January 2018 had 6,003,589 units in the top 300 comics list, an increase of 276,981 units from last month. This is the lowest January total unit for the top 300 comics since January 2012 which had 5,782,320 units. While well below average, January 2018 was still much stronger than the 4,402,738 total units in January 2011 which was the record low point during the final order era which began in early 2003 when Diamond first started reporting sales based on invoiced to stores. Doomsday Clock #3 topped the chart with 157,714 units followed by Dark Nights: Metal #5 with 149,076 units. They were the only two comics to sell over 100,000 units in January.

RELATED: Doomsday Clock & Dark Nights: Metal The Only Comics Over 100K in January

DC Comics placed 2,681,510 units in the top 300 comics and was up 272,102 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 44.67% of the total units for the top 300 comics. Marvel Comics was up 53,640 units with 2,360,010 units in the top 300 comics which accounted for 39.31% of the total units. Image Comics accounted for 6.99% of the total units with 419,515 units in the top 300 comics, up 84,927 units compared to last month. IDW Publishing had 179,699 units in the top 300 comics which accounted for 2.99% of the total units and Dark Horse had 30,681 units in the top 300 comics and accounted for 0.51% of the total units. In total, the premiere publishers accounted for 93.43% of the units in the top 300 comics this month while all of the other publishers with items in the top 300 accounted for 6.57% of the units combined.

BOOM! Studios, Dynamite Entertainment and Valiant Entertainment each had one 1% of the total for the top 300 comics while Archie Comics, Aftershock Comics, One Press, Abstract Studios, UDON Entertainment, Titan Comics, Bongo Entertainment, Broadsword Comics and United Plankton Pictures each has less than 1% of the total units. Abstract Studios, Bongo Entertainment and Broadsword Comics got back on the top 300 comics list while Action Lab Entertainment, Albatross Funnybooks, Avatar Press, Fantagraphics Books, Heavy Metal Magazine, Joe Books, New England Comics and Zenescope Entertainment dropped off the list this month.

The up-swing of 1,518,204 units from new and increased sales was enough to compensate for the down-swing of 1,241,223 units from lost sales resulting in a net increase of 276,981 units from last month. While new titles and returning titles contributed to the net increase, it was the 379,995 units of increased sales on continuing titles which was unusually high. The only other month in the past year to have such an increase in continuing titles was October 2017 with an increase by 389,427 units.

The continuing titles which gained sales category added 63,109 units compared to last month. The Walking Dead accounted for 33.9% of the activity in this category and Astonishing X-Men another 24.3% with the remaining 41.8% split across 19 other titles.

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The Walking Dead had the largest gain of 21,397 units. The Walking Dead #175 is the first part of a new story arc at the new cover price of $3.99 neither of which explain the jump of 35.1% over the previous issue. We’ve seen similar spike before on The Walking Dead and given the high profile nature of the property there are a multitude of outside factors which could account for these sales spikes. The massive sales spikes on the chart were the issues with the multiple covers.

Astonishing X-Men increased by 15,335 units over last month. This one is much easier to explain. In addition to the regular cover, Astonishing X-Men #7 a 1-in-10 cover, two 1-in-25 covers, an meet-or-exceed 100% of Astonishing X-Men #6 cover and two meet-or-exceed 125% of Astonishing X-Men #4 covers. The meet-or-exceed covers only counted orders of the regular cover of Astonishing X-Men #7 while the 1-in-25 covers counted both the regular cover and the Cassaday LH cover which was one of the meet-or-exceed 125% covers. The Marvel section of the retailer order form looks a lot like those math word problems we all had to deal with in school.

The continuing titles which shipped more issues category added 379,995 units compared to last month. January had five shipping weeks while December only had four shipping weeks. Most of the titles and units in this category were Marvel titles with Avengers accounting for 43.8% of the units.

Avengers shifted to weekly in January releasing five issues as opposed to the single issue released in December. There were numerous incentive covers on those five issues including 1-in-25 covers, 1-in-100 covers, 1-in-200 covers and meet-or-exceed covers with thresholds ranging for 100% to 150% of a previous item. Avengers #674 had ten variant covers beyond the regular cover which explains the 51.1% drop from that issue to the next.

The continuing titles with reasonably stable sales category removed 2,787 units compared to last month. DC has a couple of titles on this list as does IDW but most of the titles in this category tend to be from the publishers in the back half of Previews.

The continuing titles which shipped fewer issues category removed 171,289 units compared to last month. All of the titles in this category shipped two issues in December and only one in January. Guardians of the Galaxy #150 double in sales over the previous issue almost but not quite counter-balancing the impact fewer issues being released. The issue both ended the series and served to kick off the Infinity Countdown event.

