Greetings Mutants! Thank you for your continued patronage of our store! I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we’re a couple days out from March. We just had our first 60-degree afternoon here in New Jersey and I’m looking forward to those few days a year when we can have our windows open. Unfortunately, once the pollen starts falling its back to shut windows and alternating Heat/AC. I like to enjoy it when we can. Anyway...
It’s been a wild few months for the Comics industry. I can’t help but feel some sad sense of irony when I see our blog post about onboarding to Diamond Comics Distribution from November 2024. They’re going through a tough time after filing Chapter 11 and there’s a level of uncertainty as more publishers drop exclusivity in favor of Lunar & Penguin Random House. I can’t say that I’ve ever been a fan of exclusivity deals, but I don’t like to see people hurting as I’m sure many of the rank and file at DCD are.
We started out using Lunar and Penguin prior onboarding to Diamond. Mostly because at the time of our opening those two had all of the mainstream publishers (Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW) and most of the smaller indies. My motivation to onboard to Diamond was access to more Manga publishers, toys & collectibles and other types of memorabilia. I was intentionally not taking Pre-Orders for comics through DCD because of the inconsistency. So, for the immediate future, the things happening with Diamond have very little impact on our weekly operations.
The biggest question mark for us regarding Diamond is how their Pullbox Website will be affected. Early reports sound like it will be sold off in an auction. I’m not sure what that will mean, so I’m proactively working on some alternatives. Please stay tuned.
So with all that said, BOOM! Studios have moved their distribution over to Penguin Random House and their titles are now available in the March Pre-Order Catalog. Boom! has long been a blind spot in our product offerings, so I'm really excited to be able to have them!
I could ramble on for several more paragraphs, but I’ll wrap things up.
So, before I close this out, I figured I’d share some sales data for the past month. These are just our numbers of course, not reflective of the industry in general.
Top 10 Comic Books Jan 27 - Feb 28, 2025
- Ice Cream Man #43
- Absolute Superman #1
- One World Under Doom #1
- Absolute Batman #5
- Deadpool/Wolverine #2
- Thunderbolts: Doomstrike #1
- Alien: Paradiso #3
- Absolute Superman #4
- Ultimate Wolverine #2
- X-Men #10
Really cool seeing Ice Cream Man at the top. To clarify (since I’m not posting the actual numbers) Ice Cream Man outsold all those books in February, despite having more copies available of many of them.
Here are the Pre-Orders for the same date range. I had no idea ‘Harley Quinn Fartacular’ was a thing until the pre-orders started rolling in. No judgement.
Marvel Rivals has been doing really well. Although, I am wondering why they aren’t including in-game item codes with these. The Fortnite comics sold like crazy for those codes. You’d think a lesson would be learned?
Top 10 Pre-Order Comic Books Jan 27 - Feb 28, 2025
- Marvel Rivals #1
- Harley Quinn Fartacular Silent Butt Deadly #1
- Amazing Spider-Man #1
- All-New Venom #5
- Absolute Flash #1
- Marvel Rivals #1 (Federico Sabbatini Variant)
- Godzilla Vs. Spider-Man #1
- Godzilla Vs. Hulk #1
- Ultimate Spider-Man #16
- Harley Quinn Fartacular Silent Butt Deadly #1 (Amanda Conner Card Stock Variant)
