>DC Comics held a 34.7% share of the direct market in Q1 2026 per ICv2’s latest report, against Marvel’s 29.4%. That 5.3-point gap is the widest either publisher has held over the other in years. One year ago, Marvel sat at 39% and DC at 25.5%. The entire swing happened in twelve months, driven by DC’s Absolute Universe initiative and Marvel’s accelerating structural failure. DC held 16 of the Top 20 superhero best-sellers in the quarter. However, it doesn’t paint a prety picture overall.>Marvel didn’t collapse because DC got better. Per Comic Book Club’s analysis of the ICv2 numbers, DC gained ground “not from the House of Ideas, but mostly from publishers outside the Top 10.” The smaller publishers are losing ground to DC, and Marvel is losing ground at the same time from its own internal failures. What that means in practical terms: the comics direct market is consolidating toward fewer viable players, with DC benefiting from the contraction while everybody else absorbs the damage.>The Star Wars News Net’s review of July 2026 solicitations drives it home from the Marvel side. Both the Shadow of Maul and Echoes of the Empire miniseries wrap simultaneously in July, leaving Marvel with no anchor Star Wars ongoing. The analysis was direct: “Marvel isn’t seeing high enough sales numbers to make it worth investing in another 25–50 issue series.” The piece went further: “Marvel’s readership appears to be catching on and no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt.” Issue #1 launches, once reliable sales spikes regardless of title, no longer work automatically. Readers have been trained by years of cancelled miniseries and rotating creative teams to stop committing.
>The numbers in sequence make the trajectory clear. In Q1 2025, Marvel held 37.9% to DC’s 25.5%. By Q3 2025, DC had closed the gap to within a few points. Q4 2025 was the first quarter DC outright held the top spot, 32.6% to Marvel’s 29.6%. In Q1 2026 DC expanded that lead to five points. Marvel was at 39% eighteen months ago. It is now at 29.4%. The David Gabriel era of sales strategy, which ended with his dismissal earlier this month after 23 years, left the publisher in its worst direct market position in decades.>The Absolute Universe is doing most the work for DC. Absolute Batman launched in December 2024 and has reprinted every issue to keep it available on shelves, a distribution discipline Marvel has not matched with its own flagship launches. DC’s dollar sales grew 18% from Q3 to Q4 2025 while Marvel’s dropped 13% in the same period. The Batman/Deadpool crossover, the DC K.O. event, and the relaunched Batman by Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez all contributed. DC put titles on shelves that readers wanted to keep buying. Marvel put titles on shelves that readers picked up once and stopped.>Image Comics sits at 11.8% and is holding. IDW at 4.2%. Dark Horse at 2.9%. Below that, the smaller publishers who have been losing ground to DC’s expansion are not recovering it. Mad Cave Studios laid off its senior editors and marketing staff this week. Free Comic Book Day splits into two competing events Saturday. Diamond’s bankruptcy continues to reshape who survives in direct market distribution and who doesn’t.>The direct market has contracted significantly since its modern peak. The ICv2 numbers measure share, not total revenue, which means DC growing its percentage does not mean the industry is healthy. It means DC is winning a smaller pie while Marvel shrinks faster than the pie does, and the publishers below them are being squeezed on both ends.
This is bullshit coming from wifebeater Jon del Arroz btw
>Marvel’s response is the most important question in comics right now. The layoffs in April removed David Gabriel and several senior editors. No strategic direction has been announced publicly. The star Wars comics, once a reliable seller, have no ongoing series on the calendar after July. Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Avengers are cycling through event after event without the sustained creative runs that built the publisher’s market position in the first place.>DC figured out that readers will buy the same character consistently if you give them a reason to keep coming back. Marvel stopped figuring that out somewhere around 2021 and hasn’t found its way back.>Who do you think reclaims the top spot by end of year, and what would it take for Marvel to reverse this?https://www.fandompulse.com/p/dc-is-beating-marvel-in-comic-sales
>>153406136>>153406160>>153406188Wife beater thread
>>153406181lmaothisno nigga will ever believe anything that grifter has to say.
>>153406304News flash for you I hapen to believe what he says to be true have a nice day now mate.
>>153406340Good for you, retard
>It's yet another Gwenschizo pretends to be Australian and believes everything he reads on the internet thread.>Liberals are too busy getting triggered by Del Arroz to realize it.You're all a bunch of retards.
>>153406401you are a idiot sir
What can Marvel do to come back from this?
>>153406531Fire Brevoort, Lowe, CebulskiMove Hickman to EditorialHire fresh talent More AU stories to gauge interest for a new line
>>153406181>>153406295Who is this guy?
>>153406531At this point I don't know if they even can. Half the issue is corporate overlords giving them peanuts to budget with, so they can't even pay creators decently, which is why they have shit writers and third worlders drawing the comics. Even if Cebulski and Brevoort are fired and replaced (which they should be), the issue of having no money to work with as a small branch of a huge multi billion dollar conglomerate will remain.
>>153406136Why is it green
>>153406602Why not hire low wage college graduates for the writing?
>>153406647I thik this is DC way of telling us that they favour Green Lantern that's why,
>>153406648Who knows. Several of Marvel's better writers came from the fucking sales dept but those days are long gone.
>>153406181says rich the leech.