The continuing titles which lost sales category removed 326,974 units compared to last month. Marvel titles accounted for 59.31% of the these losses.

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Marvel Two-in-One alone equated to 10.4% of the total for this category. The second issue drop of 53.06% reflects the heavy promotional push Marvel gave the title with eight incentive covers. There were two 1-in-10 covers, a 1-in-25 cover, two 1-in-50 covers, a 1-in-1000 cover and two meet-or-exceed 200% of Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man #2 covers. The second issue had a regular cover and an meet-or-exceed 200% of Uncanny Avengers #26 cover. If you are wondering why Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man #2 and Uncanny Avengers #26 were used as benchmarks for the meet-or-exceed covers, the Human Torch was in both issues. Granted, he was only in a few panel of Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man #2 which was released on July 19th, 2017. The Human Torch is a member of the Uncanny Avengers and was in Uncanny Avengers #26 which was released on August 30th, 2017. The first issue of Marvel Two-in-One was solicited in the October 2017 Previews and the second issue in the November 2017 Previews. Given that Ben Grimm was the star of the original Marvel Two-in-One series, it is a little strange an issue of Infamous Iron Man which the Thing appeared in wasn’t used as a benchmark.

Weapon X is another example of a title selling better when it has promotion covers and not as well when it doesn’t. Weapon X #12 has a 1-in-10 cover, a 1-in-25 cover and two meet-or-exceed 125% of Weapon X #7 covers while Weapon X #13 had no incentive covers. The end result was a drop of 46.48% on Weapon X #13. The sales bumps on Weapon X correspond to the issues which had one or more incentive covers.

The new titles category added 585,466 units compared to last month. DC account for 30.12% of the units for the new titles across six titles while Marvel accounted for 31.97% across six titles. Marvel titles might launch a little stronger but the second issue drops on Marvel titles are much sharper than at DC. Batman and the Signal was the strongest launch at DC in January a with Old Man Hawkeye from Marvel not too far behind. The New Age of DC Heroes titles didn’t launch very strong. Damage #1 sold 37,001 units and Silencer #1 sold 30,131 units. While these titles could be sleeper hits, it is very unusual for a title to ever sell better than the initial launch numbers. The various Star Wars Adventures: Forces of Destiny one-shots from IDW clustered together and sold between 11,000 and 15,000 units. Unsurprisingly, the better known characters sold better than the less recognizable ones.

The returning titles category added 249,710 units compared to last month. Image titles accounted for 61.25% of the units for returning titles. Spawn alone accounted for 15.34% of the units. DC has three tiles in this category: Doom Patrol, Mystick U and Astro City.

Doom Patrol has been plagued with delays starting with the fourth issue. Some issues shipped late even after being re-solicited. Even with Doom Patrol shipping late and the final issue not having an active solicitation, the Milk Wars crossover between the Young Animal line and the DC Universe proper still kicked off in January with the JLA/Doom Patrol Special #1. This potentially puts the final two issues of this Doom Patrol title into a lame duck status with events in those issues being revealed in other places before the issues are released. This lame duck status usually doesn’t help the issues sell well.

Mystic U is a bimonthly series and shipped when expected.

Astro City has been having some scheduling problem on the last ten or so issues. The volume had a fairly good record of shipping on time from when it launched on July 10th, 2013 through July 2016 with two issues shipping two weeks late, an issue shipping a week late and one issue shipping a week early. The shipping schedule wasn’t solid after than with only two issues shipping on the expected ship date. The title is moving to an original graphic novel format which hopefully will help with the scheduling challenges it has been having lately. In terms of sales, standard attrition has tkaen its tool on Astro City which launched at 27,700 units and is currently selling 9,179 units as of Astro City #50 in Janaury.

The returning titles category added 249,710 units compared to last month. Batman: Creature of the Night was the best selling title to step away from the sales chart this month. The final issue of Invincible was delayed, failing to ship in January as expected and will ship on February 14th, instead. It is worth noting that every continuing Marvel title which shopped in December also shipped in January. Keep in mind this category includes all titles which shipped last month but not this month including one which were not expected to ship this month. Being in this category does not mean the title is late, simply that is didn’t ship this month and therefore removed items from the total for the top 300 comics which were there last month.

The defunct titles category removed 345,114 units compared to last month. Marvel titles accounted for 75.56% of the units in this category but most of that was one-shots which were assigned a unique series code. My number crunching system uses the series code to determine if a title is an ongoing title or a one-shot since I haven’t found any better data to use for that purpose. Uncanny Avengers and Royals ended last month reducing the visibility of the Inhumans a bit. Over at DC, The Kamandi Challenge concluded its twelve issue run last month and Bug: The Adventures of Forager concluded its six issue run.

