Comix Experience Best Sellers 2019

(I apologize upfront for any weird formatting errors — my outbound screen is really nice looking in format, but who knows how it will translate to you?)

Just in case this is your first time reading a sales report from us, let me give you a little background and a longer look at my CV. My name is Brian Hibbs and I own two comic book stores in San Francisco: Comix Experience at 305 Divisadero St, and Comix Experience Outpost at 2381 Ocean Ave. I opened the original store more than 30 years ago on April 1st, 1989, when I was just twenty-one years old, and I purchased Outpost just over six years ago, in order to stop it from closing overnight.

San Francisco is currently home to eight comic book stores; I now own 25% of the comic book stores in SF, which kind of freakin’ sickens me. In 2019 we lost both Two Cats as well as the Comic Book Beardies as physical store fronts. I salute them both for their noble service. The remaining stores are, well us and our two locations, Amazing Fantasy, Cards & Comics Central, Hella Novela (New!), Isotope, Jeffrey’s Toys, Mission: Comics. Both Hella and Jeffrey’s are effectively new stores for 2019, though Jeffrey’s had previously sold comics in San Francisco with a multi-year break.

This, however, is down from twenty-four stores when I opened in 1989.

There are also something around a dozen general independent book stores (note that San Francisco has no national chain bookstores! Is ts unique among “major cities”?) that also carry a solid selection of “graphic novels” (which is usually really just a highfaluting name for “bound collection of comics”, and isn’t really any different in any substantial way from “comic book”, except that it makes people feel better about themselves) – but it is the comics specialty stores that are selling the most comics material, and it is my rough belief that my two Comix Experience stores sell roughly a quarter of all comics material in The City.

As I noted, I have been selling comics since 1989, and we’re the oldest comic store with the same ownership in the same location in San Francisco. For a quarter of a century I’ve written “Tilting At Windmills”, a regular column about comics retailing, also published in two volumes from IDW Publishing; I’ve been a judge of the Eisner Awards (Comics’ equivalent of the Oscars); I’ve sat on the Board of Directors of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (an organization that protects the First Amendment rights of comics creators), I was one of the original founders of ComicsPRO (the comics retailer trade organization); and I even led a successful Class Action lawsuit against Marvel Comics that won more than a million dollars for comic book retailers internationally.

More recently, in response to rising costs in San Francisco, we launched an international Graphic-Novel-Of-The-Month Club where we hold streaming meetings with the authors for literally hundreds of folks around the country (and globe!), and we also have a sibling club for kids age 8-13 (lets call it — I most like “middle readers”).

(*whew*)

2019 was a successful year for Comix Experience! Not only did we break the two year slide, we’re up by 3.87% in sales. Yay! That still doesn’t bring us back to where we should be, but it is ahead of the +2% the DM appears to show the day I write this (year-end National numbers are still a few days away), so I’ll take it! I’d really like to get to (and exceed) 2016’s sales again, but as a thirty year old store, you recognize there are peaks and valleys.

Overall, we’re in good shape I’d say, which seems like bragging for an independent book store, but I don’t have an special individual nervousness about the next year or two — although I don’t think the traditional market leaders of Marvel or DC are especially in good order, I’ve been spending years trying to bend my business from them as much as I can, and I feel like we’re building the stores to future proof them as much as possible. Comics is changing, rapidly, and it won’t shock me at all if we see a lot of legacy businesses (retail and publisher) drop out as the new decade births itself. I’m hoping to still be writing this report in another ten years from now!

As noted, we have two stores, both of which are very different in character and tone. The main, original store on Divisadero St. is fully a book-oriented store: some 64% of sales are from Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks. We also own a second location on the far south of The City, Comix Experience Outpost. The Outpost is a periodical-forward store, and is basic the reverse of the main one: 64% of its sales come from New periodicals (and another 8% from Old Comics). We’ve tried many things to try to broaden it’s market, all to no avail. It does less than 60% of the main store in sales, but it also has a lower overhead, so we make it work, but it isn’t, necessarily what one would call “profitable”, especially, on its own — honestly, it’s a pretty break-even affair.

Let’s take a look, store-by-store, at sales this year, and see what the best-sellers are in each category, and get a sense of maybe where the market is heading. Let’s look at BOOKS, first, since that’s the biggest category at the bigger store!

