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>Top 50 Comic Books by Dollars – January 2026

>>152531050
>Inglorious X-Force that low
Damn

>>152531050
>Psylocke Ninja on high
Someone's gonna be mad lol

>>152531050
>Knull #1 outsold Dungeons of Doom #1
Are people really that sick of Doomwank? Or is it just OWUD specifically that nobody cares about?

>>152532303
now if only she could get a proper ongoing instead one-trick minis
>inb4 it ends at #10
>>152532339
OWUD ended last year

>>152532339
It's just a random 3-issue mini, no one is going crazy over that

>>152532393
>OWUD ended last year
Yes, but isn’t that mini supposed to be the epilogue to it?

>>152532554
Yeah, but it’s a mini to do with Dr. Doom… vs. a book dedicated to a character nobody fucking likes. At all. And they’re both #1s, so what gives? Is it just because the Knull book (as far as I know) isn’t a mini?

>>152531050
Marvel truly is the Funko pop of comics. Just absolutely flooding the market with slop that their manchild fan base eats up

>>152532912
>Yes, but isn’t that mini supposed to be the epilogue to it?
I think the audience checked out as soon as the main event was done
also there's no reason to extend an epilogue by three issues, even though said mini is a bridge to the next event (not even sure if the readership knows about this)
this could've been contained in an actual last issue or an one-shot instead

Where’s manga and Dog Man?

>>152531050
If Batman disappeared tomorrow the comic book industry wouldn't know what to do with itself.

>>152532912
>Yeah, but it’s a mini to do with Dr. Doom… vs. a book dedicated to a character nobody fucking likes. At all.
More like a mini that is about dealing with the consequences of looting Doom's shit versus a solo with a villain that normalfags love

>>152533253
the other books still exist

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>TOP 20 GRAPHIC NOVELS - JANUARY 2026

>These are unit and dollar sales rankings based on sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comics around the world. During the period for which these reports were generated, there were over 125 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.

>This data was collected based on a four-week month, from January 4 - February 2, 2026. These sales rankings represent sales to consumers by comic stores during the period.

>All-trash Venom still flopping
Nice, maybe White will get fired.

>>152532274
Kamala curse continues

>>152531050
>>152533627
You can't destroy a character in such an infamous fashion and then expect her to start selling comic books out of nowhere. Mary Jane is in trouble, she aint selling anything that doesnt involve Peter and she may even hurt ASM at this point. We will see.

>>152533262
Where are the normalfags that love Knull? Genuinely, I’ve never seen or heard of them fucking anywhere. Not at my LCS, not online, not in goddamn Marvel Rivals discords, nowhere.

>>152533485
The compacts are really doing well, it'd be great to see them try it with longer complete runs

>>152534578
>not online, not in goddamn Marvel Rivals discords
I've seen it
should've looked better when Venom 3 was on-screen or when it was Knull's season in MR (which is the entire reason of Knull coming back + Hela getting Knull'd)
but now it's late, unless Sony/MCU cameo's him in Brand New Day

>>152531050
>Only one series is over 100 issues.
>Only one series is over 50 issues.
>Only four books are over 25 issues.
>The longest running top 50 title is Nightwing and it's not even close.
This is the weirdest timeline.

Give me a quick rundown on how this industry is still alive.

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>>152534743
How the market's been for well over a decade, just makes sense to relaunch.

>>152532303
>Absolute Green Lantern above Absolute Flash
>would've been #15 without all the #1s

I'm glad people are getting AGLpilled

>>152534743
I'm curious if they're gonna relaunch the book after Watters is done
He just started the new bridge arc in a month which I'm guessing will be at least 12 issues due to the decompression of the Cirque de Sin arc and how he hasn't implied he's leaving yet despite saying he has two new books on the way. So I think he might get to #149 with #150 being a special issue

>>152534759
Retards exist.

>>152535252
We know, you're one of them

>>152533485
>>152533492
Serious question, why has Marvel always done so bad in trades and hardcovers?

