Sales in comic stores are up for the first eight months of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023, ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp said during his presentation of the ICv2 White Paper during the ICv2 Insider Talks at New York Comic Con on October 17, 2024.
In the direct market, dollar sales of comics from January to August (ICv2’s Spring and Summer Seasons) were up 11.7% compared to the same period in 2022, and graphic novel sales were up by 5.7%, according to ComicHub, with most of the growth occurring in the summer. “I was also hearing this anecdotally from retailers I talked to,” Griepp said.
Griepp cited several factors for this growth. “Marvel was up substantially, behind their Ultimate titles,” he noted. “Those titles did really well, especially Ultimate Spider-Man.” Marvel Comics has also revived the X-Men, following a period when the franchise was de-emphasized because Marvel and Disney did not control the media rights. “After the Fox acquisition by Disney and consolidation of those rights under a single umbrella, Marvel’s really worked hard to bring back the X-Men characters,” Griepp said.
“On the DC side of the ledger, they had a huge hit with their new 6″ x 9″ format graphic novels, which they call Compact Comics,” Griepp said (see “DC Launches New Line of ‘Compact Comics’“). “They began publishing some of the most popular material in that format and found a new audience.” He also pointed to the successful launch of the Ghost Machine studio, published by Image Comics (see “New Creator-Owned and Operated Media Company“), and the continued strength of manga, which retailers told him continues to sell well in the direct market.
Griepp also pointed to a trend that gained momentum in the summer: Licensed titles from mid-tier publishers. “There were a number of these that were just blowout successes,” he said, pointing to IDW Publishing’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Skybound’s Energon Universe (bringing together Hasbro’s Transformer and G.I. Joe franchises), Dynamite Entertainment’s ThunderCats and Space Ghost comics, and Mad Cave Studio’s Dick Tracy, which he called “the best incarnation of that property I’ve seen in a long time.”
Marvel dominated the chart of the top ten periodical comics in Summer 2024 (May through August, based on ComicHub POS data), with nine of the top ten titles, including several Ultimate and X-Men comics. The lone non-Marvel title was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 from IDW.
Superhero titles (ICv2’s category for corporate-owned properties, including Marvel and DC superheroes and licensed titles) dominated the chart of the Top 10 graphic novels in comic shops, which makes sense, Griepp pointed out, because those comics sell best in the direct market; that’s their “home.”
Turning to the top Author (creator-owned) graphic novels, Griepp noted the presence of two TV-driven titles, Invincible and The Boys, which tend to surge whenever a new season goes on the air, and the absence of graphic novels based on webtoons, which dominate Author sales in the book channel. Webtoons are a big opportunity for comic stores, he said, because the creators cultivate huge audiences online, and stores who carry them can reach a new audience. The chart of the top manga in comic shops mirrors manga sales in the book channel, although Junji Ito’s horror manga tend to sell better in the direct market.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin was the best-selling Superhero graphic novel title in comic shops in Summer 2024, as it has been for the last two years. Three of the top ten Superhero graphic novels for the Summer season are based on Hasbro properties, and three area DC Compact Comics titles. In contrast to the periodicals, only one Marvel titles (at #10) appeared in the Top 10 Superhero Graphic Novels in comic stores.
Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man was the best-seller in the Kids graphic novel category in comic stores, and Griepp noted that superhero stories aimed at young readers account for a bigger portion of sales in the direct market than in the book channel.
Note: The comic store data reported in this article is based on sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comics around the world. During the period for which these reports were generated, there were over 125 stores using the ComicHub system. As this is a small, non-random sample of over 3,000 stores selling American comics worldwide, the data may not be typical for all stores, but do represent a variety of locations and store emphases.
Note: The ICv2 Pro version of this story includes the audio and deck from the presentation (see “ICv2 White Paper 2024, with Audio and Deck“).
Source: ICv2