One important consideration here is that these numbers DO NOT include the Graphic-Novel-Of-The-Month Club numbers, every one of which would top the #1 in-store book! We’ve got some 225 members of the Adult GNC when we include the school accounts, and about 310 now for the Kid’s club — that like double or triple the best-selling book sold to a walk-in customer. In fact, we’ve been told that, for at least some of the titles we selected the book club order is a meaningful percentage of sales, impacted sell outs or triggering further printings.  Our releases were, in order of release:

Adult Graphic Novel Club selections

January 2019: Lazaretto by Clay McLeod Chapman and Jey Levang [Boom! Studios]
February 2019: The New World by Ales Kot and Tradd Moore [Image Comics]
March 2019: Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads [DC Entertainment]
April 2019: By Night by John Allison and Christine Larsen [Boom! Studios]
May 2019: Cannonball by Kelsey Wroten [Uncivilized Books]
June 2019: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe [Lion Forge / Oni]
July 2019: Die: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans [Image Comics]
August 2019: Tonta by Jaime Hernandez [Fantagraphics Books]
September 2019: The New World by David Jesus Visgolli [Boom! Studios]
October 2019: Assassin Nation by Kyle Starks and Erica Henderson [Image Comics]
November 2019: The House by Paco Roca / La Casa by Paco Roca [Fantagraphics Books]
December 2019: Little Bird by Darcy Van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram [Image Comics]


KIDS Graphic Novel Club selections
January 2019: Hex Vet by Sam Davies [Boom! Studios]
February 2019: Max and the Midknights by Lincoln Peirce [Crown Books For Young Readers]
March 2019: Radio Delley by Alex Martinez and Xavier Bonet [IDW]
April 2019: The Breakaways by Cathy G. Johnson [:01 FirstSecond]
May 2019: Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen [Oni Press]
June 2019: Glitch by Sarah Graley [Graphix]
July 2019: This Was Our Pact by Ryan Andrews [:01 FirstSecond]
August 2019: Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir and Sarah Anderson [Ten Speed Press]
September 2019: Debian Perl: Digital Detective by Melanie Hillario, Lauren Davis, and Kathryn Longua [Lion Forge / Oni Press]
October 2019: The Okay Witch by Emma Steinkellner [Aladin]
November 2019: Sunny Rolls The Dice by Jennifer & Matthew Holm [Graphix]
December 2019: Lily The Thief by Janne Kukkonen [:01 FirstSecond]

(If I am allowed to say, I think it is a SUPERB program, and I really invite you to JOIN TODAY!)

(I also can sell you pretty much all of these excellent books, and the adult ones all have author-signed bookplates, too!)

Again: NONE of the club copies are counted in here as “sales-to-walk-in-customers” - if we did, our Top 24 books would ONLY be these titles.

So, at the Mothership on Divisadero (which I say again: book-forward comics shop), here are the Top 100 best-selling BOOKS — this is by NUMBER OF COPIES SOLD

