Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Diamond Comics Distributors released their monthly sales charts and Market Share report Monday, this month for comic book titles sold in the Direct Market in May 2008, and despite the debut of DC’s Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and JG Jones, Marvel finished the month with the best-selling comic book of the month and a healthy lead in both Market Share categories.

Secret Invasion #2 was the bestselling comic book of May, comfortably edging out the first issue of DC’s big summer event, Final Crisis. Also strengthening Marvel’s numbers were consecutive Top Ten finishes for the debuts of Avengers/Invaders #1 (#4), Invincible Iron Man #1 (#5), and Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1 (#6).

Morrison’s second new entry of the month - Batman R.I.P. - performed strongly for DC, with the first two issues of that Batman story arc taking the #’s 7 and 9 positions, respectively.

On the trade paperback side, Dark Horse took the win with the second volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, "No Future for You". Dark Horse also took the third and fourth chart positions, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trade paperback and Hellboy Vol. 8: Darkness Calls, helping them continue their recent strong Market Share performances of 6.30% Unit Share and 8.11% Dollar Share.

On that note, Marvel again handily led both categories, with 47.56% Unit Share and 43.28% Dollar Share. Finishing second of course was DC, with 29.95% Unit, and 27.76% Dollar Share.

Look for the full Market Share chart, and Top 100 Comic Book and Graphic Novel charts below, as well as much more detail and analysis of these figures later this week.