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Last week ComicsPRO, the organization for comics shop retailers, held a two day online open house that included hours of informative panels and roundtables on the state of the comics industry via Zoom.
ComicsPRO is really a stellar organization run by people who care about comics, and this was an important event that I fully planned to watch. But due to various things….I didn’t. Which I’m kicking myself for because a lot of important information was presented.
Luckily, my colleague, ICv2’s Brigid Alverson, was more diligent and has reported on the most important sessions for that site. If you haven’t read her coverage yet, go check it out. In the interests of my own ongoing narrative about the comics industry, here’s a brief look at some of what was covered – it’s not intended as a substitute for reading Brigid’s coverage, but just my own commentary on the findings.
The ComicsPRO board gave their yearly report, including the success of Local Comics Shop Day, which had a new format this year.
Local Comic Shop Day was held on September 27, 2025, and over 270 shops participated, according to Director of Operations Kate deNeuve. This was the first year of the new format (see “ComicsPRO Unveils Revamped Local Comic Shop Day”), and 25% of the participants who responded to the after-event survey said this was their first time. Retailers who responded also reported an average of twice as much revenue as they took in on previous Saturdays. Retailers who had community events on that day outperformed those who didn’t. Looking to the future, deNeuve said, “We’re talking to publishers about variant fatigue with Local Comic Shop Day variants, and… part of my ask for 2026 is asking publishers to provide more community event materials, rather than variant covers.”
Another topic is replacing Previews as a compendium of information about all of the comics being released. ComcisPRO president Joe Murray said they are working with publishers on this, including VIZ Media, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.
The Comet Standard – a uniform metadata system for tracking comics – is more important than ever with Diamond out of the picture. ComicsPRO has been pushing publishers to adopt and implement the system for a couple of years, but it has been slow going. Katie Pryde, the person spearheading the COMET Standard, led a panel discussing the latest developments. It turns out PRH has been doing the best:
In terms of distributor adoption, only PRHPS is sending COMET files on a weekly basis, Bohren and Garside said. “Lunar is still working on theirs,” Bohren said, “and I haven’t heard a ‘No, we’re not going to do that’ from Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins.” Universal may also sign on in the future.
Despite the advances that have been made, the data still is not consistent across publishers and distributors, so it still has to be adjusted by hand for POS systems such as Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant.
Getting clean usable metadata for comics is a huge but necessary task – that ComicsPRO is still plugging away at it is one of the things that makes them such a key part of the industry.
Kristen McLean of BookScan delivered a talk about current trends and sales. I’m especially mad at myself for missing this as Bookscan has stopped giving any but a few numbers to outlets like this. Key takeaways:
In terms of how graphic novels are selling in the book channel, as tracked by BookScan,
- Unit sales of graphic novels came to 41 million in the 12 months ending in September 2025, a decrease of 4.7% compared to the same period a year prior.
- Kids’ graphic novels performed the best, with a 5% rise in unit sales, bringing them to 36% of the graphic novel category.
- Adult unit sales were down slightly, but their market share went up by 1.5%, to 61%.
- YA graphic novels took the biggest hit, with sales down by 1.1 million units, bringing them to 3% of the comics and graphic novel category, a year over year decline of 2.4% in market share.
Despite the drop in manga sales, McLean still sees it as a huge category:
“People ask all the time whether we’re going to see a drop in the manga market like we did back in the Borders [bankruptcy] days,” McLean said. “And my opinion is, no, we’re not. Partly that’s because there is an incredible wave of Asian content that is hitting the global market, not just the US market. I think what we’re seeing here, particularly for manga, is a stabilization and consolidation of the core fanship for manga that is new since 2019… I really think [manga] is here to stay, and this is just a normalization.” Manga sales remain at 144% of where they were in 2019, according to BookScan.
ComicsPRO also unveiled the results of their distributor survey – now limited to two players, Lunar and PRH. The topline results:
Retailers scored Penguin Random House Publisher Services ahead of Lunar Distribution for the first time in the ComicsPRO 2025 Retailer Sentiment Survey: PRHPS received a 3.99 overall score on a five-point scale, and Lunar a 3.8.
Finally, ComicsPrRO announced their Industry Award winners for the year, which are presented to one living person and one deceased. The living winner was Scott Snyder, and Jim Shooter was honored posthumously. Nominees and winners below:
INDUSTRY AWARD NOMINEES
- Jackie Estrada: Comic-book convention organizer, book editor, co-publisher of Exhibit A Press, Former administrator of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and past president of Friends of Lulu.
- Joe Ferrara: Facilitator of the Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, long term comic store retailer who created and runs one of the oldest stores (celebrating its 50th year in 2026) in the United States: (Atlantis Fantasyworld of Santa Cruz, California).
- Nick Barrucci: Long term comics industry insider (45+ years in the industry) who is founder and CEO/Publisher of Dynamite Entertainment.
- WINNER: Scott Snyder: Comic book author who is the architect and overseer of the Absolute Universe line of comics from DC.
MEMORIAL AWARD NOMINEES
- Peter David: Writer of comic books, novels, television, films and video games who wrote for Marvel, DC, and a variety of different companies.
- Ramona Fradon: Comics artist who in a 74 year career co-created the superhero Metamorpho and illustrated Aquaman and Brenda Starr, Reporter.
- WINNER: Jim Shooter: Comics writer, editor, and publisher who worked for DC and Marvel and launched comics publishers Valiant, Defiant, and Broadway.
- Archie Goodwin: Comics writer, editor, and artist who was chief writer and editor of Creeepy and Eerie (Warren) and was editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics.
ComicsPRO will hold it’s annual in-person meeting February 18-21, 2026, at the Hilton Glendale, in Glendale CA, and fate willing, I’ll be there in person!
English (US)