Marvel Comics’ market share increased to 38.8% in Q1 2022, based on sales of comics and graphic novels tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comics around the world, and provided to ICv2. That’s up sharply from 31.7% in Q4 2021. DC Comics’ market share dropped to 24.3%, down from 27.1% in Q4 2021 (see “Comic Store Publisher Market Shares – Q4 2021“). The Marvel surge pushed their combined market share to 63.1%, up from 58.8% in Q4 2021.
Image Comics was the only other publisher to gain market share, moving from 11.5% to 11.9%, still below their record high of 15.% in Q2 2021. Every other publisher lost market share except for Dynamite, which stayed level at 1.4%. BOOM! Studios dropped from 6.0% to 4.4%, and Dark Horse Comics went from sixth place to fifth, even as its share dropped from 3.5% to 3.2%. The “All Others” category lost some market share as well, going from 10.4% to 8.5%, suggesting that the long tail got a little narrower.
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Comic Store Market Share (Dollars) – Q1 2022 |
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[ComicHub Data, via ICv2] |
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Rank |
Publisher |
Market Share |
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1 |
Marvel Comics |
38.8% |
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2 |
DC Comics |
24.3% |
|
3 |
Image Comics |
11.9% |
|
4 |
BOOM! Studios |
4.4% |
|
5 |
Dark Horse Comics |
3.2% |
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6 |
IDW Publishing |
3.1% |
|
7 |
VIZ Media |
2.5% |
|
8 |
Dynamite Entertainment |
1.4% |
|
9 |
Kodansha Comics |
1.1% |
|
10 |
AfterShock Comics |
0.7% |
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All Others |
8.5% |
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The data on which these market share percentages are based is from sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American graphic novels around the world. During the period for which these reports were generated, there were over 100 stores using the ComicHub system. As this is a small, non-random sample of over 3,000 stores selling American comics worldwide, these rankings may not be typical for all stores, but do represent a variety of locations and store emphases.
The differences in how the data behind these charts is collected compared to past market share charts based on sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores are many. Here are some:
Sell-in charts show all the launch sales happening on the same day, while sell-through sales happen over time, moving sales into different periods.
Sell-in shows what retailers think they will sell, while sell-through shows what they actually do sell.
Sell-in sales are influenced by incentive variants, which increase the number of copies ordered (to get a variant that can be sold at a premium price), but may not increase the number of copies sold at retail by the same amount.
For monthly sales rankings based on ComicHub POS data, see “Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Rankings Based on Comic Store POS Data Index.”
Source: ICV2