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The annuals/specials category added 147,252 units compared to last month. As is common in five week months, DC released a couple of annuals with the Flash Annual and Detective Comics Annual doing much better than the Deathstroke Annual. There was 8,839 units of reorder activity for the Batman Annual which was released back in November.

The X-Men Blue Annual and X-Men Gold Annual were both released in January by Marvel and the X-Men Blue Annual sold better than the regular issues of X-Men Blue while the X-Men Gold Annual didn’t sell as well as the regular issues of X-Men Gold. The X-Men Blue Annual kicked of a new storyline , Poison X, which continue in X-Men Blue and Venom while the X-Men Gold Annual told a story unconnected to the current events in the main X-Men Gold title. The two titles are selling roughly the same with X-Men Gold usually outselling X-Men Blue. For a while, Astonish X_Men was selling about the same as X-Men Blue_. Right now, the X-Men franchise lacks a clear flagship title.

The non-series category removed 99,919 units compared to last month. Both DC and Marvel has units on both sides of this category with the loss in sales from last month being larger than the units sold in January. Hawkman Found #1 had 64,617 units in December and 22,289 units of reorder activity in January. DC was down 28,544 units in this category while Marvel was down 67,393 units. The Amazing Spider-Man/Venom Inc: Omega one-shot did well for Marvel but could not compensate for the loss of the various True Believers: Phoenix titles last month.

The reorders category added 92,672 units compared to last month. Most of the activity in this category was DC titles with the Dark Nights: Metal and related one-shots accounting for most of it.

Supergirl #16 did 17,642 units of reorder activity putting the total for that issue at 46,092 units which is the most units for any issue of the volume other than the first issue. Supergirl #17 sold 26,466 units. Sales have been picking up on this title since Supergirl #12 when the open-to-order Stanley “Artgem” Lau alternate covers started being offered.

Batman: White Knight #2 sold 4,438 units or reorders and Batman: White Knight #3 moved another 8,434 units. If those reorders are indicative of the series being a bit of a sleeper hit, we might see reorders on Batman: White Knight #4 next month and possibly an increase in sales with Batman: White Knight #5.

X-Men: Grand Design #1 moved 4,680 units of reorder activity and X-Men: Grand Design #2 was down 30.84% in January. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see reorder activity on either or both of these issues in the future.

Only 18 items sold over 50,000 units in January and half of them were below 64,000 units. In January, 128 items on the top 300 comics list sold under 10,000 units, including 27 items from DC, 12 of which were new released and 9 items from Marvel, one of which was reorder activity and another was a variant cover item. Another 43 new items from Marvel and DC sold between 10,000 units and 20,000 units.

With all of the interest in the movies and television shows based on comic book properties, these low sales area little surprising. While certainly not everyone interested in watching the movies and television shows will be interested in reading comics, only a smaller percentage of them need to in order to make a tangible difference in sales. The CW shows based on DC universe properties of Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and Black Lightning have average ratings which equate to around 822,072 people between 18 and 49. A single percent of that is 8,220 people which, if they have bought an issue of the related comic books, could have increased sales by around 17% for Flash, an average of nearly 39% for Supergirl, over 35% for Green Arrow and by a little over 91% for Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands. A conversion rate of 1% isn’t an unreasonable expectation, particularly given there are viewers older and younger than that specific demographic. The reason we aren’t seeing any noticeable influx of new readers from these television shows is because there isn’t any call to action attempting to convert this group of potential new readers.

There is an untapped audience out there for comic books. But before reaching out to those potential new readers, the creators and publishers need to take a close look at what they are producing and figure out why isn’t isn’t connecting with the existing readership. Neither Legacy nor the New Age of DC Heroes seems to be selling significantly better than what came before. Until the focus is on selling the contents instead of the incentive covers sales titles will continue to struggle to keep readers.

For a more in-depth discussion of the sales data, check out the Mayo Report episodes of the Comic Book Page podcast at www.ComicBookPage.com. The episode archived cover the past decade of comic book sales on a monthly basis with yearly recap episodes. In addition to those episodes on the sales data, every Monday is a Weekly Comics Spotlight episode featuring a comic by DC, a comic by Marvel and a comic by some other publisher. I read around 200 new comics a month so the podcast covers a wide variety of the comics currently published. If you are looking for more or different comics to read, check out the latest Previews Spotlight episode featuring clips from various comic book fans talking about the comics they love. With thousands of comics in Previews every month, Previews Spotlight episodes are a great way to find out about new comic book titles that may have flown under your comic book radar.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at John.Mayo@ComicBookResources.com.