There’s been a lot of discussion about comic book sales charts for, well, years. And part of the problem (or, most of the problem) is that with companies not wanting to share the numbers, and comic book shops all on different systems, it’s been nearly impossible to figure out what actual sales are, other than when a publisher trumpets “300,000 copies sold!” And the problem with that metric is those are copies sold to comic book shops; not necessarily customers.
While some, or perhaps a large chunk of those sales could be to customers putting them on their pull lists, the more reliable metric, in my opinion, is POS (point of sale), aka what customers are actually buying once something is on the shelf. DC can sell a million copies of Absolute Batman to comic book stores, for example; but if only two of those copies are actually being bought and read, what does it matter? (This is obviously an exaggeration, calm down).
In any case, over on the Comic Book Club News podcast I’ve been breaking down ICv2’s POS sales charts monthly for single issues and graphic novels, focusing on items sold rather than dollars earned; because the latter does weight towards, say, $125 omnibuses versus $2.99 single issues. ICv2, I should note, gets its data from 125 stores which use the ComicHub system, as well as 100 stores that use Comic Shop Assistant. It’s a good snapshot, even if it’s only 225 stores total.
It’s also monthly, and recently Prana Direct Market Solutions launched its own charts featuring the Top 400 comics sold weekly. They’re also pulling from 600+ stores using Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant. Like ICv2, Prana is measuring POS, not direct orders from comic book companies. And like ICv2, further complicating issues, they’re offering a ranking, not actual sales figures.
Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat recently did an interesting experiment using Prana’s numbers — they will be releasing “index percentages” monthly — as well as Robert Kirkman’s off-the-cuff comment that Terminal #1 sold 300,000 copies to try and figure out sort of and maybe how many copies that month’s comics have sold (the answer: a lot).
But this is all a lot of wind-up to say that personally I’m always very interested in comic sales charts, as well as the most exact data possible. And while 600+ is still just a fraction of the number of stores in the US (any research I’ve done into “how many comic shops in the US” is horribly compromised by AI, so maybe that’s another job for Prana), I thought it might be interesting to break down the Top 10 from Prana weekly when available, as well as any stray observations from the Top 400 single issues. So let’s go!
Top 10 Selling Comics (Single Issues) for August 11-17, 2026
| Rank | Issue Title And Number | Publisher |
| 1. | Absolute Batman #23 | DC Comics |
| 2. | Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1 | Marvel |
| 3. | Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos #1 | DC Comics |
| 4. | X-Men #35 | Marvel |
| 5. | Transformers #35 | Skybound/Image Comics |
| 6. | The Infernal Hulk #10 | Marvel |
| 7. | Barbara Gordon: Breakout #4 | DC Comics |
| 8. | Batman #12 | DC Comics |
| 9. | Hello Kitty And Friends: Hello World #1 | IDW Publishing |
| 10. | Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #2 | DC Comics |
Okay, so first of all, since this is the first time I’m looking through these charts I don’t have a lot of historical data to compare it to. But “no duh” on Absolute Batman being number one, and DC holding 50% of the Top 10. In fact, the only real surprise here is Hello Kitty And Friends at number nine, which backs up the relatively massive orders comic book shops made for the title (the number was 75,000 in pre-orders) and means IDW might have a hit on its hands.
Otherwise, people liking Gotham City books, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Transformers isn’t a true shocker. And Infernal Hulk is the final issue of that title leading into a Hulk War crossover next year, so hitting number six bodes well for that.
Other than the Top 10, DC Comics took 119 slots in the Top 40 for the week of August 11-17, while Marvel grabbed 124 slots. Image (including Skybound and other labels) grabbed 61 slots, and IDW 12 slots.
Of the publishers which didn’t make the Top 10, BOOM! ranked highest at 36 for the extremely adult Gastronomique #1, and took 11 slots total in the Top 400. Dynamite hit 40 for Ben 10 #4, with 16 slots total. And Ignition Press’s Cult-de-Sac #1 hit number 41, with the publisher grabbing 10 slots total. Other publishers didn’t crack the Top 50, which seems like a good place to wrap up for the moment.
So there you go! The top 10 best-selling comics in the country for the week that was… Maybe.
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