Congratulations, Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and The Walking Dead:
Even though the second season of the AMC adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead ended in March, the TV-drive sales of a phalanx of The Walking Dead graphic novels continued to dominate bookstore graphic novel sales in April according to a report from Nielsen BookScan. Just as in March The Walking Dead took seven out of the top ten spots, though this time Kirkman’s collections swept the top four spots, whereas in March they just took the first and the fourth positions.
Overall, The Walking Dead has twelve of the top twenty spots on Bookscan’s graphic novel chart for April, which is just… amazing, really. The other spots are taken up by manga, the collected edition of Dynamite’s Game of Thrones adaptation, Gene Yang’s Avatar: The Last Airbender comic for Dark Horse and an Avengers Character Guide from DK Publishing that isn’t actually a comic; nothing from Marvel or DC at all. I love looking at the shape of markets outside the direct market, and seeing what they’re like, but… Man. Kirkman and Adlard, you’re doing well in bookstores…!
May 5th, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Interesting. A suggestion: including link to the charts would be cool, so we could follow up on the shape of the top 20.