Growth on Growth: Direct Market Comic and Graphic Novel Sales Continue to Climb in the 2026 Direct Market
Sales in comic stores continued to growth in 2026 after a blockbuster year in 2025. ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp outlined that growth and the underlying trends during his presentation of the ICv2 White Paper during the ICv2 Insider Talks at New York Comic Con (see “ICv2 Insider Talks“).
Griepp began by recapping the trends for full year 2024, with ICv2’s sales estimate for comics and graphic novels in 2025 roughly $2.2 billion dollars (see “Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Reached New High“). “What really was driving that was comic stores,” Griepp said, “and that was a reversal of about a 15-year trend where comic stores had sort of been limping along most of the time, barely keeping up with inflation. They just had a huge explosion last year; they were up nearly 30%. “Although sales through the book channel have exceeded sales in the direct market since 2018, comic shops gained considerable ground in 2025, closing the gap.
In terms of format, comic sales grew faster than graphic novels in 2025, but graphic novels are still the most popular format by a big margin.
Manga Up in 2025
Manga sales were up in 2025, with considerable variation by channel: Sales were up 4.6% in the book channel, according to Circana BookScan, and by 33.1% in comic shops, according to comic stores tracked by ComicHub. “Comic stores are a pretty small fraction of manga sales, so the growth rate reflects more impact from the book channel than from the comic store channel,” Griepp noted. The 2025 increase, while reflecting sales well above pre-Covid numbers, still has sales levels considerably below the Covid peaks in 2021 and 2022.
Comics and Graphic Novels: Growth Continues in the Direct Market
This robust market has continued into 2026. Dollar sales in comic shops from January to August 2026 were up 22% compared to the same period in 2025, according to data from ComicHub stores. Sales were up 30% from 2024 to 2025, so, as Griepp pointed out, “we’re comping against those 30% higher sales, so that two-year change is just massive.”
Comics Growth Rate Slowed
“The composition of that sales increase is changing, though,” he continued. “Comics are up about 19%. They had tougher comps than graphic novels, and the reason for that is through 2025 there were a whole range of new Absolute titles released, and they sort of built on each other. And so, over the course of that year, Absolute had a larger and larger sales impact. For comics to still be up 19% against those super strong months last year is a very strong performance.”
Graphic Novels Grew Faster
The increase in comic store graphic novel sales for the first 8 months of 2026 was 28%, bigger than the comics growth, and again, that was in part due to the Absolute line. “Graphic novels for the first eight months of this year were not comping against Absolute, because the Absolute collections started in August of 2025,” Griepp said. “So this year, comic stores were getting Absolute Batman and collections of all the other new Absolute titles, and that fueled their graphic novel increases this year compared to last year.”
Variant Covers: Significant but Not Dominant
Looking at the effect of variant covers, Griepp cited the research of a large direct market comics retailer who analyzed six months of sales (see “How Big Are Variants“). Of the 6,000 comics SKUs handled in that time, 28% were main covers and 72% were variants. However, the main covers accounted for about 60% or more of dollar sales, while variants were between 34% and 43% of dollar sales, depending on publisher. Thus, while variant covers do have an impact, it’s not dominant, and what’s more, Griepp pointed many of the people who buy variants are not speculators but readers who want to have more of the thing they love.
Manga Up Across the Board
Manga sales in the book channel were up almost 40% year to date compared to last year according to Circana BookScan numbers presented in the White Paper, and about 35% in comic shops (via ComicHub).
Who Is Coming to Comic Shops, and Why?
The comics consumers of 2026 are looking for analog experiences, Griepp said. “There’s this post-COVID trend of people looking for physical community, and I think they’ve been finding that at independent retail,” he said. “Across the categories we cover, independent game, comic, and bookstores all had a great 2025. Hundreds of new bookstores opened up last year. Comic stores were having record years. Game stores are having record years.” The younger generation who couldn’t go to classes or meet with others during COVID are going to stores to find their community, and in fact, Griepp cited a study from L.E.K. Consulting that indicates that while they may research products online, Gen Z shoppers prefer to make their purchases in brick-and-mortar stores. “That’s a great sign for our brick-and-mortar retailers of the future,” Griepp concluded.
For the full, in-depth version of this article with the presentation deck and audio, click here!
Source: ICv2
