Comic Book Stores Coming Back To Life Thanks To Absolute DC, Ultimate Marvel, Energon Universe, And ‘Invincible’
After the last four years proved to be the absolute worst for the Western comic book scene, with readership collapsing so catastrophically that many feared the once-vibrant industry was well and truly dead, recent ‘leap of faith’ reboot initiatives like the Absolute DC, Ultimate Marvel, and Energon Universe lines – as well as renewed interest in Image’s Invincible series – have miraculously led to a genuine uptick in not just overall sales, but also direct purchases from local comic shops.
While the ins-and-outs of just what led to the 2020s comic book implosion number so high that they could fill an article all their own – Hell, a deep dive into Dark Crisis alone would make for an afternoon’s worth of reading – the general situation was perhaps best summarized by Coliseum of Comics proprietor Phil Boyle, who in a November 2023 open letter to Marvel and DC, as submitted to both ICv2 and Bounding Into Comics, decried, “Fans, retailers, and creators, have all suffered under the recent corporate mandates.”
“Where did it go off the rails? It’s not such a conundrum to anyone with two active brain cells and a list of back issues they need to complete their runs. Comics, first and foremost, have always been entertainment. Sure, collectible entertainment, which justifies the cost-to-entertainment ratio. But along the way, the immediate sale and false bolstering of numbers through variant covers, convoluted events, and incessant reboots left the considerations of the fans behind.
“Character swapping, gender-bending, and changing sexual orientation of beloved characters fell flat with the Wednesday Warriors who supported the industry for decades. The crowd of new readers the changes were meant to attract didn’t translate to a 1-for-1 swap, leaving a declining customer base.
“To make things more difficult on the retail side, in a very deliberate abuse of both the Final Order Cutoff system and retailers’ goodwill toward publishers, we constantly have to FOC an issue two issues out rather than next issue. This makes ordering a guess. Throw in four covers on #5, then six on #6, one of which is by Artgerm and another by Skottie Young, and then #7 has five covers with neither cover artist, and #8 has a celebrity appearance cover, and it’s a constant and very deliberate shell game, forcing retailers to guess on nearly every next issue.”
And though the industry genuinely teetered on the brink in 2023, it appears they took this wake-up call to heart, as a recent analysis of official sales data provided by ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp shows a significant boom in comic book interest across the past two years, “with sales in 2024 up 73% from 2019, and the trend is continuing into 2025.”
But perhaps more impressive was the fact that a significant and growing number of these sales were coming not from big box retailers like Target, Walmart, or Amazon, but rather actual comic book shops, as “dollar sales in comic shops went up by about 13.3% in 2024, while sales in the book channel [i.e. major retailers] dropped slightly, leading to the gap between the two narrowing for the first time in 15-20 years.”
“The spread between graphic novels and comics narrowed in 2024 for the first time in years, another reversal of a longtime trend. While graphic novels still account for over 76% of dollar sales, graphic novel sales increased by only 1.3% year over year, while comics grew by 12.2%.”
“2025 is shaping up to be a good year for comic shops, with sales from January through August by stores using the ComicHub POS system up 27% compared to the same period in 2024. That’s double the 13.3% increase from 2023 to 2024. The 2025 increases in graphic novel and comic sales were nearly identical, and the uptick was slightly higher in the first four months of the year, at 29%, than in the May-August period, when it was 25%.”
“The back issue market also appears to be shifting from collectors to readers, with retailers reporting that sales of slabbed comics are down and sales of inexpensive reader copies are up.”
Griepp also noted that, according to personal interviews with a number of shop owners, this boom has also seen younger readers making their way to their local shops, a significant departure from generations past.
“The reason for this is inexpensive, accessible, high-quality content,” said the CEO. “They’re buying Absolute, but things like the DC and Marvel digest format books are also popular.”
To this end, Griepp confirmed that graphic novel sales were also on the rise, with DC’s Absolute line, Marvel’s Ultimate universe, Image’s Invincible series, and Skybound’s Energon Universe – which currently features original characters alongside those from Transformers, G.I. Joe, and M.A.S.K. – easily proving the hottest sellers.
However, he also noted, “There is a problem, though, which is that the success is hampered by the fact that there’s not always availability to comic stores of the graphic novels they want to get.”
” And I think there’s two reasons for that. One, obviously the chaos in distribution that’s been happening since the beginning of this year, and then also just the surprise that publishers are experiencing in how well some of their books are selling, and so they’re not necessarily prepared in terms of the amount of inventory they have available.”
Closing out his time, Griepp beamed, “We’ve got a new world where comics are growing faster than graphic novels.”
“Comic stores are growing faster than the book channel. We’ve got growth from readers instead of just collectors. We’ve got younger comic consumers. We’ve got new audiences coming in from sources like web novels and webtoons. We’ve got manga as a force. We’ve got digital stirring. We’ve got distribution transforming and the data flow rebuilding. That, to me, puts us in a totally different world than we were a year or 18 months ago.”
Looking towards the future, he ultimately challenged his peers, “How do publishers nurture the kind of creativity that has created successes like Invincible and the Ultimate line and like Absolute in particular and build on that in the future by making good relationships with their creators?”
