DC Dominate 2025 Comic Book Sales, Marvel Makes Only Leaderboard Appearance Thanks To ‘Deadpool/Batman’
With the year in the books and the comic book industry’s final numbers tallied, 2025 can officially be called in DC’s favor, as not only did their various Batman- and Absolute-related efforts lead them to completely dominate the year’s sales charts, charts, but were partly responsible for Marvel Comics’ best-selling book of the year in Deadpool/Batman.
This recap of last year’s comic book sales was provided to the public courtesy of Bleeding Cool‘s Rich Johnston, as “based on actual sales data” regarding “in-store [sales], rather than orders from publishers”, as reported to ComicHub by “120 to 150 comic book stores.”
(As an aside, if you’re a frequent customer of a brick-and-mortar store, you should check out Johnston’s full list of sources. There’s a good chance your store is on there – both of my local ones were! Pretty neat.)
Per his report, which covered the Top 9 Best-Selling Comics (ostensibly because a clean 3×3 grid is more visually pleasing to present on social media without a single cover throwing off its balance), the top spot on the 2025 sales chart went to the aforementioned Marvel-produced entry of the Big Two’s recent crossover Deadpool/Batman Vol. 1, which saw its first print run completely selling out across all stores.
From there, DC takes the next two spots courtesy of the first issue of Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez’s Batman Vol. 3 relaunch and their respective Batman/Deadpool Vol. 1 #1, the first selling at a rate of 90% and the latter 75%.
Coming in at number four is Image’s Invincible Universe: Battle Beast Vol. 1 #1 at a sales ratio of 65.6% – and while its placement so high up seems surprising on its face, it makes much more sense once one remembers that the issue was the first of many comics last year to lock a number of its variant covers behind a predatory blind bag scheme.
In fifth is DC K.O. Vol. 1 #1 (50.1%), its podium finish resulting from a combination of the issue being the first of a big event and featuring with a blind bag release, with Batman Vol. 2 #158 (49.2%), the first issue of the Hush 2 story arc, and Absolute Batman Vol. 1 #15 (47.6%), its pages featuring the first full appearance of the Absolute Joker, following in order.
And in keeping on the Darkseid-influenced train, the last two spots of the Top 9 go to Absolute Wally West’s first run in Absolute Flash Vol. 1 #1 (47.1%) and The Dark Brick Sh*thouse’s child-punting, yacht-set showdown with Black Mask in Absolute Batman Vol. 1 #5 (44.6%).
Aside from DC’s total victory, what is most surprising about these numbers is the fact that none of the books in Marvel’s widely-praised Ultimate universe reboot took any of the top spots, not even Ultimate Spider-Man or Ultimate Endgame, whose first issue released on the last day of the year and featured a blind bag release.
Taken alongside Superman‘s box office beating those of Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four: First Steps, and its clear that 2025 was the Year of DC.
Now, the big question becomes whether or not Marvel – or Image, realistically – will be able to step-up to the plate and offer any challenge to DC’s now two-year reign in 2026.
NEXT: The Top 10 Worst Comic Book Moments Of 2025, From ‘Absolute Flash’ To ‘Supergirl’ (Part 1)
