DC’s Market Share Continues to Decline

DC Comics’ market share in comic stores continued its decline in Q2 2024, dropping below 20%, as the spread between the Big Two continued to widen.

DC’s share dropped by nearly four percentage points between Q1 and Q2 2024, going from 21.6% in Q1 2024 (see “Comic Store Market Shares – Q1 2024”) to 17.8% in Q2.  DC’s dollar share for all of 2019 was 29.23%, according to Diamond Comic Distributors (see “Marvel Dominates Share”), over 10 points higher.

Meanwhile, Marvel Comics saw a slight increase in its market share for the second quarter of 2024, going from 38.9% in Q1 to 39.2% in Q2.  Marvel’s share was more than double DC’s in Q2 2024.

IDW Publishing grabbed a bigger slice of the pie, going from 4.2% to 7.1%.  And BOOM! Studios ticked up from 3.3% to 3.6%, pushing Dark Horse Comics out of fifth place.  BOOM! is being acquired by Random House, the publishers announced yesterday (see “Random House Acquiring BOOM! Studios”).

Once again, there are two manga publishers in the Top 10.  Kodansha Comics gained a bit of market share, moving it into 9th place and Titan Comics into 10th place.

Newcomer DSTLRY had robust sales in Q2 and was just off the chart at #11 in dollar volume.

Comic Store Market Share (Dollars) – Q2 2024 [ComicHub Data, via ICv2]

Rank

Publisher

Market Share

1

Marvel Comics

39.20%

2

DC Comics

17.80%

3

Image Comics

12.90%

4

IDW Publishing/Top Shelf Productions

7.10%

5

BOOM! Studios

3.60%

6

Dark Horse Comics

3.40%

7

Dynamite Entertainment

2.40%

8

VIZ Media

2.10%

9

Kodansha Comics

1.00%

10

Titan Comics

0.90%

All Others

9.60%

The data on which these market share percentages are based is from sales tracked at point-of-sale by the ComicHub system at stores selling American comics and graphic novels around the world.  During the period for which these reports were generated, there were over 125 stores using the ComicHub system.  As this is a small, non-random sample of over 3,000 stores selling American comics worldwide, these rankings may not be typical for all stores, but do represent a variety of locations and store emphases.

For monthly sales rankings based on ComicHub POS data, see “Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Rankings Based on Comic Store POS Data Index.”