Comics Sales In 2023

Or at least those comics that I bought in comparison to years gone by.

It’s been a couple of years since I did one of these posts looking at numbers and percentages by publisher, so thought I’d dig out my trusty spreadsheets once more and inflict them all on you.

You should be able to click that for an expanded view, but that big orange bar running across the middle of the chart is DC which for more years than I care to count have always had the lion’s share of my purchases, even though that’s been shrinking on average year on year until 2023 when for the first time ever they drop down into second place for me. That green bar across the top is Image and I’ve been drawn more and more to them either with ongoing series like RADIANT BLACK and ROGUE SUN or mini-series like GEIGER and JUNKYARD JOE.

DC have given me GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA and POWER GIRL as ongoings this year (and POWER GIRL is holding on just because of my loyalty to the character) with a bunch of events or mini-series like the KNIGHT TERRORS event. For the first time ever I find myself thinking that as and when a new JUSTICE LEAGUE series launches, I might not buy it.

But the above is looking at percentages; in terms of actual numbers it looks like this:

As you can see, my annual total of new comics is roughly half of what it was ten years ago and the only publisher that’s consistently growing since 2019 is Image – everything else is dropping off.

As I mention above, I find myself becoming pickier with what I buy – there’s only so much money to go round, after all.

Anyone else seeing similar trends?

4 thoughts on “Comics Sales In 2023”

  1. Thoughts on so many bloggers shouting about the the comics industry dying? I know it’s an often repeated mantra, but it definitely feels more relevant now than at any other time in history, at least that’s the impression I’m getting. For me, I don’t buy comics anymore, instead preferring to read them online bc honestly, I was tired of the never-ending-go-round soap-opera aspect of comics from the big two, with nothing ever really changing. Indy comics are of course a cure for that, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me buying comics. Inflation didn’t help, as I really couldn’t justify paying 4, now what, 5$ for a single comics. When I started I was paying 1$ per comic.

    So, I stopped, and then sold off my collection, saving some choice trades, and outside an occasional regret (?), I’ve never looked back.

    Anyhoo, based off your chart, you’ve definitely scaled back over in comic purchases. But yeah, considering their current cost, it’s totally understandable to be pickier when it comes to what you’re choosing to pay for these days.

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    1. I know what you mean – I look at everything from DC following the New 52 and there’s plenty there that I think I’m never going to re-read or would miss if I got rid of them. I think a cull might be in order over the next year or two.

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  2. I’ll be working through my purchases next week on the blog, but the total of new comics was 119, or about what it was in 2019. The total’s fluctuated a lot each year since then, but I seem to come back to the 10 books/month range.

    As far as publishers, Marvel was in the lead as always. Got a bigger percentage than last year, but that’s more the other publishers didn’t have as many things I was interested in (Vault and Image in particular nosedived).

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