Taking into account the Bookscan figures supplied last week by CBR columnist Brian Hibbs, numbers-cruncher John Jackson Miller estimates that print sales in North America of comic books and graphic novels reached $715 million in 2012, a high not seen since 1993 or 1994.

Miller breaks down his math, so there's no great mystery as to how he arrived at that number: Bookscan tracks about 75 percent of bookstore sales. Add to that the rest of the book market, direct market sales of periodicals and graphic novels, and newsstand estimates, and voila. He acknowledges it's a little rough, and doesn't take into account graphic novel sales to libraries (or, clearly, the digital and U.K. markets); there's also the big caveat, the rate of inflation that would put those 1993-1994 sales at about $1.1 billion in 2012.

Stills, it provides a fascinating snapshot of the state of the North American comics market last year, which grew by about $35 million from 2011.

Jackson also singles out another interesting number: "For what I think may be the first time in years, the Direct Market's graphic novel dollar orders exceeded the value of the Bookscan orders (but not the entire mass market). I attribute it at least in part to the huge traffic in Walking Dead trades: comics shops ordered at least 74,000 copies of the first volume in 2012, versus 38,000 copies through Bookscan's retailers. That's a big difference."

His analysis is well worth reading, providing a solid companion piece to Hibbs' lengthy Bookscan article.