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 July 2019. All numbers presented in this article are from the July 2019 Comichron page. These numbers only represent comics distributed by Diamond to the United States comic book stores. They do not include sales outside the US, digital, newsstand, or any other distribution method.
DC and TBU Overall Numbers
* Includes ALL DC comic sales, including reorders
** TBU titles are defined by that month’s releases as featured on TBU Weekly Roundup articles and does NOT include reorders
Main TBU Books
Card Stock covers threw the numbers off a bit this month, but I’ll do my best to clarify. The titles highlighted in purple indicate the total number of issues sold from combined normal covers and the card stock variant covers. (Editor’s Note: For those who don’t know, card stock variants are priced one dollar more than the normal covers. Because of the different price point, Diamond treats each item separate when the price point is different.) The market sales position is adjusted for the combination of the two. The books that benefited the most from the two covers were Batman, Harley Quinn, Nightwing, Red Hood Outlaw, Justice League, and Teen Titans. Though it went down in sales, Catwoman stands out because the card stock covers outsold the standard ones. Batgirl came out at the beginning and the end of the month, having been pushed back previously, but unfortunately going down in sales in spite of the new creative team and the card stock cover. Nightwing surprisingly went up a bit as well, though this was most likely due to the card stock cover and the Year of the Villain event, guest-starring Talon.
Secondary TBU Books
Batman Last Knight On Earth went down a bit, but for a #2 Snyder book, losing only 7% in sales is not bad at all. Batman: Curse of the White Knight did really well with its #1, outselling its predecessor’s #1 (Batman: White Knight) by 4.4K. Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III continues to drop in sales while the only ongoing on this list, Batman Beyond continues to wallow in the cancelation zone without any changes to the creative team on the horizon.
Main DCU Books
DCeased continues to go down in sales but is staying well above 100K, which is nothing to sneeze at for a #3. Justice League and Teen Titans went up in sales. I’d pin it all on the card stock covers, but as we saw in the Main TBU table, card stock covers alone weren’t enough to bring all the books up. Adventures of the Super Sons finished up after twelve issues. I don’t know if there’s too much to say on that other than this writer hopes that Jon and Damian team up together again soon.
Overall, it was a pretty mixed bag with most of the titles getting a slight boost from the card stock variants. DC’s market share jumped up almost five percent this month with the TBU titles getting s slight boost as well. With the numbers released on time, we will release the latest TBU Numbers Spotlight in two weeks with the promised, How Do Delays Affect Limited Series Sales?
