Welcome back to TBU By The Numbers. Here we take a look at the sales numbers for DC comics, in particular, the TBU books, as outlined by the TBU Roundups for February 2019. All numbers presented in this article are from the February 2019 Comichron page. These numbers only comics distributed by Diamond to US comic book stores. They do not include outside the US, digital, newsstand, and anything else.
Overall February 2019 Numbers
* Includes ALL DC comic sales, including reorders
** TBU is defined by that month’s TBU roundup on TBU.net’s website, does NOT include reorders
Even though DC held the top 3 sales spots, and 6 of the top 10, Marvel still beat them in sales by 788K. This is probably due to the reduction in books DC has been putting out recently. Overall comic sales are down 7% from this time last year.
Main TBU Books
Snyder’s The Batman Who Laughs continues to top the charts, even though it is seeing a severe dip from its previous issue. This being an anticipated Snyder limited series makes such a large dip a little surprising. Followed at #2 and #3 are Batman #64 and #65, with #64 seeing a respectable increase from the last few issues. This was most likely due to the Flash/Batman crossover for the month, so we saw some Flash fans picking up the issue who may normally not. TEC is steadily increasing as we get closer to issue 1000, where we’ll hopefully see Detective Comics outsell Batman for the first time in 17 years. Harley Quinn is also seeing a very large increase in sales. Batgirl and Nightwing are getting close to the danger zone, despite Batgirl’s stellar latest arc, whereas Red Hood: Outlaw has now entered the under-20K-possible-cancelation-zone. Hopefully, with it returning to a team book of sorts, the charm of the book will revitalize readership.
Secondary TBU Books
I think I may have said that last month’s issue of Old Lady Harley was the last one, but that wasn’t true. February was the last one. We saw a tiny increase in sales, but not much. It was a kooky book, one I can understand isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but still kept you engaged. Batman Beyond is full on in the danger zone, despite its use of the Joker returning, Jason Todd death callback, etc…This book needs something fresh to renew its readership.
Main DCU Books
Heroes in Crisis and Flash #64 (the 2nd part of “The Price”) managed to make the top 10, but apparently, 7.7K readers didn’t care how the arc ended as Flash #65 dropped to #16. All the normally covered books are seeing a decrease in sales, the largest being Young Justice, obviously, as this is a #2 issue and #1’s sell great for collectors. Teen Titans is still hanging on just above 20K. It’s been really great and people should be reading it. Deathstroke has been severely declining over the last few months. We’ll see what the Teen Titans crossover will do for it in March. Adventures of the Super Sons is also in the cancelation zone, but with only five more issues to go for the planned maxiseries, fans shouldn’t be too worried.
February’s Number’s Spotlight will be Batman: A History of Topping The Charts (Or Not). This spotlight will release in a few weeks as we expand the spotlight into its own dedicated article.
