2015 was a very interesting year for comics that saw several large events, launch of the Star Wars books, and continued strong showing from the independent publishers among others. I did a similar blog earlier this year showing the impact the Star Wars books on Marvel’s line as of the 2nd Quarter found here that I wanted to update for the end of the year and take a look at the industry as a whole. A disclaimer before we start. These numbers come from the Diamond single issue estimates which are not exact and also do not include trade or digital sales which would potentially skew the data for a particular publisher (Image does very well in trade sales).

During 2015, nearly 46% of all single issues (49% of all revenue) were produced by Marvel. This dominance came from a very busy year including Secret Wars, launch of All-New All Different Marvel, and the launch of their Star Wars line which there will be more on later. DC had moderate success with their Convergence event in April/May and Dark Knight 3 provided a huge boost to end the year and brought in market shares of 29% and 28% in units and revenue, respectively. The rest of the of the results from 2015 can be seen in the chart below.

One interesting thing to look at is the year over year trend from 2014 through 2015. The industry as a whole shipped an approximately 5 million (5.7%) more books this year. Marvel led the charge with over a 7.5 million unit increase which helped to offset the 3 million (10.75%) unit drop sustained by DC. The mid range books were as much of a mixed bag of success as the Big 2. Image, IDW, and Boom all had respectable increases while Dark Horse and Dynamite both had huge fall off of readership. Impressively, Valiant is continuing to rise up the charts and nearly shipped a million units after only 4 years of their reemergence in the industry.

The most significant event of the year in the realm of comic book publishing was by far the release of the Star Wars comics by Marvel. Looking at the chart above, the increase of sales from 2014 to 2015 by Marvel seems to be a very impressive feat. What is most remarkable about it is the fact that this increase is made up entirely by the eight Star Wars books that were introduced throughout 2015. Actually, the Star Wars line makes up 103% of the unit increase. If the Star Wars line were their own publisher, they would rank fourth in units and third in revenue. The Star Wars title itself would rank fifth behind IDW in sales thanks in no small part to the first issue that shipped over a million units when all the subsequent printings are summed together.

While this sales juggernaut that is Star Wars is very impressive, it can also be viewed as a cause for concern. Without it, Not only does Marvel experience a slight decrease in year over year sales instead of a 22% increase, but the market as a whole retracts by nearly 2.7 million units as opposed to the 4.8 million unit gain it posted. It absolutely needs to be taken into account that the resources and talent spent on the Star Wars books would have been devoted elsewhere and would have eliminated some of that loss, however it is highly unlikely that the output would come close to the 7.8 million units and $33 million revenue that the Star Wars books produced.

Another interesting thing to look at is the potential impact of the Star Wars titles on the Marvel Universe proper. In 2015, top tier talent like Jason Aaron, John Cassaday, Stuart Immonen, Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larroca, Gerry Duggan, Phil Noto, Mark Waid, Charles Soule, Alex Maleev, and others working on the line to incredible success. Sure some of them, especially the writers, were also doing work in the Marvel Universe, but that is a lot of talent employed by Marvel focusing on essentially licensed properties as opposed to Marvel characters. 2015 was obviously a huge year for Star Wars. There was hype all around due to the Force Awakens which helped drum up some sales. The question becomes what happens now that a lot of people's thirst has been quenched for more Star Wars and Marvel has already led with the big guns of the Star Wars and Darth Vader books. It seems unlikely that there is much they can do replicate the huge sales figures that were posted in 2015. However, with the success of the line, is Marvel going to continue add more of it's top talent to these books and potentially let the Marvel universe retract? I'm looking forward to seeing where they focus their efforts as well as the impact.

As I mentioned at the beginning, these numbers are all based on estimates of single issue sales. If I have the time, I might re-run the analysis with the trade estimates to see how that effects things. My initial guess is that it would significantly benefit Image sales figures relative to it's size versus the other publishers as their books usually fill the top ten. The numbers I truly want to see are digital sales. I personally have not purchased a physical book in nearly 3 years and would like to see the growth trend in the digital world and how significant a portion it is to the overall market.