1 GENDER QUEER MEMOIR GN
2 MISTER MIRACLE TP
3 WATCHMEN TP
4 SAGA TP VOL 09
5 MONSTRESS TP VOL 01
6 MONSTRESS TP VOL 03
7 DIE TP VOL 01 FANTASY HEARTBREAKER
8 TONTA HC LOVE & ROCKETS
9 SAGA TP VOL 01
10 DEADLY CLASS TP VOL 01 REAGAN YOUTH
11 GUTS GN
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 05
13 PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 01
14 MONSTRESS TP VOL 04
15 DARK NIGHTS METAL DELUXE ED HC
16 PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 06
17 MAX AND THE MIDKNIGHTS ILLUS YA NOVEL HC
18 MONSTRESS TP VOL 02
THIS WAS OUR PACT GN
20 NEW WORLD TP [Ales Kot]
21 UMBRELLA ACADEMY TP VOL 01 APOCALYPSE SUITE
22 5 WORLDS GN VOL 01 SAND WARRIOR
PILU OF THE WOODS GN
24 SANDMAN TP VOL 01 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES 30TH ANNIV ED
25 SAGA TP VOL 08
THEY CALLED US ENEMY TP
27 OKAY WITCH GN
28 5 WORLDS GN VOL 03 RED MAZE
LITTLE BIRD FIGHT FOR ELDERS HOPE HC
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 01 THE FAUST ACT
31 WITCH BOY GN VOL 01
32 NEIL GAIMANS GOOD OMENS ($7.99 VERSION)
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 04
PRINCE & DRESSMAKER GN
35 MAKING FRIENDS GN VOL 01
36 EAST OF WEST TP VOL 09
37 NEW WORLD ORIGINAL GN [David Jesus Visgoli]
38 SAGA TP VOL 02
39 SAGA TP VOL 03
40 UMBRELLA ACADEMY TP VOL 02 DALLAS
41 BATMAN WHITE KNIGHT TP
ISOLA TP VOL 01
MAESTROS TP VOL 01
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 08 OLD IS THE NEW NEW
45 AMULET SC VOL 01 STONEKEEPER
BREAKAWAYS GN
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 02
SAGA TP VOL 04
SHARE YOUR SMILE RAINAS GUIDE TO TELLING YOUR OWN STORY HC
50 ADVENTURE ZONE GN VOL 02 MURDER ON ROCKPORT LIMITED
BE PREPARED GN
CITY ON OTHER SIDE GN
HILO GN VOL 05 THEN EVERYTHING WENT WRONG
KRAMERS ERGOT GN VOL 10
55 BABY SITTERS CLUB COLOR ED GN VOL 07 BOY-CRAZY STACEY
HIDDEN WITCH GN VOL 02
NIGHTLIGHTS HC GN VOL 02 HICOTEA
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 03
SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 03
60 5 WORLDS GN VOL 02 COBALT PRINCE
APOCALYPTIGIRL AN ARIA FOR THE END TIMES TP
DC SUPER HERO GIRLS SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS TP
LIFE CHANGING MANGA OF TIDYING UP
64 BLACK PANTHER LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK
EAST OF WEST TP VOL 01 THE PROMISE
HARLEY QUINN BREAKING GLASS TP
ON A SUNBEAM GN
RAINA TELGEMEIER GHOSTS GN
SHIVER HC JUNJI ITO
SMILE GN
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 07 MOTHERING INVENTION
72 AMULET SC VOL 08 SUPERNOVA
COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS TP
DOG MAN GN VOL 06 BRAWL OF THE WILD
EAST OF WEST TP VOL 08
LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME GN
SANDMAN TP VOL 02 THE DOLLS HOUSE 30TH ANNIV ED
THIS ONE SUMMER GN
UPGRADE SOUL GN
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 31
81 BAD WEEKEND HC
CHANGE MAKERS PINUP BOOK OF PIONEERS TROUBLEMAKERS AND RADICALS
CHECK PLEASE HOCKEY GN VOL 01
DEADLY CLASS TP VOL 08 NEVER GO BACK
DRAMA GN
MAN-EATERS TP VOL 01
SEVEN TO ETERNITY TP VOL 03
SISTERS GN
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 09
90 BONE COLOR ED SC VOL 01 OUT FROM BONEVILLE
CANNONBALL GN
CHESHIRE CROSSING GN
HEAD LOPPER TP VOL 03 KNIGHTS OF VENORA
NIGHTLIGHTS GN VOL 01
PANTHEON
SAGA TP VOL 05
97 ASSASSIN NATION TP VOL 01
INCAL HC
MS MARVEL TP VOL 01 NO NORMAL
SAGA TP VOL 07

I am kind of strangely excited that our #1 book sold (and the only book to hit triple digits) is Maia Kobabe’s wonderful GENDER QUEER. I strongly believe in the power of comics to teach, and I think this is a fantastic teachable book, very much in vein of a MAUS or a PERSEPOLIS. It is smart, funny, and very very human, and I thoroughly recommend it to nearly anyone.

#2 is the fantastic MISTER MIRACLE by Tom King & Mitch Gerads, which is very likely to go on to be a perennial best-seller, with #3 being WATCHMEN, mostly driven by the back half of the year, by the TV show. This is for the $19.95 and $24.95 versions combined. We ran out once or twice in the holiday frenzy, so it could have been possible for it to hit #2 if DC had been smart about incentivizing extra stock.

#4 is our first placing for SAGA (v1 comes in at #9) — still strong sales for the year, but something like half, I think, of last year’s performance? Not having the periodical on the shelf really caused sales to slow. I am VERY worried about when it comes back after a year+ off because I fear the momentum has been broken. I hope I am wrong! But I sure do miss those triple digit sales from last year…

Much of the rest of the top ten is more Image series, with Fantagraphic’s TONTA breaking up the pack. Much of that was actually from the week Jaime was here for a signing, though.

No kids comics strictly in the top 10, but we have Raina’s GUTS at #11, and we also have kids books at #17, 19, 22, 23, 27, #31 and so on. This feels like a triumph to me BECAUSE KIDS DON’T HAVE THEIR OWN MONEY TO SPEND — pretty much every one of these sales is either a chunk of begging OR parents trying to expand the kid’s horizons (ha, can I tell you stories….). We increased our display space for Kids comics by 50% this year, and we now have sections for “little kids”, “middle readers” and “older kids/YA” (But my content def for “YA” is very very different than a prose store, and there for sure some of DC’s putative YA books that we rack with the adult GNs)

Many (not all) of the GNC books had signings attached, but not one of them is here because of the signing. The average because-of-signing advantage here is well under 10% of sales.

