Top Selling Comics & Publisher Market Share: February 2015

Each month, Diamond Comic Distributors announces their top sellers, via press release, in the realm of comic books and more. This can give readers an idea of what folks are gravitating towards. What's working? What isn't? Let's take a look at the best of the best for February 2015.

The top company, once again, is Marvel comics. Strangely enough, Marvel dropped roughly 2.5% in the dollar share and almost 6% in the unit share compared to last month, while DC didn't move too much. Image moved a bit as well and got into the double digits for both dollar and unit share.

Here are some pie charts to help inspire you.

The top book from February wasn't from Marvel or DC. It was from IDW. ORPHAN BLACK #1 was the top selling book for February

The OGN SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE VOLUME 3 took the top spot on the top trades and graphic novels list. Surprisingly, WALKING DEAD volume 1 isn't on here. Regardless, except for a couple of Marvel titles, Image, as per usual, dominates this list.

Here's what the companies shipping out in February.

How do they calculate this information? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which include the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from a universe of over 3,500 comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world. The account base includes brick-and-mortar comic book specialty shops, Internet merchants, and other specialty stores.

Unit and dollars sales are calculated based upon orders invoiced and shipped to Diamond accounts during January to December 2013, which comprises initial pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable.

What are your thoughts on all these numbers? What's your predictions for this month?

Wow, people must really love Orphan Black.

I had NO clue that people were buying it that much. I didn't hear anyone talking about it at the comic shop

Wow that's crazy that Orphan black sold so much and #1 spot!

I didn't know it was that popular!

~MiB

Spider-Gwen also made it up here--Marvel just has to sh!t on paper and people buy.

Hell yeah IMAGE son!

But still no Valiant.....

Most likely it was in the new Loot Crate shipment.

So the two trade paperbacks that I just got in the mail are raked 2 and 3! HELL TO THE YEAH!

Don't give two sh*ts about Orphan Black, but LOVE IDW! Way to go!

I think Orphan Black is most sold because of Loot Crate.

Well, that makes perfect sense

Damn it Ninjak you had one job :)

@bl00dwerk: censor the language please

@the_stegman: i really dig Orphan Black...unfortunately I and my guess is a lot of other people were expecting higher quality art and actual story a la Star Wars/Darth Vader...instead we got episode recap. Too bad because there is a lot that could be explored in that universe, but i dont know that I'll keep buying the comic unless there is a big change of direction.

Wtf is Orphan Black

Marvel continues to do well. Glad to see all of their new series are starting off well. And yes Orphan Black had to have been included in a Loot Crate.

@silverpool: an awesome bbca production about a bunch of clones and the battle for control over them. All of them played by Tatiana maslony(or however you spell her name). The first season is amazing the second one kinda goes a lil too crazy but it's still one of the better sci if shows on this side of the pond

@drellassassin: With them having the rights to the Star Wars property Marvel will continue to always outsell DC. Especially with the hype of the new movies coming out and the resurgence of that property. Then they have their reboot or whatever they are calling it.

@superguy1591: The real test is will it stay on the charts after the first issue.

valiant is being heavily slept on. some day.

Orphan Black was the top selling book of the month? I am sooooo confused by this. The Loot Crate explanation is the only reasoning that makes any sense for this. Kind of sad that the a random subscription service might have more customers than any ongoing comic book series.

marvel keeps inching further and further ahead. I just wish the quality of books matched the sales. Marvel seems to have MASTERED the bait and switch tactic. They put the BEST creators on the coolest charecters and group books, then after an arc or so they bring in people with foreign names that noone knows about! Im tired of that! Amazing Xmen started with jason aaron and steve mcniven! C'mon marvel, love you, but stop doing that! And the quality of the avengers and xmen books are almost shameful.

@starbrand1: Not really. They had 50% last month. Star Wars books is why the gap is so big.

Due to Loot Crate

Marvel destroys once again, batman remains awesome.

