Spider-Woman #1 leads March comics sales in a very strange month

March’s sales charts are a bit late from Diamond (and the Beat) but March 2020 was a very strange month. Comics sales actually kind of held their own, all things considered, and though down sharply from a year ago, that was the Detective #1000 month. One thing was normal: Marvel was the #1 publisher. The #1 comic was a surprise: Spider-Woman #1 by Karla Pachecho and Pere Perez – with an estimated 142,000 copies ordered into stores. I’ll editorialize a bit here and say as a pal of Karla’s for many years, for her to have the #1 comic book, even in these times, is such a feel good story for someone who deserves nothing but the best…this should be a Movie of the Week, honestly!

Anyway back to the numbers. Sales were down a scant point from February 2020, but most of the comics had already been ordered before the plague broke loose.

As someone confused by all this, we turned as usual to John Jackson Miller who is also confused, but he ponders and analyzes with much more aplomb and says that if you left out ‘Tec #1000 March would have actually been UP from a year ago. Comics were doing fine until Coronavirus hit. But if orders were fine, what shipped was down, and the market hit a snag in dollars.

Reorders, for example, are always a significant part of sales and are counted in the monthly orders; as stores faced closure, those reorders almost certainly trailed off. Graphic novel sales are disproportionately special-order in nature; they’re a chunk of the decline.

There are a few other things complicating the charts this month. Note that comic book units were down nearly 7%, while the dollars they represented were down nearly 16%. Two possible reasons for that. One is that Marvel enacted emergency deep discounts for its comics with on-sale dates of March 18 and afterward, which has the effect of depressing dollar sales relative to units. In Marvel’s case, it resulted in a nearly 6-point spread between its unit and dollar market shares.

Then you’ve got a number of titles which are returnable, which means they’ll have had a 10% penalty applied to their unit-sales numbers. Publishers’ figures below, however, are based on actual sales without that penalty, so there’s going to be a gap.

Miller’s monthly comics sales (with numbers factored in) are here. With some handy charts – so go look. He also notes this shocker:

Artists Writers & Artisans — to be known in our space-limited charts as AWA — debuted in 13th place in dollar share and eighth place in unit share at Diamond.

#8 in units! Well hmmmmm. Resistance #1 led the way (26,000), although more people probably saw it in digital form.

Boom! had the top two GNs with Once and Future and Something is Killing the Children, so that plan is working. But GN units were down from a year ago.

Obviously, this is a weird month…and April is going to be even weirder. And every month is going to be weird from here on out. Gaze then, upon the frozen snapshat of the Before Times.

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

 COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

NEW TITLES SHIPPED

TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 TOYS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

TOP 10 GAMES BY DOLLARS INVOICED

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