The worst selling Top 100 book here sold significantly better than a-copy-every-other-week, on average. Our top was much much much higher. The floor is coming way way up for well-displayed, well-chosen books. I am genuinely proud of the range of material that we’re selling in real quantity — it is an eclectic and exciting list to me, filled with books that I am so thrilled that my staff has embraced. The medium of comics is thoroughly thriving. There were just a hair under five thousand different, individual graphic novels that we sold at least one copy of at full price in 2019.

Since I have to pay staff and rent and electricity and all of the other myriad of costs to run stores, I usually actually think of stuff in terms of dollars sold, rather than units. Not going to do the entire top 100, but here’s what the Top 20 looks like on Divis if you look at Dollars sold:

1 MISTER MIRACLE TP
2 GENDER QUEER MEMOIR GN
3 WATCHMEN TP
4 DARK NIGHTS METAL DELUXE ED HC
5 MONSTRESS TP VOL 03
6 SAGA TP VOL 09
7 TONTA HC LOVE & ROCKETS
8 SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 03
9 LITTLE BIRD FIGHT FOR ELDERS HOPE HC
10 PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 05
11 MONSTRESS TP VOL 01
12 MONSTRESS TP VOL 04
13 KRAMERS ERGOT GN VOL 10
14 DIE TP VOL 01 FANTASY HEARTBREAKER
15 GUTS GN
16 NEW WORLD TP [Ales Kot]
17 INCAL HC
18 UMBRELLA ACADEMY TP VOL 01 APOCALYPSE SUITE
19 MONSTRESS TP VOL 02
20 SANDMAN TP VOL 01 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES 30TH ANNIV ED

Those hardcovers (or pricey softcovers like KRAMERS ERGOT) make a pretty big difference in how things chart — INCAL goes from #97 in units, to being a Top 20 book in dollars

If I sort out just the books, and look at publishers instead, here’s what publishers-over-1%-of-dollars break out at, on the mothership… though again, none of this considers the GNC, just retail-trade-sales.

14.51% IMAGE COMICS
13.25% DC COMICS
11.87% MARVEL COMICS
6.27% DARK HORSE COMICS
4.85% FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
4.28% :01 FIRST SECOND
3.21% BOOM! STUDIOS
3.16% GRAPHIX
3.12% IDW PUBLISHING
2.73% VIZ MEDIA LLC
2.42% DRAWN & QUARTERLY
2.98% LION FORGE / ONI PRESS INC.
1.38% KODANSHA COMICS

”Everyone else” is like a quarter of sales — we’re stocking what appears to be 5946 different graphic novels from 297 different suppliers at the moment.

———————————

But what about the periodical on Divisadero? Well, it’s a different picture for sure. Here’s the Top 100 by number of copies sold, this should be accurately adjusted to account for variant covers (small thing at Divis, bigger at Ocean)

