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DC's Compact Comics line is less than a year old, but already it's one of the biggest lines in bookstores for superhero comics. In bookstore sales figures released by the market research firm Circana (and licensed to ICv2), the top 20 best-sellers are dominated by DC with a 37% market share, with the Compact Comics line accounting for almost half of those DC books. Even more impressively, the line only launched in June 2024, and so were only on-sale for half of the year.

The Compact Comics edition of Watchmen outsold the full-size edition by 21% in 2024 despite only being on sale for 7months, becoming the second-highest selling DC comic in bookstores - second only to a full-size reprint of 1987's Batman: Year One (which hasn't had a Compact Comics edition to date). Having two primary editions of Watchmen didn't seem to cannibalize each other, as in 2023 the full-size edition of Watchmen sold roughly 100 copies more. Meaning that about double the amount of people who bought the Watchmen comic (in two formats) in 2024 than did in 2023.

Also in the Top 20 bookstore bestsellers for the superhero market are Compact Comics editions of Batman: The Court of Owls, Batman: Hush, and All-Star Superman. The only DC comics not in the Compact Comics format that made the top 20 list was the aforementioned Batman: Year One and Watchmen, followed by Batman: The Killing Joke, the recent Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong, V for Vendetta, and Batman: The Long Halloween - with those latter four all without a Compact Comics edition to compete with like Watchmen did (and lost).

To put it another way, among the Top 20 bookstore bestsellers in 2024, DC's Compact Comics line alone accounted for 15% of sales by units, with Marvel as a whole accounting for just 12%. It's no wonder Marvel announced their own version of Compact Comics format in October 2024 with the Marvel Premier Collections, which began hitting shelves in February 2025.

That also begs the question, if (or when) DC will do Compact editions of its biggest selling graphic novels without companion compact editions such as Batman: The Killing Joke, V for Vendetta, and Batman: The Long Halloween, especially since Compact Comics edition don't seem to cannibalize sales of the full-size editions in the case of Watchmen.

Make sure to check out Icv2.com for more of Circana's data.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.