Marvel Gains Market Share at the Expense of Smaller Publishers

After a sharp decline in market share to 33.3% in the last quarter of 2024 (see “Marvel Slips, DC Gains Ground“), Marvel Comics came back with a 37.9% share in Q1 2025, up 4.6 share points.  That increase came mostly at the expense of the smaller publishers; DC Comics’ share dropped just about a point and a half, from 26.9% to 25.5%, during the same period.

Every other publisher except Image Comics lost ground as well, including the non-top-10 publishers, who dropped from 9.7% to 8.6% as a group.  Image surged from 9.8% to 12.1% in Q4 2023 (see “Q4 2024“) and has stayed at 12% or above ever since.

IDW Publishing remains in fourth place despite a steadily eroding market share, moving from 5% in Q3 2023 to 3.9% in Q1 2025, and BOOM! Studios has gone from 4.2% to 2.3% during that same period.  In both cases, there were a few upticks but basically the trend has been down for over a year.  Dark Horse Comics has remained in the 3-4% range and in Q1 2025 it moved up to fifth place, nudging BOOM! Studios down to sixth.

Titan Comics has slipped out of the Top 10 to be replaced by Kodansha.

The data on which these market share percentages are based is from sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comics and graphic novels 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, these rankings may not be typical for all stores, but do represent a variety of locations and store emphases.

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

Source: ICv2