Detective Comics leads the charge in Comic Book Sales, Positive in March Q1 2019

The Dark Knight Returns DC to the Top.

It isn’t a big surprise to see Bill Finger and Bob Kane’s Creation putting DC on top again, thanks to DC celebrating Batman’s 80th Birthday and reaching a huge milestone in Comic Books with reaching 1000; helping the comic book Direct Market make solid sales gains in March over last year, and sales for the first quarter of 2019 are up nearly 8% compared to 2018.

Newsarama was the first to reveal that the All-Star Studded Detective Comics #1000 (With the hefty price tag of $9.99 and countless variant covers to go with it) was the biggest selling Comic in March. According to the Diamond Comic Distributors figures that were posted on Friday Morning, DC dominated the top of the Comic Book sales chart; accounting for the top six selling titles of the month, including The Batman Who Laughs: The Grim Knight #1 (#2) and Doomsday Clock #9 (#3). Marvel had the seventh, eighth and ninth selling titles, including Amazing Spider-Man #17 (#7) while Image Comics’ The Walking Dead #189 was the best-selling non-DC or Marvel title at #30.

Speaking of TWD, Volume 31 The Rotten Core, was the best-selling Graphic-Novel in March (Units Sold), one of six Image titles in the Top Ten. DC had four other titles including Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman was at #2 in terms of the best-selling title by dollars. Detective Comics #1000’s $10 cover price and their top-of-the-charts dominance helped DC to a rare split of the market share categories. DC was March’s top dollar publisher with 36.20% in market share to Marvel’s 34.46%. Marvel led the industry in unit market share with 40.94% to DC’s 34%. Image was third with 9.63% in dollar share and 9.36% in unit share.

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Overall, comic book and graphic novel dollar sales in March were up 13.10% over March 2018, though down 1.87% in total units sold. For the completed first quarter of 2019, dollar sales are up 7.64% but down -1.68% in units. Let’s take a look at March’s Chart for 2019’s Market Share, Comparative Sales Data, New Titles Shipped and Top 10 Comic Books Units and Dollars and Top 10 Graphic Novels Units and Dollars charts follow below.