2018 Comics Retailer Survey

Recently I was asked to participate in Publisher’s Weekly’s annual review of the comic book industry. You can read the article by Shannon O’Leary HERE. I was quoted a number of times in the article, but a lot of people, mainly my customers at Phantom of the Attic, have asked about the whole questionnaire so I decided to share it here. This really only of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the state of the comic book retail industry. My caveat here is that my answers reflect my opinions and observations based on 21 years of experience in one specific store. I don’t claim to have all of the answers or to speak for other stores. We all have different experiences.

1) What were your best selling graphic novels in 2017?

Saga continues to be our bestselling series of graphic novels for the third or fourth year now. We’ve had a lot of success with The Wicked and the Divine and East of West because they are books that a couple of our employees push pretty hard. In general the Image TPs top the list. They are self-contained series without crossovers, so people can get into a series and, quite simply, know what to read next. The introductory $9.99 price point doesn’t hurt either. We moved a lot of My Favorite Thing is Monsters. Though there are few specific standout titles in general we do really well with the FirstSecond catalog. World of Edena by Moebius did extremely well for an expensive HC. We’ve had customers regularly asking for Moebius stuff for years so the prospect of his work finally coming back into print here is exciting.

The DC Rebirth TPs increased sales over DC from the past couple of years. Marvel TPs are mostly dead stock for us. I can’t put my finger on why, other than as another indicator of the downturn in interest in Marvel. There are many Marvel trades we don’t order at all. We only move a couple of each of the X-Men TPs when they come out. The Epic Collections do pretty well with an older customer base.