The fourth quarter comic books market share figures for 2023 are out and it doesn’t look good for Marvel and DC Comics, both of whom lost market share in the fourth quarter.
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Where Marvel held 37.8% of the comic books market share in the third quarter, it is down to 36.0% in the fourth quarter of 2023. DC Comics didn’t fare any better either as it went from 24.9% in the third quarter of 2023 down to 23.3% in the fourth quarter. IDW Publishing went from 5.0% to 4.1%. The strongest performer was Image Comics and it grew from 9.8% in the third quarter to 12% in the fourth. Notably, and according to ICv2: “the publishers other than the Big Two were outperforming among top sellers on the graphic novel charts.”
The publication of these figures comes in the wake of controversy surrounding retailers complaining about the quality of comics produced by Marvel and DC Comics. While retailers voiced legitimate concern about the quality and complained about not being able to sell these comics to customers, industry insiders instead rallied up the woke mob, or “cancel pigs” as Mark Millar called them, to harass and abuse comic book store owners.
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Millar interviewed three comic book retailers in December 2023, and it came to light that comic book insiders and mainstream comics websites like ICv2 are gas-lighting the American public when they report that the comic book industry is healthy. They said in the interview that when ICv2 report growth in comic book sales, those sales include Japanese manga and Dog Man comics (with starting print runs of five million), while Marvel and DC comics do not make up a significant portion of the total sales reported. Barely a month after the interview Millar announced that one of the retailers is closing down.
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Of course industry shills like Heidi MacDonald of Comics Beat quickly went into damage control to help buoy the narrative that everything is fine with Marvel and DC. She wrote at Comics Beat that comics aren’t dying it is just changing, in an either wilfully obtuse or completely ignorant opinion piece that horribly disregards the significance of the retailers’ comments.
To further pour oil on the fire it has now come to light that Batman & Robin writer Joshua Williamson admitted in a recent interview with Popverse that the comic industry upsets fans intentionally as a cynical marketing ploy. This does not bode well for the future of Marvel and DC Comics.
Not only is their slice shrinking, but the entire pie is shrinking even faster. The only reason comics are still being published is to fill out corporate ESG portfolios. That no one’s reading them is irrelevant — maybe even a bonus.
“but the entire pie is shrinking even faster” Yes that is the most concerning part. But it isn’t as if the retailers did’t try to warn them
Exactly. And yet, as Mark Waid admitted recently, they’d rather see the industry collapse than give you and me a product that we’d enjoy, because in their minds, we don’t deserve a fun hobby. It’s a sentiment that would get me fired from my job, but in their world, it earns them medals.
It’s all ogre. Wrap it up.