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>>152531050
Sad that Absolute Wonder Woman doesn't do better than Absolute Superman. It's a much better book.
Still awesome that one of Wondie's books is in the top ten

>>152535427
pretty sure there's a very long multi-year span just recently where WW's main book was ahead of Superman's

>>152535326
Marvel and DC got into doing graphic novels in the 80s but DC had the advantage in that decade because they had Warner Books knowing how to get stuff sold through bookstores and through carefully cultivating it (and also due to DKR, Watchmen, and Sandman being big sellers) managed to get ahead of Marvel in that department

Marvel's approach to the TPB market seemed like an afterthought as most of their money was coming from the regular monthly readers, then there was the bankruptcy and the company getting taken over by a major cost-cutter

They did put more of an effort into getting into bookstores in the 00s but they still have the problem of allowing stuff to go out of print or not really marketing their stuff that well (case in point: They were doing Mighty Marvel Masterworks before DC did DC Compact and yet DC Compact had a way bigger impact)

>>152533627
It was pretty obvious considering they forced Ewing to pull his head out of his ass and make MJ venom look female.

>>152536032
I don't think Marvel really got good about trades until Quesada, that's when you really started seeing the latest runs getting collected like clockwork and the essentials

Stuff DC was basically doing since the late 80s

>>152535214
And at that point they might as well go past 153 to say it lasted longer than the first Nightwing ongoing.
After that they might as well keep going to 184 to shut up the Timfags about which Robin had the longest running comic volume.
And at that point they might as well keep going to 200.
And by then DC will probably be doing another reboot to get ahead of Batman and Robin entering public domain.

>>152531050
>only one I'm interested in is #49
Brutal.

>>152531050
Honestly shocked Black Cat is that high and Venom isn't even in the top 50. I pretty much had left Black Cat for dead, but if it's going to remain a top-20 Marvel book, they might not have any other choice but to keep it.

>>152533627
Venom's a high number. It isn't going to sell well.

>>152535155
It picked up after the soft reboot

>>152535427
They're both not that good.

>>152538586
You're not that good.

>>152536156
>I don't think Marvel really got good about trades until Quesada, that's when you really started seeing the latest runs getting collected like clockwork and the essentials

Yeah, that was during the 00s. But for some reason things fell off during the 10s.

>>152531050
#134 = TOP 48
Nightwing has balls

>>152531050
>All Star Superman
Hey moving up. Fancy how that works when the comic picks up in quality.

>>152537211
Venom is a Paul book and black cat had MJ in it. So there was a possibility there would be some kind of asm development. But there wasn't, it was a nothing burger.

>>152534759
Gotta have my Batman.

>>152533835
Well, that's what happens when you put an indian front and center.

>>152531050
So many #1 issues, only one comic book surpasses #100.

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>>152531050
This is why Nightwing is so high btw

>>152535326
Marvel is more floppie - tpb oriented. While the other anon said DC had more tradition in doing "collection" hardcover stuff.

>>152534759
Parent company charity under IP farm misconception.

>>152542030
makes sense
But I like it when they show him with scars, like in Tomasi's and Taylor's runs.

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>>152531050
>>152531058
>>152533485
>>152533492

>>152534759
unironically Batman

>>152542030
If one variant by a C-tier-in-DC's-eyes artist (at least I'm assuming, he hasn't done non-filler interiors since Ric) makes him sell that well DC just needs to make Moore the official NW variant artist like they did for Artgerm on rebirth Supergirl.

>>152536156
In the 80s and 90s DC only ever collected "important"/notable stories, they just did slightly more than Marvel. It was Quesada who made "let's collect literally everything" a standard practice.

>>152531050
>DC and Transformers/Image-Skybound Raping Marvel
THE PENDULUM SWICTHED BACK TO BASED AND GOOD

Everytime i see anything sales related on comics it seems like DC always sell better than marvel yet they never overtake them

>>152544182
DC's currently on top with regard to market share purely on the strength of Absolute, DC KO, and Batman. The rest of the line is abysmal.

>>152543315
How so? Marvel already started the Essentials line back in 1996, years before he became EIC

>>152544791
Those were collecting much older stories. Before Quesada, the idea of putting an entire story arc into a trade months after it was done and doing that for almost every book they were publishing was unheard of. DC was doing that for their critically acclaimed Vertigo books and for their big crossover events, but not just for any run.

