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Top 100 Graphic Novels of 2017

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As some of you may or may not be aware, in my day job I work as a software engineer and I have a growing interest (and pending postgraduate qualification) in data science. And so I have made some science for you. Comicbook science, in fact.

I made an app that lets you explore Diamond’s monthly top 100 graphic novel charts from last year. You can filter by publisher and/or work-for-hire/creator owned status. Check it out here: https://jasonfranks.shinyapps.io/Top100GNs2017/

Some Insights

Marvel, DC and Image massively dominate the charts. Dark Horse is clearly #4, but it’s much closer to the smaller publishers than the top three.

Also pretty obvious is the way that Saga is absolutely killing it. By far the best performing title, with all eight volumes in the top 100, and many of them among the most frequently ordered books month in, month out. Paper Girls, Monstress and Walking Dead are also doing enough business to shame most work-for-hire titles. Probably the oldest title in the chart is… Watchmen. 

Watchmen is still one of the most frequently ordered single items, on par with any volume of the top volumes of any of the hottest new books.

The creators of Saga, Brian K Vaughn and Fiona Staples are massively outperforming all other creators, together and singly. BKV is also a member of the second best performing creative team, with Cliff Chiang, for Paper Girls. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are also in the top 10 creative teams for Watchmen, a book that is thirty years old.There’s a lot more stuff to see in there, if you’d are to play around with it. I found some other interesting information while I was analyzing the data that you can’t see in the app–stuff around pricing and creative team composition–which I might talk about another time. I might even extend the app, if there’s enough interest. 

What do you think?

— JF

 

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