>>153406188>fandom pulseReminder this is some dumbfuck culture war content farm blog pretending to be a pop culture news outlet. Every "article" is a mix of trending Twitter topics, regurgitated points from other places, and some culture war framing blended together in chatgpt.
>>153407466At least Rich the Leech doesn't beat his wife
>>153408086both are equal shit, stop citing both
>>153408228>le reddit centrism viewkek
DC is so good right now no wonder it won
>>153406616Comicsgater who used to write for Bounding Into Comics and had some kind of split with them/other Comicsgaters for presumably retarded reasons. Has a restraining order from his ex-wife for DV, jerks off to Mewtwo x Lucario yaoi while bitching about how the gays have infiltraed everything, was one of the people (along with lefties like Alex de Campi) who contributed to blowing up the Ed Piskor shit that led to Piskor's suicide.
Marvel only cares about adaptations, the comics might as well just be movie script ideas I can hope Doomsday fails but I have no faith in the retarded general audience so nothing will change
>>153408086no, he just beats his meat
>>153408603Good. Fuck pisscore. Glad that faggot's dead
>>153406625>Half the issue is corporate overlords giving them peanuts to budget with, so they can't even pay creators decently, which is why they have shit writers and third worlders drawing the comicsBasically this, Marvel would need to rethink their whole publishing philosophy to get out of the hole they’re in. They need to focus more on quality over quantity and stop spreading their budget so thin so instead of printing fifty-some mediocre-to-outright-awful books publish like ten to fifteen high quality books. And stop giving books to characters that don’t sell. If Spider-Gwen or Miles didn’t sell before just relaunching the book with a new number one isn’t going to change that. They’re pissing away what little budget they have to spite…who? If the Twitter crowd aren’t supporting the books they demand be published then fuck ‘em
>>153406136DC beating Marvel in comic sales is like winning the sword fight with your hated rival, aboard the sinking Titanic. Sure you won. Congratulations. You won't have much longer to savor it.
A Void At The End of Time run would fix this.
>>153409301Sure you do, JDA
>>153406136>been trained by years of cancelled miniseries and rotating creative teams to stop committing.This is funny, as a collected edition guy DC used to be terrible. Around covid and the AT&T shit they completely gutted their collected edition department and fucked up a lot. Series were announced, volume 1 didn't get the numbers so they were swiftly cancelled. So people stopped getting volume 1 which created a feedback loop of cancellations. But now they are trying things, compact editions, tankobon sized and cheaper. Or collected editions with more traditional style colours/paper. They seem to have turned it around.That being said:>ICv2They send out questionnaires to a limited number of shops and do not argue that they are representative of the whole. It is stupid for this article to not mention this.>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.
>>153408603>Comicsgaterlmao you are RAPED
>>153408603>>153411120Ironically, JDA is against Comicsgate because there was a schism between Comicsgate and the crowd JDA runs in
>>153407630Okay but is it wrong?
>>153406181>>153406295>>153406304>>153406439>>153408603>attacking his character and not his information If Stalin told me comic sales were down, I'd want to know if it was true.
Why are there so many libtards on /co/ compared to the rest of the site?>>153406181This is how redditors talk
>>153413410yeah there's no source cited. but the comicsgater thing is the big tell - they need comic sales to be down to sell their grift, so they just assert that they are.everything i've seen from the actual industry and not parasitic culture war hangers-on does not even suggest comic sales are in steady decline. they were in a lull but these products are high-margin so they can sustain a lull just fine. Absolute was quite a substantial shot of new blood to comics in general. Rivals was, too, but Marvel has fumbled that opportunity catastrophically.if there's any takeaway to have, it's that it's weird that DC is being so competent while Marvel is absolutely flailing.
>>153406136This wife beating beaner still grifting?
>>153413802>gets called a wifebeater>"o-oh yeah? y-you're a redditor"kek
>>153406136>But the Story Is That the Industry Is ShrinkingThe industry isn't shirking, Marvel and DC is.Decades of subpar writing has alienated the loyal audience and the new generation moved on to manga.
>>153414056There is a source cited. It's Icv2. Like they said: >>153411072Icv2 are not comicsgate aligned, just a pop culture site. They send out a questionnaire to a non random selection of shops. In recent years the dollar amount spent has increased but per unit sales hasn't. More spending on collected editions and price increases but not selling more books overall..
>>153414591icv2 doesn't give out totals, just proportions. the totals are what you'd need to declare an overall "shrinking pie"see: >>153406160>The ICv2 numbers measure share, not total revenueit's pulled out of his ass.
>>153414591Forgot linkhttps://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/62162/dc-expands-lead-over-marvel
>>153414632And? I was just commenting on anon saying there is no source cited. I was just saying there was a source. That's all. I wasn't commenting on anything else.Icv2 have at other times had articles on a more overall picture level from my recollection. But if have to search for them.
>>153414056Brother, you are absolutely deranged if you think the comic business is healthy. Nobody reads comics anymore.
>>153414673i was responding to >>153413410>If Stalin told me comic sales were down, I'd want to know if it was true.there is no cited source for "comic sales are down," which the Fandom Pulse (which is an extremely unreliable source for anything and basically an insane opinion blog) "article" asserts unilaterally.i don't think we really disagree here, there was just a misunderstanding about who was saying what to who.
>>153414206A funny thing about this, is that they couldn't even say that they were blindsided.
>>153409301Piskor is innocent.