>>152544182
If you mean market share it's mostly because Marvel floods the market with a lot more shit and variant covers than DC. I mean a Jubilee miniseries who the fuck asked for that

>>152544972
They were much more comprehensive

Every book got at least an initial trade and then continued pretty much down to interest, so you'd get trades of Hitman and Starman and JLA to completion but Robin and Impulse and Supergirl, for instance would get an initial one or two trades and that was it

Is Absolute all that's going on in American comics right now?

>>152545126
Define "going on"

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>>152544182
>Everytime i see anything sales related on comics it seems like DC always sell better than marvel yet they never overtake them
Because the Absolute books and mainline Batman sell like hotcakes (and Absolute adjacent stuff like DC KO), but the rest of DC sells like shit. Also. DC sells more trades.

I can assure you that if Marvel published them, books like mainline Green Lantern, Flash, Titans, Aquaman, Nightwing, even Wonder Woman would simply not go beyond 10 issues since they don't sell much. Those books do Marvel-cancellation numbers. They'd be stuck in the same hell books like Iron Man are. Not to mention books like Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Catwoman or Batgirl that they probably wouldn't even bother beyond a 5 issue mini every few years.

>>152545104
PAD was amused by how DC decided to bookend Supergirl with a trade that collected the first few issues and a trade that collected the final arc with pre-crisis Supergirl and nothing in-between.

>>152544182
>>152544676
>>152545149
If it was just a fluke it wouldn't have lasted long enough for DC to claw back into the market share lead. Comic sales in general were boosted by Absolute just existing - that's almost unheard of for a spinoff universe in the current era. It halted and partially reversed a downward trend in the whole industry, but the key thing here is it did so largely by pulling in new fans, not milking existing ones harder. Both of the big 2 had pretty much only been doing the latter for years. Absolute's multiyear staying power is extremely encouraging for retention of that new blood.

People bring up Absolute Batman because it's the most popular, but Absolute Martian Manhunter is probably the better example. It was supposed to end at #6 as a year-long special, but held numbers so well across the year (despite bimonthly releases, which can cause harder issue-to-issue drops) that it got extended past that first year of releases. And a lot of the buyers were NEW, often younger, comic readers (which is why it using the unique qualities of physical comics media is important - they're new people buying physical comic books).

I cannot stress enough how much of an aberration getting new blood at this scale into the medium is; people running stores and even in the industry had been dooming about the aging comic book readership for years.

If DC plays their cards right, Absolute may represent the first step of DC simply outcompeting Marvel in the comics space with zoomers, despite the dominance among millennial comic readers that the MCU had previously enabled for Marvel.

TL;DR: Regardless of where it goes from here, people are probably going to look back on this in a few years and go, "Marvel didn't have a proper answer for Absolute."

But you can never, ever rule out incompetence at the leadership level screwing everything up. Especially not in comics. It's kinda how Marvel ended up so flat-footed here.

>>152544182
Marvel is the bigger slop machine, they flood out far more shit than DC and constantly jew the numbers with cancellations and relaunching the same character a new comic under a new name to get fraudulent #1 hype

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>>152545333
This has happened multiple times in the past few decades and I'm pretty confident it'll turn out the way it always has in the past.

>>152545903
Nah, the whole point is Absolute isn't one of those spikes. It has staying power and the run up to the overtake was longer - most of those spikes fall off so fast because they were just milking existing fans and not making new ones (new fans looks more like DC's 2016-2017 rise, and the falloff there was because retention wasn't great; Absolute has better retention than that).

Ask around and it's not hard to find examples where Absolute is actually helping to make up for flagging Marvel sales at individual stores (the rest is made up for by non-big 2 stuff rising; it all gets completely dominated by the current trading card bubble, though, so less comics-focused stores don't care as much). There's no equivalent to the current shakeup in the whole time span of that chart. Marvel's in kind of a bad way, and DC is actually succeeding at what each of those DC reboot spikes was trying to do.

