Comic Book Resources has posted Diamond’s sales charts for February 2006. Thirty-one of the top fifty manga made the top 100 graphic novels chart (32, if you count Image’s Spawn Manga Vol. 2, which came in at #38 on the GN list, which would have placed it at #7 on the manga chart).
Tokyopop saw a bump in both dollar and unit share over January, with Viz experiencing a slight decline in both. That will likely turn around in March, as a new volume of Naruto dropped.
The top-selling manga property was Dark Horse’s Trigun Maximum Vol. 8. This is another property with a popular anime attached, so it’s not surprising that it’s doing well. I can’t remember it ever charting very highly in the BookScan lists, but it airs in the wee hours on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Another Adult Swim tie-in, Tokyopop’s Samurai Champloo Vol. 2, shows up at #49 on the GN list. It will be interesting to see where Viz’s R.O.D.: Read or Die tracks, as it’s aired intermittently on Adult Swim as well.
After some usual suspects (Ruroni Kenshin, Tsubasa, etc.), Tokyopop’s Loveless makes a strong debut at #40 on the GN chart. Tokyopop’s strongest performer is Warcraft Vol. 2, though. DrMaster gets nice results with another game title, SNK vs. Capcom Vol. 3, which lands at #72 in GNs.
Yû Watase continues to reward Viz’s devotion with a strong debut for Absolute Boyfriend (#75) and solid performance from Ceres: Celestial Legend Vol. 14 (#81). Nana, wildly popular in Japan, hasn’t seemed to take off yet. Vol. 2 comes in at #35 on the manga list. It seems like lots of LCS shoppers are on the You Higuri train, with the first volume of Gorgeous Carat (Blu) reaching #90 on the GN list.
Neither of Viz’s new Signature books (Monster and Golgo 13) cracked the top 100 GNs, though both made the manga top 50 (at #37 and #35 respectively).
On the top 300 comics chart, Shonen Jump ($4.99) dropped from #190 in January to #216. Shojo Beat ($5.99) fell from #242 to #271. When ICv2 posts its numbers, I’ll have to check back and compare how many units those positions represent. (Jump was ranked lower in December – an estimated 7,692 units — than January – an estimated 4,735.)
(Corrected, because math is hard.)