DC just took almost half the comic shop market for a week. That sounds like a regime change until you read what actually shipped.
According to the Prana Direct Market Solutions point-of-sale data that Bleeding Cool published November 4, DC took 48.98% of comic shop sales for October 27 through November 2, 2026. Marvel landed at 29.79%. Image was third at 11.70%. Absolute Batman #25 sat at #1 on the weekly chart, with Absolute Wonder Woman #25, DC All In Saga: Darkseid vs. the World #1, and Justice League: The Dark Realm Special #1 also in the Top 10.
Bleeding Cool’s own framing is honest about the driver: Absolute Batman #25 “totally dominated” the week. One milestone Absolute issue can move the pie chart that far. That is impressive. It is also exactly the kind of one-week spike that should make you wary of coronation headlines.
Week over week: from ~40% to ~49%
| Week | DC | Marvel | Image | Notable driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 20–26 | 39.98% | 31.56% | 15.75% | Absolute Green Arrow #6 |
| Oct 27–Nov 2 | 48.98% | 29.79% | 11.70% | Absolute Batman #25 |
Sources: Oct 20–26, Oct 27–Nov 2 (Bleeding Cool, Prana data).
That is a nine-point DC jump in seven days, while Marvel and Image both lose share into the same Absolute Batman #25 weekend. Image dropping from 15.75% to 11.70% is the quiet tell: when a single DC book eats the room, everybody else’s slice shrinks whether their own titles got worse or not.
What Absolute Batman #25 actually means here
Credit where it is due. Absolute Batman has been the Absolute line’s gravitational center for months. In mid-October, Bleeding Cool reported unnamed “very senior” sources putting Absolute Batman #25 north of 775,000 comic-shop pre-orders — a number DC has not confirmed, and one that is still orders into stores, not proven sell-through to readers. Even with that caveat, the sell-through week matching the hype is not nothing. The book topped the Prana chart, Absolute Wonder Woman #25 rode shotgun at #2 (39.39% of Absolute Batman #25’s sales in Bleeding Cool’s ratio column), and DC put four titles in the Top 10.
That is how you win a week in 2026: one oversized Absolute release, enough adjacent Absolute and event books to keep the dollars/units in-house, and a release calendar that does not hand Marvel a matching stack of #1s the same Wednesday. Winning a week is not the same as owning the market.
The caveats that always apply
It is a sample. Bleeding Cool is clear that the Prana set is point-of-sale data from more than 600 shops on Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant systems, out of an estimated 1,800 to 2,000 direct-market stores. Best weekly read we have. Still not the whole market. If the sample skews toward busier Absolute-friendly shops, a 48.98% week can look hotter than a full-census number would.
Weekly share swings with the calendar. The prior week, without Absolute Batman #25, DC was already ahead at 39.98% on Absolute Green Arrow #6. The week before that run, Marvel was winning on Midnight. Quarterly stories and weekly stories answer different questions; a single Absolute Batman heat week does not rewrite a quarter by itself, and a quiet Absolute week will almost certainly give a big chunk of that 49% back.
We do not get a clean dollar-vs-unit breakout in this particular Bleeding Cool write-up. The publisher table is “Percentage” of comic shop sales as Prana reports it. The Top 10 “Percentage” column is a ratio to Absolute Batman #25 (= 100%), not each title’s share of the whole market. Variant-heavy Absolute issues can move dollars differently than units; this article does not separate those, so I will not pretend it does.
My take
Absolute Batman #25 earned the spike. DC earning nearly 49% of a sampled comic-shop week on the back of that book is a real sales event, not a rounding error. What it is not is proof that DC “owns” the direct market now. The real test is the next ordinary Absolute week — no #25-level event heat — and whether Marvel’s Midnight books or Image’s bench claw share back when the calendar is fairer. Celebrate the sell-through if the shops actually emptied. Just do not confuse one Batman’s week with a lasting market map.
