Here is the comic book sales numbers for April, 2015.  It is broken up into two sections, one for single issue comics and one for trade paperbacks and graphic novels.  There are a couple of obvious things standing for this month, namely that Convergence is dominating the list.  This is not a surprise since it is DC’s largest event in several years, and puts all their DCU titles on hold, but it is still surprising to see so many Convergence titles, and to see Convergence #0-4 all over 100,000 units.  This may be a testament to exactly how many readers are committing to this event, and this may also attest to the relatively high sales numbers of each of the tie-in titles. This allows us to kind of predict May’s numbers as well, though sales will undoubtedly shrink for the second issue of the tie-in miniseries and once they have to compete with Marvel’s Secret Wars, which will unquestionably sell more than Convergence.

Even a bigger surprise is to see the number one slot taken by Star Wars #4, a series which is still dominating sales.  With a number like 203k, without any bulk sales to places like Loot Crate to change the numbers, you can expect this to be leading sales numbers for most o2015.  This has been true of all Star Wars titles, even with more fringe books like Kanan: The Last Padawan selling well over 100k titles.  This could be a good predictor for the coming Lando miniseries, which should sell similar numbers.

The heavy sales of DC crossover series did not seem to affect indie titles too heavily, and actually there will probably be a clean separation between the two audiences during this since it will only be committed DC readers that will really invest in something like convergence.  That being said, Walking Dead and Saga both got pushed down the list by the insertion of multiple popular titles raising the bar for early positions in the list.  On the Vertigo side, American Vampire Second Cycle broke the 12k sales number, a bar for Vertigo titles.  This shows that American Vampire may be back to being Vertigo’s flagship title.  It also seems that Jeff Lemire’s Descender will remain amongst the top Image titles, and could maintain the kind of indie-mainstream crossover audience that many of his other past books have as well.

The trade sales are again showing the trend towards crossover indie titles with Walking Dead Vol. 23 taking the top spot, and four Saga books taking up the top fifteen.  There also seems to be a move towards preparing for Marvel’s Secret Wars and heightened interest of certain titles because of the theatrical release of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Rage of Ultron takes the second spot, and we see the returning of Civl War to the top 20.  Fables’ last trade paperback is on that list, which has always dominated trade sales, and is in preparation for the last issue/trade coming in July.

Estimated Comics Sold to North American Comics Shops as Reported by Diamond Comic Distributors
This list includes all items on Diamond’s Top 300 charts, plus any post-#300 items from its Top 50 Indy and Small Publisher charts. If you don’t see a book, Diamond released no data for it.Items marked with asterisks [*] had their reported orders slightly reduced due to returnability.