May 2012 Comic Book Sales Chart

Comic Book sales estimates for may were released over at ComicChron and ICv2, and while the big stories seem to be how A vs. X is dominating the charts, and how Walking Dead is selling boatloads, I want to look at this from the perspective of our favorite Publisher, Valiant. (We should give some props to The Beat for mentioning Valiant in their review of sales numbers)

The results: X-O Manowar was number 43 on the sales list, selling an estimated 42,700 copies (hey! that number is familiar!)

This number, and this placement, may not mean much out of context, so let’s take a look above it in the charts to get a sense for what that rank means. Of all the titles that sold more copies than X-O Manowar #1, 16 were published by Marvel, and 24 were published at DC. Only two were published by a non-Marvel/DC company, and that was the two issues of Walking Dead sold in May (coming in at number 31 and number 28 on the sales chart).

X-O Manowar #1 was second only to Walking Dead, the juggernaut of the comics industry, of sales of non-Marvel/DC comic books. That’s not bad.

Looking down the chart

Now, let’s take a look further down the chart. Looking down the chart, after X-O Manowar, you don’t see another non-Marvel/DC book until Saga #3, at number 57. Saga has been a runaway success, and looking further, we don’t see another non-Marvel/DC book until we get to Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, from Dark Horse, at number 94. After that is Fatale #5, from Image, at 114, and after that we start to see a lot of the non-Marvel/DC publisher’s books, Dynamite, Boom!, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, etc.

Number 43 seems to be a very strong start for Valiant Comics, it is the second highest selling non-Marvel/DC title in May, and one of only three non-Marvel/DC titles to break the top 100.

The Beat has a breakdown of the sales ranking by company, and in that chart, Valiant is number 14 by dollar share. What I find interesting about this chart is that there is not a huge dollar share difference between publishers at this point. If Valiant were to double their dollar share, that would put them in the top 10 near Zenescope and Viz, quadrupling their dollar share would put them about on par with Dynamite and Boom! Studios.

What to expect

When the numbers for June come out, they will include both Harbinger #1 and X-O Manowar #2. Will orders be as high for Harbinger #1 as they were for X-O Manowar #1? We don’t know yet. Our guesses have been that Harbinger will be ordered in slightly lower numbers, since it doesn’t have the cache of being the first title launched. Also, orders for second issues are always lower than orders for first issues, so I think we can expect the numbers for X-O Manowar #2 to be lower than they were for #1.

Congrats to Valiant Comics!

These numbers are a pretty big splash to make, and as a fan, it is exciting to see high numbers of these books. The more they sell, the more they can continue to make, and that is good for every one.