1 DETECTIVE COMICS #1000
2 POWERS OF X #1 (OF 6)
3 HOUSE OF X #1 (OF 6)
4 X-MEN #1 DX
5 HOUSE OF X #4 (OF 6)
POWERS OF X #3 (OF 6)
7 HOUSE OF X #3 (OF 6)
8 POWERS OF X #5 (OF 6)
9 HOUSE OF X #5 (OF 6)
10 POWERS OF X #4 (OF 6)
11 DOOMSDAY CLOCK #9 (OF 12)
12 HOUSE OF X #2 (OF 6)
HOUSE OF X #6 (OF 6)
POWERS OF X #2 (OF 6)
15 POWERS OF X #6 (OF 6)
16 DOOMSDAY CLOCK #10 (OF 12)
17 LITTLE BIRD #1 (OF 5)
18 USAGI YOJIMBO #1
19 BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #1 (OF 3)
20 DCS YEAR OF THE VILLAIN #1
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #11 (OF 12)
22 PAPER GIRLS #26
PAPER GIRLS #28
WALKING DEAD #193
X-MEN #2 DX
26 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1
27 PAPER GIRLS #27
PAPER GIRLS #29
PAPER GIRLS #30
30 LITTLE BIRD #2 (OF 5)
31 BATMAN CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #1 (OF 8)
WALKING DEAD #192
X-FORCE #1 DX
34 MARAUDERS #1 DX
NEW MUTANTS #1 DX
36 EXCALIBUR #1 DX
SUPERMAN YEAR ONE #1 (OF 3)
38 BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #2 (OF 3)
39 HEROES IN CRISIS #6 (OF 9)
X-MEN #3 DX
41 CRIMINAL #1
ONCE & FUTURE #1 (OF 6)
43 BATMAN CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #2 (OF 8)
44 HEROES IN CRISIS #7 (OF 9)
45 LITTLE BIRD #4 (OF 5)
46 HEROES IN CRISIS #5 (OF 9)
LITTLE BIRD #3 (OF 5)
48 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #2
FAR SECTOR #1 (OF 12)
HEROES IN CRISIS #4 (OF 9)
51 BATMAN SUPERMAN #1
DAREDEVIL #1
DARK KNIGHT RETURNS THE GOLDEN CHILD #1
DCEASED #1 (OF 6)
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #12 (OF 12)
HEROES IN CRISIS #8 (OF 9)
SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #1 (OF 6)
58 DIE #2
HEROES IN CRISIS #9 (OF 9)
WAR OF REALMS #1 WR
61 SOMETHING IS KILLING CHILDREN #1
WALKING DEAD #191
63 CRIMINAL #2
WALKING DEAD #187
65 BATMAN CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #3 (OF 8)
BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #3 (OF 3)
FALLEN ANGELS #1
WALKING DEAD #189
69 DIE #3
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #1 (OF 12)
SAVAGE AVENGERS #1
WALKING DEAD #188
73 LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #1
MONSTRESS #21
NEW MUTANTS #2 DX
SUPERMAN YEAR ONE #2 (OF 3)
WALKING DEAD #190
X-MEN GRAND DESIGN X-TINCTION #1 (OF 2)
79 DIE #1
EVENT LEVIATHAN #1 (OF 6)
GREEN LANTERN #3
GREEN LANTERN #4
SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #3 (OF 6)
84 BATMAN #62
BLACK PANTHER #12
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #3
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #8 (OF 12)
LCSD 2019 WALKING DEAD ALIEN
MAGNIFICENT MS MARVEL #1
MONSTRESS #19
SILVER SURFER BLACK #1 (OF 5)
UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY #1
93 BATMAN #66
BATMAN CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #4 (OF 8)
BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #3 (OF 6)
LITTLE BIRD #5 (OF 5)
LOEG TEMPEST #5
MONSTRESS #20
MONSTRESS #22
MONSTRESS #23

Some notes: at Divis, DETECTIVE #1000, all covers combined, sold about 140% of POWERS OF X #1 (“all covers combined”, but that was largely insignificant at the big store). The consistancy of HoX/Pox is pretty thrilling, too: there was only about a 15% drop between PoX#1 and #6. That kind of thing very seldom happens.

YEAR OF THE VILLAIN started fairly strong with the 25 cent comic…. but it absolutely destroyed DC’s line this year, causing the lowest sales I’ve seen in a while in the regular monthly ongoings set in that universe.

The BIG problem, though, and one that is echoed down the charts, is just how difficult it is to maximize periodical sales when so many of the popular ones go OOP, sometimes before they even ship. Every publisher is (pretty) aggressive with second prints and such (HoX/PoX might have hit 6 printings on the early ones?) but it ignores that there is usually three weeks between a first print and a second, and in that time, a vast amount of your velocity is going to fall off the edge of the universe. I think that if Marvel had actually lived up to my ideal of what a publisher should do in overprinting, I could have probably sold at least 150% of what I managed to on HoX/PoX, probably significantly more. This happened again and again this year (Hi surprise ending for WALKING DEAD) and it happens at the top of my top 100 and down at the bottom, too — like how I could certainly be selling way more copies of FAR SECTOR #1 if only it didn’t go OOP before #3 shipped. Or how not being able to restock issue #4 of DOOMSDAY CLOCK meant the rest of the issues sold less than they could have.

THE PUBLISHER HAS THE LOWEST PER-UNIT COST FOR HOLDING INVENTORY of any participant in the chain. The marginal cost to add copies is pennies once the presses are running; and yet I think that publishers seem to be more inventory adverse than the retailers are in 2019. It would be easier to go down the list to find books that I had uninterrupted access to than it would be to list all of the ones where my ability to sell got capped by how many the publisher chose to print. If you take ANYthing from this year’s report, take that: periodical publishers need to have confidence in their periodicals, or the market is flatly capped and can not grow.

