DC Comics Dominates September's Top Ten, Wins Marketshare

Avengers vs. X-Men

#11, featuring the death of a key Marvel character, scored the top spot for September sales but was the only title from the publisher to crack the top ten last month, according to Diamond Comics Distributors. All nine of the other top ten titles were DC Comics "zero month" releases. DC outsold Marvel to take the top of the chart in both volume and marketshare, Not surprisingly, sales were down from the same time last year when DC's New 52 launch sold out every book in their publishing line. That decrease was less than 5% by dollars and less than 10% by units, though, which is pretty solid considering. Sales were down slightly from August, which may be thanks to August being a five-week month. Batman, Justice League, Green Lantern and Detective Comics rounded out the top five best-selling monthly comics last month, followed by Action Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman & Robin, Earth 2 and Batman Incorporated. As the full list is not yet available, it's not clear how far down the list you have to go before seeing a non-Marvel, non-DC book or even when Marvel made the list again. The real surprise, arguably, was in the graphic novels sales chart, where the seemingly omnipresent first few volumes of The Walking Dead took a backseat to a reissue of some old Marvel material, an original Batman graphic novel and a few debut collections of popular Image and DC titles. The Walking Dead Volume 8 hardcover was the only volume from the hit zombie survival drama to make the top ten, cracking the chart at #3 behind Thanos Quest #1 and The Judas Coin. Thanos Quest, while technically a trade paperback, is short and inexpensive so coming in at #1 may have been at least in part a byproduct of its $7.99 price point (the #2 and #3 books both cost more than $20 retail). The most recent collected edition of Dark Horse's Avatar: the Last Airbender came in at #4, followed by Aquaman Vol. 1: The Trench rounding out the top five. The Tower Chronicles Book One: Geisthawk #1, also a $7.99 paperback, took the #6 spot, followed by the first volumes of The Manhattan Projects and Robert Kirkman's Thief of Thieves, an exclusive hardcover edition of which will be released at New York Comic-Con. Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Knightfall Volume 3 rounded out the top ten.