Nice job Image, you're moving up.

@jhazzroucher said:

I'm not buying the Loot Crate explanation.....you really think there are more people buying loot crates than Star Wars, Darth Vader, and Spider-Gwen comics?

I did not know an Orphan Black comic existed

@sailorsriracha: @jonny_anonymous: fret not, dollar share is nothing to Valiant since they only put 9 books out a month. It is all about unit share.

Month #4 where Valiant has been in the top 10 for units sold. This is no small feat. Remember they only put out 9 books a month.

@nofzac: No but if you combine the loot crate numbers with the sales numbers then you get the number 1 issue. Not ALL of the sales came from that but it wouldn't be number 1 without loot crate.

Marvel has been outselling DC like this long before the started having Star Wars comics again.

Loot Crate orders 1 copy for each of their many subscribers and includes it in their monthly box. Loot Crate is a big reason why Star Wars #1 was able to sell one million.

@superguy1591:

If marvels numbers are up, then YES they are inching higher and higher. If star wars affects it, thats good for marvel, and is INCHING them up. Smh at people not having any sort of logical thinking skills.

Poor DC

@drellassassin: True but not by this much. If you look at the numbers before they released the star wars books Marvel would only be up by a few units. Only time they would garner high sells is when they release number issues and a event was going on. Now they are release number one issue combined star wars with stuff. With the release of a black Captain America and female Thor along with secret wars coming up. Then they have the whole reboot thing or whatever you call it.

While this month is an extra wide gap because of all the number 1's, this was the six months before Star Wars #1 released (from Diamond's listings of Overall Dollar Share):

June: Marvel +3.83%

July: Marvel +6.91%

August: Marvel +5.56%

September: DC +4.54%

October: Marvel +7.29%

November: Marvel +7.41%

December: Marvel +.31%

So i found an article from October 2014 about Walking Dead #132 and its inclusion in loot crate. WD #130-#131 each sold around 70k copies, while 132 was in a loot crate, and sold around 326,000 copies. So the crate in 2014 added around 256k to a total. You can Google for Comichron Loot Crate for more info.

I wish they released individual sales figures with the info in the article here. Curious how big of a gap between Orphan Black and Vader.

DC is doing fine, these Star Wars books (and the new Spider-Gwen) sell a lot and increase Marvel's sales and market share exponentially, making DC look smaller then normal.

I'm surprised so many people are buying Superman Earth One, I really don't get why people like that series.

@drellassassin: Yeah but look and see what was happening during those months, Marvel had an Event, also they had released other number issues. Alot of those issues had variants. While DC didnt have a major events except in Sept when DC has those special events they have every year that month.

Loot crate orders thousands of copies...or at least that's what we were lead to believe with previous installments.

DC will probably be on top during convergence or straight after.

The loot crate makes since about Orphan Black because we have three local comic book shops in are area, and not one has a copy of Orphan Black on their shelves or even knew that Orphan Black had a comic book to begin with. I'm going by later to check it out.

Orphan Black must be a popular show.

Damn, Marvel is killing it in single issues and Image continues so kill it in trades.

DC really needs to step up their game.

Wow good for Spider-Gwen, also nice to see people picking up Ms Marvel Trades that book is amazing.

@starbrand1: it went down this month. They had 50% of the market last month, it's down now.

Silk in the top ten, good news for a great book.

@transformers1024: As long as Marvel keeps making number ones, and events, they will have high selling single issues.

Now they have Star Wars, which is MAJOR. DC needs to license something popular to counter that, like Harry Potter or something.

@feartheliving: Yeah, it's great Ms Marvel trade is in the top 10 again when it's been out for 5 months. The next trade comes out next month, too.

I didn't even know there was an Orphan Black comic being made, and I'm a huge fan of the show.

What's any better about not having the "i" in there? It's not like anyone who can read doesn't know what that means. If there's a language policy there should be a filter that changes the entire word...