>>152546144
It is way too early to make this call. The line isn't even two years old yet.

>>152546310
Note how the largest of those spikes barely lasted a full year.

Regardless of where it goes from now, it's already beaten out previous "examples" - the fact is it doesn't have an equivalent in the modern era, at least as far as the data we have for it.

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>>152546382
Go back far enough and you'll find an example of DC Comics staying on top for approximately two years. They only have only just very recently won market share. Can they keep it up for the rest of the year? We'll see.

>>152545903
>5-year-old chart
>>152546426
>8-year-old chart
it's not looking good for Marvel damage control

>>152546310
>Absolute won't sell and will die right out of the gate
>Absolute will die after six months
>Absolute will die after a year
>Absolute will die after a year and a half
>Absolute will die in two years

>>152546493
Snyder has a record of pulling reliable six digit sales with Batman for five years, everyone else, that's a bit iffy.

>>152546426
It's a momentum thing; DC was pretty far behind at the start of all this.

It's not like Marvel has started losing money on comics or anything, but they're stumbling and there's no light at the end of the tunnel (so far), while DC is making comics people are more excited for than anything in the last decade.

>>152546540
I think that's the thing hurting Marvel the worst right now is that they don't have anyone in their creative stable who can consistently bring in six figure sales. It looks like they're putting their chips on whatever this Armageddon thing Zdarsky is doing this summer but I dunno to me Zdarsky still has the stench of that failed Batman run on him

>>152546540
>everyone else, that's a bit iffy.
Even Martian Manhunter is doing well. Just kneel, boy.

>>152547071
I think the fact Amazing Spider-Man just barely outsold a fucking Martian Manhunter comic book should be sending Marvel into a panic

>>152547071
It's on issue 8 and a distant fourth to the trinity. How's it going to look a year or more from now? I doubt Flash and Green Lantern are going to make it.

>>152531050
But /co/ told me that DC KO flopped? How is it a top 5 book?

>>152547435
It has Batman in it.

>>152547444
And it's a big event with that manga-style storytelling that Snyder fully embraced after he saw his kids get into it.

>>152547304
>>152546493

>>152547444
Detective Comics and Batman and Robin have Batman too, how well are they doing on the sales chart?

>>152547435
>Top 50 comics list on ICV2 is up this week
>suddenly yesterday people are trying to claim DC KO is a flop, claim that no one is reading the Ultimate line, a line that outperformed most Marvel titles and flies in the face of what Brevoort and the rest were claiming, and shill for Quesada-era Marvel comics
>"/co/ is the one saying DC KO is a flop?!"

If only there was a way to figure out why someone would start a thread claiming DC KO is a flop the other day.

>>152547444
Batman wasn't in DC KO #3. Absolute Batman was but at the last page

>>152531050
DC is crushing the other publishers

>>152547304
>It's on issue 8 and a distant fourth to the trinity.

And? Were you forgetting that Martian Manhunter comics typically didn't sell this well to begin with?

>>152547304
It's fucking Martian Manhunter.

>>152545903
>>152546426
The problem is that Marvel and DC aren't in the same place they were in the 90s/00s/10s

In the 90s Levitz had was running DC in a "safe" way because he didn't want to rock to boat and cause WB to step in and change things. This kept things stable but it allowed Marvel to attract the younger audience moreso than DC did. In the 00s and 10s Didio was constantly making decisions that did really well only to shoot himself and the company in the proverbial foot within a year or two later. Sometimes even less.

In the 90s Marvel was massively successful in the early part of the decade, enough to have a still devoted audience when many of the Boomer fans bailed. In the 00s the Ultimate line and other things brought in newer fans, even if it wasn't to the degree of the 90s fans. In the 10s Marvel pissed off all their fans and stuck on the same playbook that isn't effective as it used to be.

>>152547986
Marvel usually had something to get the hype back up within a few years. But what was the last Marvel thing audiences were truly hyped up for, the 2024 Ultimate launch probably? And before that what, Krakoa?

As terrible as AvX was there was clear hype around it. I never got the impression that Empyre or AXE or Blood Hunt or Books of Doom had even the hype that Original Sin, another terrible event, got.

