COMIC BOOK STORES

Year-to-date over-all sale of comics and graphic novels through Diamond Comic Distributors are down by 5.79% compared to sales over the first 11 months of 2009; graphic novels show a somewhat smaller decline, 4.35%. “To be fair,” ICv2 reported, “comic sales didn’t suffer nearly as much as most other entertainment sectors during the worst of the great recession in 2008 and 2009. The difference between graphic novels and comics would have been smaller save for what transpired in November. Dollar sales of periodical comics in November were down 10.2% when compared with November of 2009, but graphic novels rebounded strongly with a 14.84% jump over November 2009 fueled by the release of the latest volume of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, which has got plenty of ‘juice’ thanks to the highly popular debut of “The Walking Dead” on tv. ... The first volume of The Walking Dead, which was originally released in 2004, also made the top ten, a sure sign that the tv series is having an effect on sales.”

After reporting declining sales in the Top-Selling 300 comic book titles and in graphic novels in the third quarter, ICv2 got to wondering: what if the decline in the Top 300 category were offset by increases in the rest of the range, all those titles that aren’t in the Top 300? So they did some careful re-casting of figures and formulations. The conclusion? “Sales below the Top 300 may be growing in importance, but when we look at a fairly long period (10 months) either they aren’t big enough in the aggregate to make much difference, or their sales are changing at about the same rate as the Top 300's. If anything, looking at year-to-date numbers, sales on the titles below the Top 300 are shrinking faster than sales in the Top 300, at least in periodical comics.” No rousing news there.