To help educators and librarians to be informed about what their students and patrons are buying from their local comic shops, we present the Top 50 Graphic Novels for 2019. Each month, Diamond Comic Distributors announces its best-selling graphic novels and manga based on total unit sales to comic book specialty shops.

The inspiration for the critically acclaimed television series on HBO, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, published by DC Comics, was the best-selling graphic novel of 2019.

DC had five titles among the year's top ten including Tom King and Mitch Gerad's Mister Miracle at #5, Sean Gordon Murphy's Batman: White Knight at #7, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke at #9, and Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo's Batman: Damned at #10.

Image Comics had four of the year's top ten graphic novels. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' award-winning Saga Volume 1 ranked #2; Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's Monstress Volume 1 ranked #4; Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans' Die Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker at #6; and Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudino, and Cliff Rathburn's The Walking Dead Volume 31 at #8.

Also in the top ten, Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's Umbrella Academy Volume 1: The Apocalypse Suite, the basis for the Netflix television series, was Dark Horse Comics' best-selling title of the year at #3.

Among the premier publishers, Jim Starlin, George Perez, and Ron Lim's The Infinity Guantlet and Al Ewing and Joe Bennett's The Immortal Hulk Volume 1: Or Is He Both tied as Marvel Comics' best-selling graphic novel at #17; Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys Omnibus Volume 1, the basis of the Amazon Prime super-hero series, was Dynamite Entertainment's top title of the year at #22; IDW Publishing's top book Rich and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons was their top book at #46; and BOOM! Studios' Firefly: The Sting, an original graphic novel based on Joss Whedon's cult classic television series, ranked #126 for the year.

TOP 50 GRAPHIC NOVELS
Based on Total Unit Sales of Products Invoiced in Calendar Year 2019

This information may not be reproduced in any format without the express permission of Diamond Comic Distributors.

How does Diamond calculate the charts? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which includes the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from sales made to thousands of comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world.  Additional sales made to online merchants and other specialty stores may be included as well.

Unit and dollar market shares are calculated based upon orders for comic books, graphic novels, and magazines invoiced and shipped to Diamond customers during any given month, which comprises pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable. Please note that comics marked with an asterisk (*) have had their reported quantities reduced due to retailer returnability, and thus may rank lower on the charts than their actual sales would reflect.

About the Diamond Sales Index: The Sales Index of selected monthly Best Seller Charts is presented as a comparative tool for retailers and publishers. It presents Diamond’s monthly sales for individual titles in relation to Diamond’s total sales for the issue of DC Comics' monthly Batman comic book. (Batman is used as the control title – with a value of 100 – because sales of Batman usually remain relatively stable.) This allows for easy comparison to other titles and helps retailers gauge their orders for all other titles. This formula is only a guide, other factors may impact a titles’ ability to sell in certain locations and clientele.