The second concern is just how many dollars were driven by DETECTIVE #1000 (a flatly non-repeatable publication situation) and HoX/PoX (A once in a generation phenomenon that seems hard to see how it could be replicated in the Marvel of 2020) (No, EMPYRE ain’t gonna do it) — like see how the “DX” post-HoX/PoX material simply isn’t performing anywhere near the level. I have solicits through March 2020, and there’s all of jack shit been solicited will excite people like those projects. We need four solid quarters of hits, each and every quarter, folks!

Here is how the publishers break down by market share for us for periodicals (this is one is by dollars) — Marvel’s dominance is mostly from all of the $5+ comics they publish rather than raw individual title circ (HoX/PoX being the biggest exception). Mostly Marvel sales are a whole lot of “subs +1” or “+2” for the rack. Because they’re publishing so much rack filler the ironic thing is that they work against themselves — we’d sell so many more Marvel comics, if they’d just stop publishing so many damn comics. It’s a rare book (25% of their output?) where I’m ordering what I’d consider a meaningful, or almost worth-the-effort to stock number of rack copies, because the individual numbers are so low, the risk on unsold copies skyrockets. Its a goddamn conundrum for the working retailer. Anyway.

35.51% MARVEL COMICS
27.46% DC COMICS
15.06% IMAGE COMICS
4.96% DARK HORSE COMICS
4.65% BOOM! STUDIOS
3.88% IDW PUBLISHING
0.78% TITAN COMICS
0.59% ONI PRESS INC.
0.59% VAULT COMICS
0.55% AFTERSHOCK COMICS
0.51% VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC

———————————————————————-

And if we take EVERY product sold in 2019, mix it together in a giant pile, and sort it out by publisher, here’s what it looks like for pubs over 1% at the Mothership:

MARVEL COMICS 20.09%
DC COMICS 18.07%
IMAGE COMICS 14.83%
DARK HORSE COMICS 5.87%
IDW PUBLISHING 3.97%
BOOM! STUDIOS 3.72%
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS 3.30%
:01 FIRST SECOND 2.77%
ONI PRESS INC. 2.24%
PENGUIN RANDOM companies 2.06%
GRAPHIX 1.96%
VIZ 1.78%
DRAWN & QUARTERLY 1.56%
NOBROW 1.01%

—————————————————————————————-

OK, lets switch over to Outpost, shall we?

This one is a bit easier, and the focus over here is periodical comics. Here’s the Top 100 comics for them

1 DETECTIVE COMICS #1000
2 POWERS OF X #1 (OF 6)
3 HOUSE OF X #4 (OF 6)
4 HOUSE OF X #6 (OF 6)
X-MEN #1 DX
6 POWERS OF X #5 (OF 6)
7 POWERS OF X #3 (OF 6)
8 POWERS OF X #4 (OF 6)
9 HOUSE OF X #1 (OF 6)
10 HOUSE OF X #5 (OF 6)
11 HOUSE OF X #3 (OF 6)
12 HOUSE OF X #2 (OF 6)
13 POWERS OF X #6 (OF 6)
14 DCS YEAR OF THE VILLAIN #1
15 BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #1 (OF 3)
POWERS OF X #2 (OF 6)
17 DOOMSDAY CLOCK #11 (OF 12)
18 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #2 (OF 6)
19 DOOMSDAY CLOCK #9 (OF 12)
20 DCEASED #1 (OF 6)
21 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #3 (OF 6)
22 DOOMSDAY CLOCK #10 (OF 12)
X-MEN #2 DX
24 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #4 (OF 6)
25 SPIDER-MAN #1 (OF 5)
26 SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #1 (OF 6)
27 BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #2 (OF 3)
28 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS THE GRIM KNIGHT #1
NEW MUTANTS #1 DX
30 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #5 (OF 6)
31 BATMAN SUPERMAN #1
32 HEROES IN CRISIS #4 (OF 9)
WALKING DEAD #193
34 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #7 (OF 7)
MARAUDERS #1 DX
36 BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #6 (OF 6)
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #12 (OF 12)
38 HEROES IN CRISIS #8 (OF 9)
39 BATMAN #70
BATMAN #82 ACETATE
BATMAN #83
JOKER YEAR OF THE VILLAIN #1
43 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #17
BATMAN #62
BATMAN #64 LAST COLD CASE
BATMAN #77 YOTV DARK GIFTS
SPIDER-MAN #2 (OF 5)
48 BATMAN #67
BATMAN #69
BATMAN #76 YOTV DARK GIFTS
BATMAN #78 YOTV
EXCALIBUR #1 DX
HEROES IN CRISIS #6 (OF 9)
SUPERMAN YEAR ONE #1 (OF 3)
55 BATMAN #68
BATMAN #71
BATMAN #74
BATMAN #81
BATMAN CURSE OF THE WHITE KNIGHT #1 (OF 8)
HEROES IN CRISIS #9 (OF 9)
LITTLE BIRD #1 (OF 5)
SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #2 (OF 6)
63 BATMAN #65 THE PRICE
BATMAN #79
BATMAN #80
SAVAGE AVENGERS #1
SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #3 (OF 6)
68 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #19
BATMAN #66
WAR OF REALMS #1 WR
YOUNG JUSTICE #1
72 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #15
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #18
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #30
DARK KNIGHT RETURNS THE GOLDEN CHILD #1
HEROES IN CRISIS #5 (OF 9)
HEROES IN CRISIS #7 (OF 9)
X-FORCE #1 DX
79 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #20
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #21
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #24
BATMAN #75 YOTV THE OFFER
SPAWN #300
SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY #4 (OF 6)
85 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #23
BATMAN #63
BATMAN #72
DCEASED #2 (OF 6)
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #1
90 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #14
BATMAN #73
BATMAN #84
BATMAN LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH #3 (OF 3)
WALKING DEAD #192
X-MEN #3 DX
96 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25
BATMAN DAMNED #3 (OF 3)
DETECTIVE COMICS #998
EXCELLENCE #1
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1

