,500 units compared to last month.
Of the 69 titles which shipped in November but did not in December, Heroes In Crisis and Return of Wolverine_ were the two highest profile ones. Both shipped in early January so they were likely just delayed by the holiday shipping induced skip week at the end of December. Many of the other titles in this category probably fell victim to that as well.
The defunct titles category removed 619,961 units compared to last month.
Marvel accounted for 70.6% of this category with the a few miniseres like Cosmic Ghost Rider_ Death of the Inhumans and Vault of Spiders ending and a few ongoing titles like Daredevil and Astonishing X-Men ending to make room for replacement titles. This is a common practice for Marvel which seems to work well for them.
The annuals/specials category added 177,444 units compared to last month. Unsurprisingly, more specials and annuals came out in December than in November.
The non-series category added 104,447 units compared to last month.
If we add in the 329,724 units of non-series issues which fell into the new titles category because they were assigned series codes then this category jumps up to a total of 434,171 units.
The True Believers line continues to do well for Marvel with a total of 117,882 units in sales in December. DC should consider doing a line of dollar comics (perhaps even titled Dollar Comics) with themed reprints. For instance, DC could have released reprints of older SHAZAM! material to coincide with the release of the new SHAZAM! series.
The reorders category added 46,784 units compared to last month. Marvel accounted for most of the reorder activity in the top 300 this month.
For a more in-depth discussion of the sales data, check out the Mayo Report episodes of the Comic Book Page podcast at www.ComicBookPage.com. The episode archived cover the past decade of comic book sales on a monthly basis with yearly recap episodes. In addition to those episodes on the sales data, every Monday is a Weekly Comics Spotlight episode featuring a comic by DC, a comic by Marvel and a comic by some other publisher. I read around 200 new comics a month so the podcast covers a wide variety of the comics currently published. If you are looking for more or different comics to read, check out the latest Previews Spotlight episode featuring clips from various comic book fans talking about the comics they love. With thousands of comics in Previews every month, Previews Spotlight episodes are a great way to find out about new comic book titles that may have flown under your comic book radar.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at John.Mayo@ComicBookResources.com.
