Kids Comics rule the decade according to NPD BookScan

[Hypo Lil' Leaguer Find all posts View Profile Close Hypo]

The 10 Best-Selling Graphic Novels of the Decade

Raina Telgemeier, Dav Pilkey, and Rachel Renee Russell are the top-selling graphic novelists of the past decade, according to data from NPD BookScan.

Here are the top 10 selling OGNS both digitally and in print from 2010 to the end of 2019:

1. Smile by Raina Telgemeier
2. Dork Diaries Vol 1; Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Ren Russell
3. Drama by Raina Telgemeier
4. Dog Man & Cat Kid by Dav Pilkey
5. Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas by Dav Pilkey
6. Dog Man Unleashed by Dav Pilkey
7. Dog Man by Dav Pilkey
8. Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
9. Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey
10. Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls by Dav Pilkey

Looking at that list, you might be wondering where are Marvel and DC or successes like The Walking Dead? These 10 beat all of those.

And is it a mistake that only kids OGNs are included? No, turns out kids OGNs sell more than ... well, everything else.

NPD BookScan offers point-of-sale tracking for the publishing market, and currently tracks 85% of all print book sellers in the U.S. including Amazon Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, and independent bookstores.

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

This is the reason for all of the Harley Quinn Breaking Glass, Diana Princess of the Amazon and Beast Boy graphic novels recently. DC is trying to tap into this market. But they haven't cracked the formula yet.

[Hypo Lil' Leaguer Find all posts View Profile Close Hypo]

Yea, the closest they've gotten is the Raven graphic novel which I believe is on printing number four or five.

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

I've been saying this for years.... make comics all ages again. My son wanted to read Forever Evil but I couldn't let him because Ultraman was snorting Kryptonite like cocaine and Super Woman was sleeping with at least three men.

If I were DC or Marvel I'd be hiring that writer on Dog Man on something like Teen Titans, Robin, Spider-man, or Young Avengers. 6 out of the top 10 obviously means the guy knows what he's doing and how to keep an audience.

[Hypo Lil' Leaguer Find all posts View Profile Close Hypo]

If I were DC or Marvel I'd be hiring that writer on Dog Man on something like Teen Titans, Robin, Spider-man, or Young Avengers. 6 out of the top 10 obviously means the guy knows what he's doing and how to keep an audience.

Dav Pilkey apparently has a net worth of like 40 million so he's gunna turn that down unless he's got like a childhood dream to work on those properties.

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

If those books are based on superhero themes then I'm sure he grew up reading comics. All it would take is for one of them to extend an olive branch and an invite. Hell I'd let him work on whatever he wanted.

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

Bendis' net worth is only 4 million.... Yeah fuck giving him a Wonder Comics imprint and the keys to an entire corner of the DCU with their teen heroes. Dav should be the guy over Wonder Twins, Young Justice, and LoSH...

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

Wonder Twins is fine as it is.

And Pilkey already has a kid friendly superhero franchise under his belt, complete with an animated movie that made $125 million worldwide. That itch has been scratched. DC couldn't pay him enough money to lure him away from another volume of Dog Man.

[Hypo Lil' Leaguer Find all posts View Profile Close Hypo]

Yea, that was kind of my point, working for DC or Marvel would mean 1) he's probably making less money than he would doing his own thing and 2) he now has to deal with editorial. It's a job with less freedom for less money, so unless he's got a longtime dream to scratch it wouldn't make sense.

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

My son tells me the guy is also the creator of Capt. Underpants. If I were DC or Marvel I'd offer to buy the rights and publish monthly children's comics based on Dog Man and Capt. Underpants and hire the guy as an editor under a new kid friendly line that isn't what they've been publishing so far [since only Raven seems to be doing well].

They basically did the same thing for Bendis publishing Powers now, and his other original works like Pearl. And he doesn't seem to have the same mph that he had over in Marvel or his DC work would be doing better than it is. IDK if it's marketing, or just the audacity of DC hiring Marvel's top guy [kinda like when Geoff Johns was at Marvel and wrote Avengers for a second and that Thing mini series and then went nowhere]... but Bendis probably isn't worth the coin. The only thing he's got on GJ is that he can hold down writing duties on multiple titles *so far* without any delays to my knowledge. He's just not as big as he was ten years ago....

[Hypo Lil' Leaguer Find all posts View Profile Close Hypo]

Last week, five of the Top Ten best selling books in the US were comics

On last week’s book bestseller list, as reprinted by PW from Bookscan numbers, five of the top ten best selling books were comics, or “nearly comics.”

Dav Pilkey charted twice with the last two Dog Man books at #1 and #6, the new Wimpy Kid was at #2, Raina Telgemeier’s Guts was #8 and Nathan W Pyle’s Strange Planet was at #10.

Even if you don’t count the text/comics hybrid Wimpy Kid….that’s 40% of the Top Ten.

According to the article by Carolyn Juris, the new edition of Watchman was also charting strongly.

Pilkey’s Fetch-22 (the eighth book in the Dog Man series) has already sold a mind boggling 312,605 copies.

Just to emphasize that.

These are Stephen King/John Grisham numbers.

Backing that up, Pilkey was just named Publishers Weekly’s Person of the Year, the first time a cartoonist-type has been named to that honor. The numbers don’t lie.

Since Dog Man’s debut in 2016, more than 26 million copies of the first seven books in the series have been printed, according to Scholastic. In 2019 alone, Graphix says it’s printed more than seven million Dog Man books (not including Fetch-22) for the U.S. market. For Whom the Ball Rolls, released in August 2019, has sold nearly 40% more copies than its predecessor, Lord of the Fleas, which was released in August 2018, according to the publisher.

While Pilkey’s Dog Man and Captain Underpants books are flying off the shelves, his fans are flocking to his public appearances. A Pilkey book tour is essentially a rock concert for his throngs of young fans. David Saylor, creative director of Graphix, says of a recent sold-out Pilkey appearance at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus comics festival in Ohio, “I was blown away by the event. The unbridled joy of the crowd and the way he connects with kids… I’ve never seen anything like it. Afterward, he met with every kid that wanted to meet him. It took hours and they waited patiently and got to talk with him.”

This overwhelming success of kids comics is undoubtedly why The New York Times had to reinstate their comics bestseller list – to have Dog Man and Guts on the “real” book list would have been unthinkable.

To which as we finish out a 2019 that was pretty incredible for comics, I can only say