DC Expands Lead Over Marvel

For the second quarter in a row, DC Comics was the biggest publisher in the direct market, as measured by sales through ComicHub, increasing its lead over Marvel Comics, which stayed stable.

DC had a 34.7% share of the market in Q1 2026, opening up its lead over Marvel, which had a 29.4% share; in Q4 2025, DC and Marvel had market shares of 32.6% and 29.6% respectively (see “DC Had #1 Comic Store Market Share in Q4 2025“).  The increase in DC’s share seems to come largely from non-top 10 publishers, as that category shrank from 9.3% in Q4 2025 to 8.5% in Q1 2026, a bigger swing than seen by any individual publisher.

DC’s Absolute and DC K.O. lines as well as its Batman series continued to sell well in the first quarter, and the DC/Marvel crossover Superman/Spider-Man #1, a March release, was the top-selling comic of the three-month period in terms of both dollar and unit sales.

Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and BOOM! Studios all slipped, with BOOM! losing over half a percentage point, while IDW Publishing and VIZ Media showed slight gains; the other publishers stayed about the same.

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