Stan Lee would be one happy camper

Last year was the North American comic book industry’s biggest sales year of all time, even when adjusted for inflation, per a recently released report from ​​Comichron and ICv2. To deliver some actual numbers, we’re talking $2.075 billion in total – a 62% increase from 2020.

🦸‍♀️📖 Driving the trend… A surge in popularity across all comic genres, but particularly Japanese manga and graphic novels. Those two categories accounted for $1.47 billion in total sales last year, up from $835 million in 2020.

Per industry insiders, most of this growth👆 can be attributed to new streaming content released over the past year, like the final season of Attack on Titan or shows and movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How the two are connected is pretty simple, at least in theory: people get hooked on a show and want to explore additional content related to it. And this is driving biiiiiiig numbers.

• Japanese webcomics platform Piccoma was the second highest grossing non-gaming app in the world behind TikTok in 2021, earning nearly $100 million per month.
• Webtoons, a digital comic format originating in South Korea that’s geared towards scrolling, also posted record sales last year, mostly in Asia. Marvel and DC and Archie Comics have struck deals to produce original stories featuring some of the style’s biggest characters.

+One interesting thing: Demand for webtoons is being driven by an audience not typically interested in comics: young, female readers. Naver Webtoon, the world’s largest digital comic platform, reports that more than half of its 82 million monthly users are women.