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After a round of recession, the North American comic market in 2019 has ushered in a recovery.

According to data provided by Diamond Comic Distributors, North America’s largest comics publishing company, sales of comics and graphic novels ordered by North American comics stores from them reached $ 528 million in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 2.23% . In three quarters of 2019, comic book sales were higher than the same period of the previous year, a phenomenon that has never happened since 2015.

The upsurge in sales in 2019 is due to the explosion of comics like 2015. In 2015, the first Star Wars comic “Star Wars # 1” was launched, and in 2019, the 1000th detective comic “Detective Comics # 1000” was launched. Led by this monumental comic book, North American comic book sales rose 4% in 2019.

The number of comics published in 2019 also increased slightly, from 1365 in 2018 to 1,381.

Graphic novels derived from comic journals have also come out of haze in 2019. The sales of graphic novels by diamond publishing companies in the previous year fell by 8% year-on-year, and the decline in 2019 slowed down, only 2%. The number of graphic novels published increased from 895 in 2018 to 1,050 in 2019. Considering the overall recovery of the North American book market in 2019, the overall sales of graphic novels may not have declined.

However, the rebound in sales does not mean that paper comics can change the fact that the publishing industry is no longer beautiful.

Compared with 2010, the diamond publishing company ’s comic and graphic novel sales in 2019 increased by 25%. This number looks very large, but the actual compound annual growth rate is only 2.34%, even the US GDP growthThe long rate did not outperform.

“Star Wars # 1”

But the comics as the source of IP will not disappear. Although it is a bit slower, the comic publishing industry in the United States is also trying to digitize comics in a suitable way to adapt it to various screens.

Digital comics are easier to spread than the original paper comics, and it is easier to open the international market. On January 8 this year, the official Chinese version of Marvel Comics, an agent of NetEase’s Marvel Comics, was launched. Today, this app has been recommended by the Apple App Store homepage.

Marvel’s U.S. Marvel Unlimited has been online since 2013, and has been consistently ranked in the top 20 of the best-seller list in the library area.

Marvel’s market share continues to rise, maintaining a bipolar pattern with DC

Nothing new in the North American comics market in 2019. The paper comics market, which has hit the ceiling, is now in a state of stock competition. The two giants, Marvel and DC, occupy a large portion of the market share, and the remaining fractions are divided up by countless small companies.

In 2019, Marvel Comics ’market share rose slightly, reaching 40.2%, compared to 38.24% last year. Part of Marvel’s rise may come from DC. DC Comics’ share decreased from 30.04% to 29.29%.

Image, which ranks third in the market, has also experienced a decline in market share. Last few, Such as Dark Horse, Boom, Dynamite, the market share has increased, but with their size, their share changes have little effect on the market.

2019 is significant for Marvel, and it’s not just that its films have come to an end under the halo of the highest box office in film history. The copyright of the characters brought back by Disney’s acquisition of Fox also enriches the character reserve of Marvel movies and the creative environment is more relaxed.

This is equally significant for Marvel Comics. In the field of comics, the use of mutants and X-Men’s characters is not restricted, but at the group level, Marvel’s comics have long been serving as “fans around” for movies. Although comics are the real source of IP, movies are the levers that really move IP into cash.

Under the big strategy, the Marvel Comics Department has gradually slowed down in the past few years, and even suspended the X-Men comic series creation in 2017. It will not officially restart until the second half of 2019.

《House of X # 1》

In the second half of 2019, Marvel published 4 comics about X-Men, namely “House of X”, “Powers of X”, “New Mutants”, and the restarted “X-Men”. From the new story, Marvel is already preparing for incorporating mutants into the Marvel movie universe.

The X-Men story that has n’t been updated for a long time has seduced fans’ appetite, and it was naturally welcomed by fans after restart. In the sales rankings counted by the diamond publishing companies, the first issues of “House of X”, “Powers of X” and “X-Men” all reached the top 10 of the sales list, among which the restarted “X-Men” sales Ranked fourth, reaching 257,343 volumes.

