DC did not just win the week — it nearly owned it. Publisher marketshare for comic shops from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 put DC at 48.98%, with Marvel at 29.79% and Image at 11.70%, Bleeding Cool reports from Prana Direct Market Solutions point-of-sale data covering more than 600 stores.
Absolute Batman #25 sat at No. 1 on the weekly unit chart and spilled heat into the rest of DC’s Absolute and event stack. Absolute Wonder Woman #25 ranked No. 2, followed by DC All In Saga: Darkseid Vs The World #1, Batman: Bad Seeds Sunrise #1 and Justice League: The Dark Realm Special #1 inside a Top 10 that still had room for Amazing Spider-Man #1002, Daredevil #8, X-Men #40, Captain America #16 and Fantastic Four #18.
IDW (2.93%), Dark Horse (1.71%), Mad Cave (1.17%), BOOM! (1.05%), Oni (0.97%), Titan (0.86%) and Dynamite (0.84%) rounded out the listed shares. Prana’s Monday-to-Sunday store sample is a large slice of the roughly 1,800–2,000 direct-market shops, not a full Diamond-era census, but it is the clearest weekly POS snapshot shops share publicly.
The jump is even louder next to RCG’s prior week, when DC retook the lead at 39.98% for Oct. 20–26. Absolute Batman #25 turned a solid DC week into a near-half share — the kind of single-issue spike retailers feel in pull boxes before they feel it in spreadsheet columns.
Whether Absolute can keep that altitude without another anniversary-sized drop will show up in next Friday’s Prana cut. For one week in late October, though, the bat signal was basically the market.
Shops that stacked Absolute and All In deep are the ones who rode the 48.98%. Everyone else is already counting how much of that demand was a one-week event versus a lasting Absolute floor. Either way, Oct. 27–Nov. 2 belongs in the Absolute sales scrapbook: nearly half the direct market, two Absolute books at the top, and Marvel left playing for place.
