The arrival today of the second collection of Saga, the hit space opera by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, will be met with glee not only by readers following the Image Comics series in trade paperback but also by a good number of retailers -- and Brian Hibbs in particular.

The owner of Comix Experience in San Francisco (and Comic Book Resources columnist) commented last week on our post about the first volume's strong performance in the direct market eight months after its debut, saying, that "Saga is, by far, our best-selling title." Hibbs expanded upon that last night on his own blog, revealing that Saga, Vol. 1, "is now my second-best selling title in the store’s history of point-of-sale. Nearly seven years."

"It just passed into that spot a few days ago, where it passed the previous #2, The Walking Dead v1," he continued. "Understand, that is for sales of TWD v1 OVER THE LAST SEVEN YEARS. Uh, yeah. What’s the most remarkable about Saga is that it steadily sells even at this point. When it crossed into #2 position, it was something like 243 copies sold in 248 days — even at this point, months and months after it first came out, we’re still selling 5+ copies a week."

For comparison, he points out that Comix Experience sells fewer than five copies of The Walking Dead, Vol. 1, or Watchmen -- it's the store's all-time bestseller -- a month.

And clearly, those kinds of numbers for Saga aren't limited to Hibbs' store. As we noted last week, the first collection sold an estimated 7,552 copies in May, the most in any month since January's 8,456 copies. In total, Saga, Vol. 1, has sold an estimated 53,000 copies in North American comic shops. That surge, which represented a 65-percent increase from April, propelled the volume back up to No. 2 on on Diamond Comic Distributors' graphic novels chart.

Granted, last month's eye-popping spike may have been been fueled by the attention given to the recent erroneous announcement that Saga #12 had been banned from Apple's App Store, but there's no denying the consistent sales record of the first collection. Now to see whether the second volume will match it ...