To help educators and librarians to be informed about what their students and patrons are buying from their local comic shops, we present the Top 50 Graphic Novels titles for April. Each month, Diamond Comic Distributors announces its best-selling graphic novels and trade paperbacks based on Total Unit Sales to comic book specialty shops.

Batman leads a team into Santa Prisca to find Bane in Tom King and Mikel Janin's Batman Volume 2: I Am Suicide from DC Entertainment, the best-selling graphic novel of April.

In total, DC Entertainment had six titles in the top ten including Superman Volume 2: Trials of the Super Son at #4, Scott Snyder and John Romita, Jr.'s All-Star Batman Volume 1: My Own Worst Enemy at #5, Batman Volume 10: Epilogue at #7, Justice League Volume 2: Outbreak at #8, and Red Hood and the Outlaws Volume 1: Dark Trinity at #10.

Mike Mignola and Gary Gianni's original graphic novel Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea ranked #2 and was one of Dark Horse Comics' two titles among the top ten; also in the top ten from the publisher was Avatar: The Last Airbender Volume 9 at #9.

Image Comics rounded out the top ten with two volumes of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga: Saga Volume 7 ranked #3 and the Saga Deluxe Edition Volume 2 hardcover ranked #6.

TOP 50 GRAPHIC NOVELS
Based on Total Unit Sales of Products Invoiced in April 2017

This information may not be reproduced in any format without the express permission of Diamond Comic Distributors.

How does Diamond calculate the charts? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which includes the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from sales made to thousands of comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world.  Additional sales made to online merchants and other specialty stores may be included as well.

Unit and dollar market shares are calculated based upon orders for comic books, graphic novels, and magazines invoiced and shipped to Diamond customers during any given month, which comprises pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable. Please note that comics marked with an asterisk (*) have had their reported quantities reduced due to retailer returnability, and thus may rank lower on the charts than their actual sales would reflect.

About the Diamond Sales Index: The Sales Index of selected monthly Best Seller Charts is presented as a comparative tool for retailers and publishers. It presents Diamond’s monthly sales for individual titles in relation to Diamond’s total sales for the issue of DC Comics' monthly Batman comic book. (Batman is used as the control title – with a value of 100 – because sales of Batman usually remain relatively stable.) This allows for easy comparison to other titles and helps retailers gauge their orders for all other titles. This formula is only a guide, other factors may impact a titles’ ability to sell in certain locations and clientele.