Not a lot of surprises, I don’t think? Not many notes either that differ so much from Divis. Outpost sold DETECTIVE 1000 at like 2.1x of HoX/PoX. Oddly, both stores sold virtually identical numbers of copies of HoX/PoX — the differences come from Outpost leaning in on the Variant covers, so there’s less than a 10% difference between the top and (most of) the bottom — PoX #2 was weirdly low for some reason? I think that was a case of placed reorders not filling because of various printing issues, and me catching it late.

Outpost is “thicker” than Divis on periodicals though — the #100 comic is about 1/3 higher at Outpost than it is at the Mothership.

How do the publisher break downs go at Outpost for periodicals? Like this:

42.34% MARVEL COMICS
33.81% DC COMICS
9.57% IMAGE COMICS
2.99% DARK HORSE COMICS
2.82% BOOM! STUDIOS
2.61% IDW PUBLISHING
0.86% AFTERSHOCK COMICS
0.58% ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS

It kills me just little bit, that Marvel dominance, stranglehold even. Everything about balance of stock that happens at Divis sure as hell doesn’t happen here. They want what they want, and they will get it. You can’t change what a customer base wants, you can only try to attractively provide many options of comics to buy. We will continue to try in 2020!

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Then there are books at Outpost, which… well, here’s the top 71, I’ll discuss at the end

