Last month, ICv2 released its annual North American comics sales report for 2024. Overall, sales have increased by 4% over 2023, with 2024 sales pulling in an estimated $1.94 billion. Almost all of the sales increase came from comic shops (aka the direct market).
2024 comic sales information
Most of the previous years’ criteria applies:
- Direct market figures are based on a sampling of ComicHub point-of-sale reports. With the decline in 2024 of Diamond, ICv2 is now even more reliant on ComicHub estimates. Figures for book channels are from Circana BookScan.
- Book channel information includes sales from bookstores (like Barnes and Noble), online retailers (like Amazon), mass market retailers (like Target and Walmart), locally owned bookstores, etc. Library purchases and digital services like Hoopla aren’t included; neither are Scholastic book fairs or digital subscription services like Marvel Unlimited.
- Digital comic sales are no longer counted, likely as a result of the demise of Comixology as a stand-alone service and the difficulty in accessing sales figures.
- The “Other channels” category consists of fundraising channels like Kickstarter. It also presumably contains Archie, the only major comic publisher still available through newsstands, via Archie’s digests.
Below are ICv2’s infographics outlining their 2024 sales figures.
Breaking down the above figures by percentages (numbers below are rounded):
Sales percentage by channels
- Book channels: 58.1%
- Comic stores: 39.5%
- Other channels: 2.3%
Sales percentage by format
- Graphic novels: 76%
- Comic books: 24%
My thoughts
In dollars, sales of comic books are up 12.2% over 2023, which is a 15 year high. Comics Beat thinks sales might be up thanks to Marvel and DC launching popular comic lines (an Ultimate revival for Marvel and the Absolute line for DC). However, ICv2 notes this sales increase might not be from more units (i.e. number of comics) sold.
Meanwhile, graphic novel sales are flat in the book channel space (down 1.4%), though up in comic stores by 13.3%. The flat book channel sales are due to non-manga categories not offsetting manga coming off pandemic highs. However, despite glowing praise of the Big Two’s comic book sales by ICv2, it’s still graphic novels, manga, and trade paperbacks that are steering the sales ship for North American comics overall. Again, I feel it’s a good thing that DC and Marvel aren’t the be-all and end-all of comic sales anymore. An entire industry relying heavily on a single genre dominated by very old superheroes (such as Superman and Batman) isn’t healthy. Of course, DC and Marvel still dominate in the direct market, which isn’t likely to change.
Like last year, I wonder how well Archie Comics is doing, as I assume they make up part of the “Other comics” figure alongside Kickstarter projects. A lot of the buzz they had in the 2010s has fallen off; they now seem to be more of a nostalgia brand at this point?
As for this year, Diamond’s bankruptcy and Trump’s nonsensical tariffs certainly mean 2025 comic sales figures will look different from 2024. Of course, I hope things aren’t too negatively impacted. Local comic shops are still important: for their communities: as independently owned outlets, lessening the dominance of conglomerates such as Amazon, etc.
Photo by jareed (Flickr / CC BY)