Marvel’s highest-selling comics in 2019 is “Black Cat # 1”, the first black cat, ranking third. The main character is the black cat of the villain in the original Spider-Man story. Although it is a villain, the popularity of Black Cat has always been very high, and now it finally has its own story line. Maybe we can still look forward to this role in the future “Spider-Man” movies. After all, the only black widow in the Marvel movie is farewell to the big screen.

“Black Cat # 1”

Under the strong performance of Marvel Comics as a whole, 7 of the top 10 diamond publishing company comics best sellers come from Marvel.

The biggest surprise on the 2019 sales list is the second-ranked “Spawn” from the third-ranked Image. This is the only non-Marvel / DC comic in the top ten miles. The first character created by Todd McFarlane, the founder and cartoonist of “Spawn” Image, is also the head of Image. In addition, this comic has also previously rumored to be a film adaptation plan.

Although DC’s share has declined, the best-selling comic in 2019 is DC’s 1000th detective comic “Detective Comics # 1000”. “Detective Comics” is the origin of the name of the DC company, and it is also the first stage of Batman’s debut. 2019 is the 80th anniversary of the birth of Batman. Therefore, no matter from which perspective, the 1000th issue of this comic magazine has extraordinary significance for the beauty fans.

Detective Comics # 1000

In fact, 2019 is also the 80th anniversary of Marvel ’s birth, but Marvel ’s “MARVEL COMICS # 1000” sales don’t look so good, only 222,776 copies were sold, less than half of DC.

2019 is also the end of the second decade of this century. Comic market analysis agency Comichron made a statistics of the sales of comics in the past 10 years, and summarized the 300 comics with the highest sales in the past ten years. This time Marvel pulled back a round. And the number one comic will definitely surprise many people-it is the first issue of the “Star Wars # 1” Star Wars comics mentioned earlier, with more than 1 million copies sold. This once again shows that Marvel has the thigh to hold.

In the graphic novel market, small factories can finally fight with big factories. In 2019, Diamond Publishing’s top three sales of image novels were captured by Image, and the fifth place was Dark Horse’s Umbrella Academy Vol. 1 Apocalypse Suite. This work was adapted by Netflix into the TV series Umbrella Academy. The first season aired in 2019.

Digitization is the next decade of comics. Will small comics companies be included on the platform?

Rob Salkowitz, chief strategist at digital communications company MediaPlant LLC, makes a forecast of the comics market every year. Standing at this special time of the moment, Rob Salkowitz not only predicted the comic market in 2020, but also made a summary of the past ten years.

In both analyses, he mentioned the digitalization of comic distribution channels.

In the past 10 years, music and videoDeeply transformed by streaming media, but the comics seem to have avoided this wave. Although comics platforms such as ComiXology have also appeared, their impact on the comics industry is not great. However, this does not mean that comics can really be “survived.” With the birth of a new generation of readers who are not so obsessed with paper comics, comics in the future will definitely be digital.

You can watch all kinds of comics on Marvel’s official website

Rob Salkowitz believes that the early failure of the comic platform was mainly due to the low subscription price, which caused the platform and the publisher to fail to agree on the revenue sharing. Therefore, the publisher only considers the digital comic platform as a place to advertise. Sell ​​all the comics on it.

In the past 10 years, including China, more and more mobile-first web comic platforms such as Webtoon have attracted many 8 to 21 with the style of Japanese-style comics and the stripe style of drawing to the end Aged teen reader. More importantly, they are more inclined to charge for a single work than a subscription, and all the content on the platform can be viewed.

The comics on these platforms are currently very different from orthodox American comics, and the readership is different, but their profitability is not bad. According to Qimai data, WEBTOON can be ranked in the top 100 in the US App Store in the iOS App Store in the past year.

Rob Salkowitz believes that sooner or later, these companies will launch an attack on the US Man market, because the market of Orthodox US Man is not small.

These comics platforms will not have a big impact on giant companies like Marvel DC, because they already have their own official digital comics platform, and they have also made a lot of optimizations for reading electronic devices.

If the digital platform really wants to enter the field of the overall beauty of Man, you may first collect those small comic companies.