1 MISTER MIRACLE TP
2 DIE TP VOL 01 FANTASY HEARTBREAKER
3 MONSTRESS TP VOL 01
4 SAGA TP VOL 01
5 EMPTY ZONE TP VOL 01 CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD
SAGA TP VOL 09
7 BONE PARISH TP VOL 01 DISCOVER NOW EDITION
8 DOG MAN GN VOL 02 UNLEASHED
MONSTRESS TP VOL 02
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 05
TEEN TITANS RAVEN TP DC INK
WATCHMEN TP
13 BATMAN THE LONG HALLOWEEN TP
DOG MAN GN VOL 04 DOG MAN AND CAT KID
DOG MAN GN VOL 05 LORD OF FLEAS
GENDER QUEER MEMOIR GN
INFINITY GAUNTLET TP DELUXE EDITION
LEGEND OF KORRA TP PART 01 RUINS OF EMPIRE
MAX AND THE MIDKNIGHTS ILLUS YA NOVEL HC
MONSTRESS TP VOL 04
MY HERO ACADEMIA GN VOL 01
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 04
VICTOR LAVALLE DESTROYER TP
24 ADVENTURE ZONE GN VOL 01 HERE THERE BE GERBLINS
BATMAN THE BLACK MIRROR TP
BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC
DC SUPER HERO GIRLS FINDERS KEEPERS
DEADLY CLASS TP VOL 01 REAGAN YOUTH
DESCENDER TP VOL 01 TIN STARS
DOG MAN GN VOL 03 TALE OF TWO KITTIES
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 01
SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 03
SAGA TP VOL 02
UMBRELLA ACADEMY TP VOL 01 APOCALYPSE SUITE
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 01 THE FAUST ACT
WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 08 OLD IS THE NEW NEW
X-MEN DARK PHOENIX SAGA TP NEW PTG
38 ADVENTURE ZONE GN VOL 02 MURDER ON ROCKPORT LIMITED
AMULET SC GN VOL 08 SUPERNOVA
BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC
BITTER ROOT TP VOL 01 FAMILY BUSINESS
BLACK MAGE GN
BONE COLOR ED SC VOL 01 OUT FROM BONEVILLE
BOYS OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
CIVIL WAR TP
COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS TP
DARK NIGHTS METAL DARK KNIGHTS RISING TP
DARK NIGHTS METAL TP
DESCENDER TP VOL 06 WAR MACHINE
EAST OF WEST TP VOL 09
ETERNALS BY NEIL GAIMAN TP NEW PTG
HELLBOY OMNIBUS TP VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION
MARVEL ENCYCLOPEDIA HC NEW ED
MARVEL SUPER HERO ADVENTURES GN TP SPIDER-MAN
MARVEL SUPERHERO ADVENTURES GN TP TO WAKANDA AND BEYON
NEW WORLD TP
NIGHTLIGHTS HC GN VOL 02 HICOTEA
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 06
PREACHER TP BOOK 01
PUERTO RICO STRONG SC
SAGA TP VOL 03
SAILOR MOON TP KODANSHA ED VOL 01
SPIDER-GWEN TP VOL 01 GREATER POWER
SPIDER-VERSE TP
STAR WARS DARTH VADER TP VOL 01 VADER
STAR WARS ORIGINAL TRILOGY GN HC
SWEET DREAMS SUPERGIRL BOARD BOOK
TEA DRAGON SOCIETY HC
UNDERSTANDING COMICS SC NEW PTG
V FOR VENDETTA NEW EDITION TP (MR)
Y THE LAST MAN TP BOOK 01

I stopped the list at 71 because then we start getting to “not super meaningful quantities” — starting at 72 we’re just talking about books only turning the equivalent of four times a year. Not a thing to complain about (four turns is way better than none!), but it’s still not much. There are almost 1800 books that Outpost sold 1 or more copies of in 2020…. but like 1100 of them only sold a single copy

On the other hand, there’s signs of life and diversity in there — two kids books in the Top 10, a book like GENDER QUEER still in the top 20. And 23% of Outpost’s gross sales ARE books, so there’s that.

Here’s how the Books at Outpost break by publisher

20.78% DC COMICS
19.39% MARVEL COMICS
15.29% IMAGE COMICS
8.01% DARK HORSE COMICS
3.84% BOOM! STUDIOS
3.25% ONI PRESS /LION FORGE
3.10% VIZ MEDIA LLC
2.58% IDW PUBLISHING
2.24% GRAPHIX
1.80% :01 FIRST SECOND
1.15% KODANSHA COMICS
0.92% VERTICAL COMICS
0.83% FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
0.73% HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS
0.67% SEVEN SEAS ENTERTAINMENT LLC
0.65% AMP! COMICS FOR KIDS
0.64% PANTHEON BOOKS
0.58% TITAN COMICS

And if we were to combine all categories, here’s what the top publishers look like at the Outpost:

MARVEL COMICS 35.93%
DC COMICS 30.25%
IMAGE COMICS 10.87%
DARK HORSE COMICS 4.21%
BOOM! STUDIOS 3.04%
IDW PUBLISHING 2.56%
ONI PRESS INC. 1.03%
VIZ MEDIA LLC 0.77%
AFTERSHOCK COMICS 0.64%
FUNKO 0.52%

What do those numbers tell you? I dunno, really, but that’s pretty much “Direct Market Store 101” right there for Outpost I think.

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So, that’s what 2019 looked like to me — I think the Mothership is strong and healthy and diverse enough to move beautifully into comics’ future. Outpost a little less so, but Outpost really really rocks the periodical comics hard, so if/when Marvel and DC get their shit together, they’re more likely to be rewarded for that. The two stores are about 3 miles apart, as the crow flies, but couldn’t be more different in temperance or tone. Financially, the picture is perfectly OK — sales are up in both locations, and we continue to be stable as long as I wish to keep going (A long time, I hope) If both stores went back to 2016 levels, we’d be doing just peachy, thanks. The clubs, especially the Kids Club, are thriving, so I see a lot of reason to be optimistic for the next decade.

(*knock wood*)

Please feel free to comment below in the comments section!

Have a great 2020!

-B