October seems to have been a good month for… well, everyone, as far as Diamond orders are concerned:

Due to the happy confluence of the end of its successful Avengers vs. X-Men event and the debut of its Marvel NOW! line, Marvel placed five titles in the top ten compared with four for DC and one for Image. Regaining some dominance at the top of the comic book chart was crucial in allowing Marvel to recapture the marketshare crown decisively in October. In addition to the previously mentioned Uncanny Avengers #1 variants, Marvel also utilized the technique on a number of other titles, some of which got “Final Issue” variants, while others received pink “Susan G. Komen” variants.

Even though most of DC’s top titles dipped slightly from their “0” issues in September, many of them posted gains over their #12 issues in August. With Jim Lee no longer penciling Justice League, Scott Snyder’s Batman is easily the publisher’s top title, and the strong debut of the “Death of a Family” storyline in issue #13 indicates that the situation is not likely to change anytime soon. Also showing great promise in October was Green Lantern #13, which actually posted a gain over its “0” issue thanks to the start of the “Rise of the Third Army” saga in issue #13. John Layman (Chew) took over as the writer of Detective with issue #13 and his tenure is off to a strong start.

Overall five titles in the top 25 showed growth in circulation in October (seven if the DC “0” issues are disregarded), while sixteen posted declines (there were four #1’s in the top 25).

Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead #103, the title that posted the biggest circulation increase from September to October, also cracked the top 10 for the first time (with the obvious exception of its #100 issue, the bestselling comic of the year so far). Aided by the debut of the new season of The Walking Dead on AMC, the black-and-white Image comic moved up from #24 in September to #9 in October as it posted a 28% increase in sales, which grew to 74,378.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 at 8:40 am and is filed under DC Comics, Image, Industry, Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.