Cape and Cowl Comics Best Selling Graphic Novels of 2016

It has been fascinating for us to watch and participate in our customer's reading habits over the course of our first year and we thought it might be interesting enough to share what we have found. Below is a list of our top 50 best selling trade paperbacks and graphic novels of 2016. Below the list is a handful of observations about what we found that we thought were pretty cool. Once you make it through the list, let us know what you think. Have you read everything on here? Think there are any glaring omissions? Anything ridiculous on there that you don't think belongs?

1. Paper Girls Vol 1
2. Saga Vol 1
3. Saga Vol 6
4. We Can Never Go Home Vol 1
5. Bitch Planet Vol 1
6. Black Panther Vol 1 Nation Under Our Feet
7. Monstress Vol 1
8. Saga Vol 5
9. Saga Vol 2
10. Sex Criminals Vol 1
11. Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection Vol 1
12. Saga Vol 4
13. Space Riders Vol 1
14. Saga Vol 3
15. Ms. Marvel Vol 1 No Normal
16. Wicked + Divide Vol 1
17. Fight Club 2
18. I Hate Fairyland Vol 1
19. Wolverine Old Man Logan
20. Tokyo Ghost Vol 1
21. Y: the Last Man Vol 1
22. Preacher Vol 1
23. Deadly Class Vol 1
24. Batman the Killing Joke
25. Wicked + Divine Vol 2
26. Wicked + Divine Vol 3
27. Civil War
28. Lumberjanes Vol 1
29. Sex Criminals Vol 3
30. Sex Criminals Vol 2
31. Legend
32. East of West Vol 1
33. Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol 1
34. Broken World
35. Batman Vol 1 The Court of Owls
36. East of West Vol 5
37. Humans Vol 1
38. The Fix Vol 1
39. Rat Queens Vol 1
40. Locke and Key Vol 1
41. The Vision Vol 1 Little Worse than a Man
42. Manhattan Projects Vol 1
43. Chew Vol 1
44. Southern Bastards Vol 1
45. Paper Girls Vol 2
46. Superman American Alien
47. Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol 2
48. Flashpoint
49. Humans Vol 2
50. Rat Queens Vol 3

• TWENTY-NINE of our top 50 come from Image Comics
• Marvel Comics came in 2nd with 8 of the top 50. DC Comics had 6 on the list. Boom and Black Mask each had 2 and Dark Horse, Z2, and IDW each had 1.
• Every one of our book club books from the year ended up on here (We Can Never Go Home, Broken World, the Fix, and Legend).
• Marvel ending up with More books than DC is kind of interesting because we sell more DC books overall, but apparently it's spread out over a wider variety of titles.
• Old Man Logan, Flashpoint, Preacher, and the Killing Joke all probably got a boost in 2016 because of either appearing in or the anticipation of appearing in TV/Movies.
• It's cool to see Y:the Last Man, Superman American Alien, and the Vision on here because these are books we are super passionate about and must have been able to share our enthusiasm in a positive way.
• We would have expected to see Image Comic's $9.99 volume 1's to dominate the 29 titles that made it from the publisher on this list, but they were actually outnumbered 16 to 13 by later volumes in these series. This goes to show how strong these series start, but also goes to show that it appears to be a pretty damn smart practice to make an affordable entry point for new readers.
• We count at least 24 of the books on this list as featuring strong female leads. Not sure what this means, but it seems pretty sweet :)