>>152548084
I think Marvel’s done an event every year since Avengers Disassembled which was 22 years ago. I mean the last one before the Doom one was about fucking vampires, they’re clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point

>>152547757
>>152547809
It's an Absolute comic with some nice weird art. The actual character involved doesn't matter.

>>152531050
Top 50 stinkers. Yikes.

>>152535427
That kangaroo looks so at peace~

>>152544182
That's because Absolute, Batman, and DC KO are the only things that sell. Everything else sells like shit.

Marvel has a lot more mid tier sellers and more books in general.

>>152545333
I think its very obvious the actual issue here is not that superhero comics wont sell anymore with young audiences but that they want new stories and characters, look how much zoomers like invincible (even if its already kinda old)
Its hard to get excited for batman #56896 and spiderman #1 vol.15

>>152535427
>Absolute Tumblr: the comic
>better than anything
lol
It's the book people will talk about the least once the absolute hype dies down

>>152535214
>>152536160
They won't ever have to relaunch Nightwing if they just put out gooner bait variant covers at least 2-3 times a year. >>152542030

>>152548488
So what you're saying is all they need is to keep hiring weird artists and they can continue crushing Marvel

>>152551243
I thought you said the Absolute hype would die down in 2025

>>152551243
Keep saying it

>>152531050
Cool

>>152548084
>AvX
that was the last time as you said and it was awful. I hate hero vs. hero comicbooks.

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>>152531050
>>152533485
>this is a small, non-random sample

>>152553249
Please understand, this is all DC fans have before they are shuddered in the next Warner Brothers merger.

>>152553230
X-Men aren't heroes.

>>152551641
Yeah, Snyder struck gold when he noticed that his sons were really into manga and didn't care for western comics at all and decided that he and DC needed to make comics that they would enjoy, copying the storytelling form of what they were reading instead of just the art style like what Marvel tried back in the 00s. This is something a 53 year old unmarried childless loser like Hickman could never come up with on his own. Getting Peach Momoko for Ultimate X-Men was a lucky fluke, every other book in the line was a comic that looked like it could have been released 10 years ago.

>>152553666
>Getting Peach Momoko for Ultimate X-Men
If DC were smart they would try to poach her for an Absolute Teen Titans title and let her make japanese girl versions of them all

>>152551153
then why does Batman still consistently sell more than literally any other singular character in comics

>>152553249
>>152553265
>Marvel shills constantly bragging about how high Marvel places on the ICV2 charts
>suddenly when DC is doing better they bring up the "small non-random sample"

lol

>>152554381
Its the one (along with spiderman) exception to this rule just like if the manga industry collapsed tomorrow dragon ball would probably also be the exception to this rule

>>152555613
>along with spider-man
Getaloadofthisguy.jpg

>>152555602
well it's not like they have any good comics to talk about
>>152555613
they literally brought up batman as their example of what people weren't excited for - just factually incorrect. the best selling marvel-associated book is the one with batman in it lol.
the original anon's whole point was that Absolute isn't the meaningless reboot/variant cover laziness that BOTH Marvel and DC had been doing, and that Marvel's closest equivalent both couldn't compete with Absolute and is now dying completely.

>>152555713
Im not interested in your blue vs. red schoolyard shitflinging, if you dont want to engage with my actual point then fuck off
>>152555781
My point is that batman will sell no matter ehat because it is batman and he will always sell, the issue is that aside from this highly specific character (and some other character that can also sell sometimes) most young people want to read something new, and (even though its the same characters) the absolute universe managed to scratch that itch better than the ultimates did

One of the reasons manga is so popular is because almost every story is new (although alot of them are very samey and formulaic)

>>152555840
>My point is that batman will sell no matter ehat because it is batman
What are the current sales figures on Detective Comics? Or Batman and Robin? Batman's name is even in the title of that one
>if you don't want to engage with my blah blah blah
Neither Batman or Spider-Man sell "just because" in numbers that matter...look at the current state of Amazing Spider-Man. One issue barely cracked the top ten then the following issue dropped to the 20s.