2025 Review
2025 was our best year ever!
Not by much, but sales were slightly better than our previous record in 2019 and finally pulled out of the Pandemic sales slump! It was an 8% growth over 2024 and much of that was fueled by single issues of DC’s Absolute comics!
Things felt easier this year compared to the last few year despite the disruption of the Diamond bankruptcy and the worries about tarriff impactas. San Francisco and the Mission District felt more recovered with more people out and about, and a new enthusiasm for the City’s recovery. Despite everything else going on the world, the Absolute comic and ABSOLUE BATMAN in particularly brought in new young, enthusiastic readers.
Both James Gunn’s Superman and the Fantastic Four film boosted sales for the associated graphic novels. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN sold quite well, but as usual Marvel did not have enough stock of the Fantastic Four graphic novels that people wanted. We could of sold a lot more of Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four if it had been available.
For most of 2025 sales were slightly better than 2024, with a March sales bump from the debut of the second wave of Absolute comics and ASSORTED CRISIS EVENTS, a comic we pushed heavily. Then in October, the ABSOLUTE BATMAN ANNUAL which feature Daniel Warren Johnson’s story with Batman fighting neo-Nazis boosted sales. The annual got a lot of attention on tiktok and brought in even more new readers for the Absolute comics!
In the past we were much focused on graphic novels, but this year new comic book sales grew by 25% on top of 2024’s 24% growth! Graphic novel sales continued to decline but by only 3% in 2025. Manga sales also declined but by not as much degree than the last two year.
For the entire year of 2025 new comic sales were greater than graphic novel sales, and the gap grew even larger later in the year especially in the 4th quarter. Strangely enough we did not get a holiday boost in graphic novel sales in 2025 unlike previous years, maybe from the the December rain and cold, or maybe just a lack of holiday gift shoppers visiting the store.
2024
2025
2024
New comic sales grew by 25% in 2025 to the point were they 45% of our overall sales. Considering how well Absolute reprints are selling for months and months, we need to find a way to keep more single issue comic on display. Plus people are not really browsing our graphic novels and we need reduce the amount of space they are taking up. We may need to make more changes to store layout to adapt.
2025
DC Comic sales exploded in 2025! Up 69% growth in sales over 2024! That kind of growth is just incredible and I think DC sales are still growing! Most of that growth came from the Absolute line, especially ABSOLUTE BATMAN, but the DCU BATMAN also did very well. ONI also saw sizable growth, 42% up over last year! Street Noise Books sold much better in 2025, on the the strength of two book we did events for YOU MUST TAKE PART IN REVOLUTION and THE MURDER NEXT DOOR by local artist Hugh D’Andrade. Image Comics grew by a 12% and even Marvel saw 5% growth.
Unfortunately, other publishers saw double digit declines. And both Vault and DSTLRY reduced their output significantly in 2025, so of course their sales were much lower.
2024
DC’s percentage of our sales grew to 36.2% of our comics/graphic novel sales, while Marvel’s shrank from 28.9% to 25.7%. But this growth was at the expense of many of the other publishers. People were buying slightly from other publishers and I was stocking less, especially short miniseries with no pre-orders. No sense in order something that no one was asking for. As noted, ONI was the only smaller publisher to buck the trend.
2025
In 2025 DC’s graphic novel sales improved dramatically, thanks mostly from strong sales of all the Absolute Universe volume 1’s, SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and the lower priced DC Compact Comics line. Thanks to warnings from my Penguin Random House sales rep, I ordered a lot more copies of ABSOLUTE BATMAN Vol. 1 than usual and we were able to have copies in stock till the end of the year. Image’s graphic novels also sold slightly better in 2025, led by both SAGA Vol 12 and NIGHTS Vol. 1
DC dominated new comic sales in 2025! The was lots of talk about ABSOLUTE BATMAN, but ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER and the Matt Fraction DC Universe BATMAN sold incredibly well for us also. We were also able to take good advantage of DC’s bundle pricing where they offered a deeper discount on larger bundles of copies. This both allowed us to stock deeper on in-demand titles and take a risk on some titles where demand was greater than I might have guessed. Marvel did quite well with their DEADPOOL/BATMAN crossover, GODZILLA VS SPIDER-MAN and we did a signing with local comics creator Erik Larsen that sold a good number the SPIDER-MAN: NOIR #1 that he wrote and did variant covers for. Image’s comic sales held pretty much steady largely thanks to ASSORTED CRISIS EVENTS, which we were big fans of and thanks to bundle pricing able to stock heavily.
TOP 100 LISTS
There’s currently a bug in ComicHub that is preventing me from exporting our top-seller lists. So I’m going to have to add that specific data at a later date. But in the meantime, I can report ABSOLUTE BATMAN Vol 1 was out best-selling graphic novel, outselling ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN Vol1 and BENEATH THE TREES WHERE NOBODY SEES by more than double!